Sounds and Graphics

Achtung! Spitfeur!

Much like the interface, the sounds are designed to be perfectly realistic. Your battles won't be accompanied by a musical score and you won't hear extraneous sound effects. You'll only hear those things that affect you or have the potential to affect you - the sound of a truck or tank engine idling (or even going by), the sound of distant gunfire. You'll be able to discern rifles from SMGs and cannons with ease. That is it - that's all the sound effects involved in playing the game. They are purely functional, sound quite legitimate (the echo of a rifle shot on an open field is amazing) and aren't cluttered by background noise.

The sound isn't as perfectly realistic as we'd like it, however. For one, it is difficult to tell the direction that an approaching vehicle is coming from, or the distance away from you. The distance-fading algorithms, if any, are not particularly intuitive and take time to get used to.

Shells, bullet streaks, blood galore

Good work, soldier

Weak sauce

If you haven't looked at the screenshots yet, we'll save you the disappointment and state it flatly - World War II Online is two to three years behind the curve. The game is a hybrid between Tribes and Panzer Elite in terms of graphical complexity. Like those two titles, Panzer Elite uses heightmaps for terrain rendering. The polygons that render each part of the terrain are quite large and blocky, yet given the vast distances covered by the game terrain, the end result tends toward huge, smooth rolling hills and plains. In a major departure from previous titles, there are virtually no flat areas that are perfectly level. There always appears to be some sort of slope to the terrain.

Sneaky bastard, you can only see his leg (right of the reticle)

The advantage of the high ground

Despite the huge terrain blocks and flat textures used as trees, shrubs and bushes, World War II Online somehow manages to convey the feeling of a war in a countryside. The empty battlefield, a trait of modern war, is alive and well as soldiers fight over great distances instead of up close. The illusion is maintained through a very deep viewing distance and great skies, which create a realistic horizon. The only time you may find yourself in close combat is in assaults on towns and cities, or any other areas that provide cover from long-range gunfire.

While the terrain texturing is downright gross and the shape of the land passable, vehicles are modeled quite adeptly and given reasonably good textures. There is no overabundance of detail on these textures or models (especially not on infantry) but they are accurate enough to allow for accurate friend or foe recognition from a distance.

A most productive outing, however

The worthless little map