RAID: World War II

RAID: World War II was a half-alive fetus born from PAYDAY 2's success and died almost instantly after the unfinished, buggy mess of a launch back in September 2017. It managed to cling onto life for about a half a year (February '18) with 100+ peak players, if not even that.
I went back and played this game again recently and... it was fine, I guess. The gunplay feels fantastic and the playable characters made me do a funny "ha-ha" at times. That's all the praise I can really give to this game. The AI (both enemies and teammate bots alike), the leveling system and stealth get a special mention of how ungodly awful these things are.
Now, enjoying the game is very much a subjective thing. The game is very much like Payday: The Heist and Payday 2 to a lesser extent, that being: "How many enemies are there on my screen and how long have I exposed myself to them/are they aiming at me?" If the answer is "plenty/few seconds/yes", you're either dead or hurt pretty bad. But don't worry, enemies drop resources (mostly ammo, but they do drop health and seldom grenades) and there should be chests containing these resources as well, so it's all well and good. Or in layman's terms: cover-peek/shoot-cover/reload-repeat. If you're out in the open on the two hardest difficulties, lmao good luck
So anyway, do you like that kind of gameplay? Well, I can't answer that for ya. But I do know one thing you're not gonna like and it's the steaming pile of scrap that is the Diesel Engine 2.0 this game runs on and any Payday player should get PTSD from hearing those words. They decided to use this almost decade and a half old, originally car-racing engine to make this game since they were most familiar with it. Sure, whatever. It'll have the same problems Payday has, if not more.
I could go on but I'm running out of writing juice, but if you're wondering about getting this game, get it only during a sale. This game is definitely not worth the full price. I'm giving this game a nostalgia filled pity recommend.

WE'RE BACK, BABY
The devs have miraculously started updating this game again, which is what prompted this review, but I also just genuinely enjoy this game. I definitely recommend it if you're looking for a similar experience to PAYDAY 2 without having to, you know, play PAYDAY 2.

If anything, this is a game that deserves a second chance.

Could have been a good game, maybe even a great one. But through bad investments, the publisher almost going under through insider-trading and Overkill barely scraping by through bankruptcy, this game sadly never had a chance. Using the old tried and true Diesel engine, used to power driving-games, along with Payday the Heist and Payday 2, this game was developed as a response to the Payday IP soaring into popularity, along with a resurgence in 4 player co-op shooters.
Don't get me wrong, this game is awful. It's buggy, it's ugly, and it's unfinished. But there is charm in there, left by a dev team who had a vision, and really wanted this thing to pan out. The game has humour, good writing, frantic gunplay and a good selection of weapons with questionable upgrades.
The level design is awful, the enemy variety is bland, and the balance is all over the place. But even with that, I continue to come back to this game. I can feel that the devs wanted this to work, but sadly, with how the market was starting to lean away from PvE shooters at the time this game came out, it just didn't stand a chance.
And after being silent for almost 4 years since the game released, the devs suddenly came back into action with an update, and spoilers for future content. I applaud the devs for their efforts, and I wish them the best in the future. This is truly something special and almost unheard of in the games industry.
Get this game if you can. It's nothing special, but it's a fun little timewaster with friends and a fun little thing to jump into every now and then, if only for the writing, arcade-like gunplay and cut-scenes.

Yes this game is very much like Payday, except WW2. But it plays more like Payday the Heist than Payday 2
Another example of a dead game - asked for way too much money on launch, failed support
Long review ahead - tl;dr at the end:
Good stuff
+ Unique Special Units:
The Flame - acts like the Bulldozer, except he has a large range, and can either be killed by spamming ammo or trying to shoot his tank on the back, so he explodes and kills nearby enemys
The Officer - acts like Captain Winters, except he is a actual threat and roams the map instead of walking to one spot and remaining there until you kill him. He spawns stronger Units over time and walks around with a group of people protecting him. Low health but huge impact on the game if you dont bother to search him out.
The Spotter - unique enemy, throws a flare onto your current position and you can either extinguish the flare or change position. If you do not extinguish the flare, that position will be bombed for a short amount of time, basically killing you in a few hits if you remain in that area.
The Sniper - acts the same as a Payday Sniper, except he has a huge lense flare so you can spot him.
+ Unique Modifiers - you can earn certain cards after finishing a raid (level) and use them to either make the game harder or easier for yourself and your team. Depending on if they are helpful or harmful they will decrease or increase your XP gained from a single raid (in which you used the card). People get to vote on it if they want to use your card before a raid starts :)
+ Unique objectives and levels - The game released with 12 raids and added 2 more later on, there were also 2 operations which are a collection of previous levels with new objectives and also some cruising time in Berlin. They all feature mostly unique objectives to their dedicated level, some even offer the ability to stealth or partly stealth the raid.
+ Camp and the customization - You gain gold from raids and can spend it on some items for your camp. The camp is the place you will be booted into with your team after every raid. Its a nice idea but probably takes some heavy loading if you play with someone who has a slow PC
+ Stealth - The game has Coins nowadays (didnt on release) and guards seem to respawn nowadays aswell (didnt on release either). You can carry corpses around which is quite nice, sadly there is only 1 stealth pistol in the game and its the odd Payday 2 release date Stealth (You have to aim at the head to kill them so you make less sound). There are sadly only like 2 levels that offer full stealth tho.
Meh
~ Weapon challenges - to upgrade your weapon you have to use the weapon and compelte certain tasks, sometimes pretty odd ones
~ Classes - There are 4 Classes which "force" you into a certain playstyle, some being vastly overpowered compared to others and one being so bad without being max level that you are actively worse when you use its ability (it automatically snaps your aim onto the body instead of the head and you cant pull away from it)
Bad Stuff
- Game is basically dead - no active players after about 2 months since release, devs have been removed from the game so there is no active support anymore. They do keep working on it in their free time apparently nowadays. (which is nice to hear but its too late sadly)
- Bag carrying Simulator - They continued to use the bad trait from Payday 2 of making you carry around alot of Bags. There is an entire Bank heist that has about 120 Bags if i remember correctly that you need to deliver for an achievement. Its not difficult, just tedious. Other raids have the issue of having to bring the bags a very long way without any car to make the delivery faster
- Game breaking bug - There used to be a bug (cant confirm if its fixed nowadays) if you have a Character on Slot #5 the game wouldnt save any progress from Weapon challenges anymore.
- Grind - reaching Level 40 is somewhat tedious, but reaching it with 4 characters just wastes time. You dont level fast in this game.
tl;dr
Its an alright game if you like Payday 2 or Payday the Heist, only buy it on sale and only bother if you have some friends to play it with (4 in total). After all its a dead game with no players and devs have been layed off for the bad sales.

Blammo!
The game still gets updates but slowly. Although after latest update (U21) everything feels much more fluent to run and very satisfying to play. Thus gameplay feels more satisfying and neverendingly fun. It's still surprisingly yet happy news to see community as a whole being friendly and keeping this game alive with its aesthetics, concepts and yet with limited resources doing so much more. So do please give this game another chance. It's doable for fun than PAYDAY 2 nowadays.

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