A Front Too Far: Normandy

I enjoy Easy Red 2 from the same developer but this game, A Front Too Far: Normandy, really sucks. It's extremely clunky with strange bugs. Some examples: 1) When you reload from a save checkpoint, your ammo is still depleted form the previous mission. 2) The damage dealt by shooting enemies is extremely random. Headshots are sometimes fatal, but other times it can take up to five shots to drop an enemy 3) Mission objectives can be confusing and it's easy to get lost (perhaps this is by design, but it's not fun)

A Front Too Far: Normandy is a story and narrative driven first person shooter set in WW2, as the title implies, you take on the role of an American special forces paratrooper in the invasion of Normandy, meet up with the French Resistance and do some missions and adventuring as well as liberating France. I've played more video games than anyone else on the planet, at least 10,000 games on Steam (of which I've reviewed over 9,500). As I wade through the lower end of the Steam marketplace, I come to expect each game as it comes up as probably being garbage. I thought the same thing would be true for A Front Too Far: Normandy. Well, A Front Too Far: Normandy is [i]not[/i] garbage. This is a sincerely made game and there's some real elements of professionalism and understanding from the developer about what goes into making a real solid game that gamers would enjoy. So for that reason, at least, I certainly hope the developer departs the indie/amateur scene and goes onto a professional engagement with a serious development company who can make good use of their obvious talent. See, I can't recommend A Front Too Far: Normandy, despite the effort that went into it and the areas where the game does show great promise. And those include good map design, attention to detail, fairly okay voice acting (proper accents and everything)... this is certainly head and shoulders above most amateur games on Steam, and with over 9,500 product reviews on Steam, I can say that with great confidence. But a few good ideas don't make a complete game, and the amateur nature of this game does shine through... games have to be a complete package, the best of the best, for me to recommend them, and there's some issues with A Front Too Far: Normandy. Usually when writing a game review I'll pick out the obvious defects, and for most games that really do fall into the 95% of games that barely make any money at all for the developers or for Valve, those defects stick out like a sore thumb. Here, the only obvious defect is the poor quality graphics. The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the mid 2000s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with. That's not much that's wrong with this, but overall, the game also lacks polish, many areas of it are clunky. The FPS combat is lacklustre... the decent storytelling unfortunately can't counter those defects. It's not really pleasant to play, and that's a shame because the story is engaging. This really comes across as Arma 2 from Wish, and that's unfortunate. But at the same time, it's a pretty big achievement for an amateur project like this to do well enough to even merit that comparison. A Front Too Far: Normandy has an over ambitious price of around $6 USD, it's not worth it. Games don't exist in a vacuum. There's hundreds of better, professionally developed FPS games, many cheaper or at similar price points (like Arma games when they are on sale). But I do hope the developer does go on to get a professional role in the industry so they can get better opportunities to contribute with their talent (and get paid properly for it).

The concept is interesting but the game is far too unpolished to be enjoyable. The thing in patricular that made me just give up is the fact that if you fall through the map or get stuck on geometry and cannot break free, you are pretty much screwed, because it doesn´t matter wether you press ´´main menu,´´ or ´´save and exit,´´ the game will save regardless, and upon loading the game, you will spawn at the exact same spot, in the same predicament (that being still stuck or still freefalling in the void under the map). The only thing left to do at that point is restarting the entire game, no matter how far you´ve gotten. Other minor issues can be forgiven, because you can tell it was clearly made by a very small dev team, but this is simply cannot overlook.

I really really love games like this because it shows a fine example of someone really trying hard to make something they're passionate about, but it doesn't really come together well in execution. I love seeing these great ideas put into scale and into production, and I've always had a passion for bad or *bad-ish* games. I wouldn't call this game *bad*, it's definitely bad *ish* though. It's basically a WWII RPG kinda deal, no stats or anything but you get to equip yourself with all sorts of guns and gear from the time, different sights and scopes that seem era accurate and quests you can do for different people. There is a lot of passion put on display here and I commend the developer for making their passion, HOWEVER. This game has a LOT of problems that need to be ironed out. One example is the inventory, it's incredibly limiting with only 25kg before you are over burdened, and that is NOT a lot of room for all the guns you want to play with. I usually like holding three guns, a long range rifle, a mid range battle rifle, and a short range machinegun/smg. That puts me pretty much at the limit of the inventory, putting me at about 21ish kg's, and THEN you have to hold all the consumables that will keep you alive which puts you at the complete limit of 25kg to hold those life-saving bandages and medicines and foods that you need to manage. Yes, there is a food system, so you need to hold food to keep you filled up. This is an RPG where you're supposed to be getting and using all the different weapons and items you can find, and yet you are incredibly limited in what you can pick up. When you're overburdened, you walk at a snails pace, so trying to transport weapons to SELL, you know, like in an RPG where you're trying to save money to get better weapons and scopes and such is a living hell of slow paced walking. It's jank and not very well thought out. It's the most jank game I think I've ever played, honestly, and I've played a LOT of jank BS on this platform. First of all, the mouse sensitivity is set really high by default, at least for me and there is no way to change it. Not in any way I've found, there is no slider and I haven't found a config file that has the mouse sensitivity options, so you're stuck with it. It is REALLY hard to control your guns and especially when aiming down your sights. You will always have issues of taking your shot, and it misses by one pixel because your mouse just refuses to sit in the right spot because the sensitivity is too high. You move it, and it moves too far to the side and you're a pixel off on THAT side now too. It's really frustrating to play, I'm not going to lie because of the really exact and small hit-boxes the enemies have. It makes the gunfights feel finicky and annoying as you're just trying to shoot your targets and you're literally fighting with your mouse the whole time. The vehicles are all drive-able, however they are all REALLY awkward on the ground. You will literally be bouncing all over the place if you even go an INCH off the main roads, which are constantly patrolled by Germans. You are encouraged to go off-road, however doing so will make you bounce so bad you flip over. You CAN flip the vehicles back over, but it brings about another issue. The way you get off your vehicle, is you basically just spawn outside of it and if you're on your side, or upside-down (which happens a LOT), you will spawn under the map and fall infinitely until you load your save. Speaking of; The save system. You cannot save mid mission, and the missions/quests are usually long and annoying to get to. Each mission you have to walk or drive to and they are usually a thousand and more meters away. They are long treks across the countryside, and if you die during the mission, you go back to your last save in camp. This *wouldn't be that bad* if it weren't for the constant glitches and pointless deaths that happen because of how jank the game is. When I started, I had spent at least two hours replaying the first two missions over and over again because I wasn't used to the jank and didn't know how to avoid the game-breaking glitches. The game doesn't let you save at first until you complete the two missions, and that is a solid hour or so of having to run without getting glitched or killed, which again, is really hard to have happen. Combat is also always jank as heck. On top of the sights being very precise and your aim having to be really perfect, you're fighting with the mouse as I said earlier. Enemies spawn in strangely when at a distance. They aren't always in the world until you get around 100-150 meters in proximity, and from far away they can be visible through terrain and obstacles, which you will shoot at and find that they are actually *behind* something that they're glitched through. Either that or you'll be accidentally shooting the crazy huge hitboxes that cover has. I was trying to shoot around a rock, and I had to step TWO METERS out of cover before my shots actually started hitting enemies. I was just shooting a hard spot in the air because the rock I was behind had such a huge hitbox, all the while the enemies have really small and exact hitboxes. Again, it becomes very frustrating to play, and I only recommend this game to people who have an affinity for jank and bad games like I do. I can play this game just fine because I have the patience to get past the glitches and the jank and the broken BS, but I know a lot of others WONT have that patience and I suggest they give this a miss until it gets a lot of work and polishing. Especially that mouse sensitivity issue, there needs to be an option to lower it because it is *incredibly* frustrating to play without it. People have brought up this issue and the dev hasn't done anything about it which doesn't bode well for the future of the game. I have no idea if they plan on updating the game, but since it came out there has been NO UPDATES at all. No clue if the dev just put the game up and left it, thinking it's all finished, or if they've just released an unfinished mess, but I'm hoping they come back and actually put in the work to polish this game. I like it, it's got charm and it's fun when it works. It's fun to play with all the weapons and scopes and manage the different ammo types, but the limited inventory and the rest of the issues really make it difficult to recommend, as it's overall more negative than positive; more frustrating than enjoyable.

Atrocious! Clearly an abandoned game by the developers. Bad models, bad animations, bad NPC AI, bad voice acting, and bad game destroying bugs!! I can't believe that this was from the same devs for Easy Red 2

While not for everyone and also a bit janky, this was clearly inspired by the original Medal of Honor games with an added open world concept. The motorcycle handles decently, but the rest of the vehicles are quite a challenge to operate off road.

This game set in France at the end of WWII is an interesting experiment: a mix between FPS and RPG, which sadly doesn't fully succeed in either field. The controls are clunky, the game has a few obvious bugs (e.g. items falling through the grounds or NPCs getting stuck) and the role playing elements are limited to a few choices and some side missions. Why do I give it a thumbs up? Well, it's cheap, fun and (even more important) and indie game! Besides I just love slaughtering nazis. Give it a shot!

this is pure awful, rather burn your money for heat or go mobile game gacha or something a message keeps popping out asking me to leave comment while playing so there you go that's what you get

There's no possibility to change mouse speed inside game, and changing in windows have no effect on game.

Hát először is mivel nem egy nagy projectről van szó, nagyon haragudni nem tudok rá. Ez a játék olyan amilyen. Van benne 1-2 jó dolog, csak túl nagyok a bugok benne. Egyszer már refoundoltam a kocsiból kiszállásnál történő talajon átesésnél... ez talán 1-2 éve volt. Pedig tetszett a játék. RPG-nek nevezni azét elég erős, sajnos még a vásárlás is szinte fölösleges pedig lehetett volna kicsit jobban kidolgozni. Pl alig van benne pénzed, mert nemtom mire valók a zsebórák azon kívül, hogy lehúzzák a zsebed konkrétan és nem tudsz futni tőle.. :D:D A másik nagy bug, amivel én találkoztam az az volt, hogy egyszerűen nem tudtam átugrani egy térdig érő követ és kettő közé beragadtam és a játék természetesen mentett kilépésnél, pedig úgy gondoltam hogy a main menü nem jelent automatikus mentést... szerencsére véletlenül rájöttem hogy mivel veszem elő a térképet, amit végig nem használtam, mert nem volt rá szükség. Mindkét bugut orvosolja a gyorsutazás a térképpel. Rohadt mérges lettem volna, ha 7 órányi játék után megint megszopat a játék és nem tudom végig játszani... mert ha jól emlékszem akkor első alkalommal a talajon átzuhanást mentette el valahogy, talán ki akartam lépni újra tölteni... és az egész addigi játékom ment a kukába... ez után nem volt kedvem elölről kezdeni és refoundot kértem, aztán újra megvettem gondoltam orvosolták ezeket. hát nem... de szerencsére zuhanás közben is elő lehet venni a térképet. Nem tudom mennyire ajánlható ez a játék, az biztos, hogy az Easy Red-nél egy nagyon kicsit számomra jobb volt a hangulat még akkor is ha nagyon gagyi a megvalósítás. Viszont az Easy Red 2 akkora igénybeli ugráson ment keresztül, hogy mindenképp javaslom azt mindenkinek, ezt meg azoknak akik mondjuk mindegyik részt végig akarják játszani, ahogy én is.