UberSoldier, Aka Eastern Front: Unknown War, is a slavjank FPS from the mid-2000s, that was clearly inspired by Wolfenstein games. This one is kind of guilty pleasure. Objectively it's kind of bad and aged like milk, but if you are connoisseur of slavjank and below average FPS games in general, this is not the worst thing you could be playing.
The game follows Karl Stolz, an ex-nazi officer that dies during attack of German resistance and was brought back to life by an experimental nazi tech as a part of the project that ressurects people and turns them into super-soldiers. As part of this project, any ressurected person is injected with experimental drug that removes person's free will and makes them follow commands of the first person that addresses them when they wake up. Fortunately for Karl, the first person that addresses him by a complete accident is resistance member named Maria, who out of principle doesn't shoot unarmed Karl. Unknownly, Karl becomes the secret weapon of the resistance, following commands of Maria, and with them will stop the UberSoldier project.
Let us just consider the implications of this story. The main character fights against nazis not because it's the right thing to do, but because he literally not given a choice at all and becomes a resistance member by a complete accident. Karl himself is not much of a protagonist either, he barely talks and has no character outside of being tied to Maria. At the same time, there is a romance between Karl and Maria being shoved in the middle of the game which also has weird implications. The game says that it's Maria that has feelings for Karl, but Karl reciprocating these emotions are his own or he is just following his programming? And the programming is also kind of weird. Karl himself at the end of the game states that the only reason he keeps following resistance and hepling them to stop nazi project is him being driven by Maria. But he blatantly ignores her in the middle of the game when there is disagreement between Maria and Klaus, the resistance leader that wants to save his brother. not to mention his tone towards her is really weird when he tries to protest Maria's involvement in one of the missions, so again, is he following her because of the drug or not?
The game's technical side is really dated. For starters, there is no widescreen support. And no, I'm not talking about you 21:9 weirdos. The game is locked in 4:3 and while there is a way to adjust it in the game files, it will break the hud and menus. There is no way to adjust FOV either. The game itself doesn't look bad for it's time, but character models and animations did not age well. The game itself runs fine, there was only one time when framerate dropped due to one scene with a lot of heavy effects. There are actually some light destruction in the levels in some scripted scenes, which is kind of impressive. There are a lot of physics objects as well. Seeing nazis and their gear flying around after an explosion is kind of funny.
The gameplay is mostly basic 2000s FPS stuff. Going through linear levels shooting nazis in the face while completing objectives, which usually boil down to finding some key object or blowing something up. As a unique gimmick, Karl's resurrection gave him ability to creat a stasis shield that can can bullets midair. The shield has 2 states, blue and white. The only difference between those is that blue shield after being deactivated drops bullets on the ground, while white shield shoots them back at enemies. There are 2 mechanics that can make Karl stronger. If you get 3 headshots in quick succession, Karl's shield becomes stronger, allowing him to use white shield for longer. If you can get 3 knife kills in quick succession, Karl's health permamently increases by 2 points, which allowed me to end the game with 172 max health. Getting those buffs is actually pretty easy, since the enemies frequently attack in groups of 3 or more. The knife attack is actually kind of OP due to first attack knocking enemies down and the second killing them. The only downside is hitbox can be sometimes incosistent and enemies melee attack sometimes has some kind of phantom range, but it's not that big of a deal. The shooting is competent. You can carry 5 weapons at a time, having an absolutely terrible and useless pistol, a precision weapon in a second slot, like a rifle, the automatic weapon, which will be used most of the time, a heavy weapons, usually either a rocket launcher or a flamethrower, and grenades. Pistols are bad due to their horrible recoil and spread. When you get a headshot it usually kills, but low magazine size and firerate make them useless for headshots. The rifles can be useful on longer ranges, but automatic weapons usually have pretty good range as well. The game has some random spread if you fire for too long, but usually it's fine to just spray in opponents direction, and you can esily get a random headshot. Just don't use aim down sights, since due to recoil the models is jumping around, making it actually harder to hit something.
The levels are linear, but sometimes it's hard to understand where you need to go next, only to realise that a friendly NPC needs to open the door. or you need to go back or go through door that makes you loop back into an ealier part of the level and open a different door that was closed previously.
But overall Ubersoldier is not the best thing in the world, but if you, like me, have a fascination with mid FPS games from 2000s, it fits fine.
