It should come to nobody’s surprise that I would be the one to write a review on a game where you can play a anthropomorphic vixen that speaks in broken English and fights next to a rocket firing panda that carries artillery rounds on his back. If you’re confused by what you just read than you may not be familiar with Wild Assault, a new IP entering the hero shooter space, so allow me to give you a quick run down on the newest multiplayer only (at the time of this review) third-person shooter.
Wild Assault was developed by Combat Cat Studio, a new game studio from Hong Kong, China. And before you begin to worry about what kind of kernel level Chinese anti-cheats the game uses, the PvP shooter utilizes Epic Game’s ‘Easy Anti-Cheat’, so you don’t have to worry about having to download a new anti-cheat software that you may not trust.
The setting for the game is simple and confusing at the same time, the timeline takes place in the early 1990’s, after a long war a new relic appears in the middle of the dessert and soon unnamed forces take instant interest of the device and sends out soldiers known as Valiants to secure key areas.
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If you’re looking for story I’m afraid you’re not going to find it here just yet, Combat Cat Studio says that they want to do a single player story mode one day but for now they’re focused on the multiplayer modes, so maybe in future updates we’ll get a better sense of the Wild Assault world.
After multiple beta testing Combat Cat Studio decided to launch Wild Assault on April 11th in Early Access for PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, and admittedly while I was excited to see Wild Assault launch after having fun with the tests, the game’s launch was less than ideal. Wild Assault launched with three maps, ten characters, thirty weapons, two game modes and a battle pass, which may sound like a lot for an Early Access game, but after a couple of hours you will definitely feel like you’ve seen it all.
Forget Me Not
The characters of Wild Assault is one of the two biggest draw, the second being their unique abilities, the designs for each character is carefully crafted and they can easily be recognized by a quick glance. You can tell what character is coming in the distance just by the way they run and move, ask any artist worth their weight in ink and they’ll tell you, a good character design can be recognized simply by their silhouette, and Wild Assault achieves that design in spades.
Every character follows their respective real life feral species when comes to their run, instead of running on their hind legs Valiants will sprint on all fours, seeing the different sprints are always a treat and a great way to know what kind of opponent you’re going up against. For example, you can see a character as big as Zhenshan the panda bear coming a mile away, not only because of his size, but also because his sprint is actually a panda roll and another character like Uly the meerkat has a much lower silhouette and has a more crawling animation.
Learning these different sprints is a great way to figure out how each character can move about the map, smaller characters like the medics will sprint much faster and can jump onto higher platforms giving them an advantage when escaping from enemy fire, meanwhile bigger characters are slower but has a better chance to get out of their sprint and survive in an engagement when facing enemies head on.
And the character designs are the biggest thing you’ll remember about them, while they all have personalities, none of them really sticks out as anything fun or interesting, even though Akai Hime comes the closest with a fun memorable backstory. Another flaw with Wild Assault is that the characters kind of stop being cool at their design, good luck remembering their names or their small backstories, even Combat Cat Studios knows players will have a tough time remembering the characters beyond their looks, the surveys they give to players lists the Valiant’s species next to their name.
All About The Gameplay
Everyone is going to find their favorite character based off their unique gameplay style, for example, support players are going to find either Erwin (the cat medic) or Hongying (the rabbit medic) as their main but not both. That all comes down to how you like to play medic, with Hongying players can be a little reckless as she has a healing ability that covers a small area of effect, so she can heal herself and another squad member will still fighting.
Meanwhile, Erwin players will most likely be a bit more conservative with firefights as she needs to put her weapon away in order heal with her medic glove, the biggest difference between the two is that Erwin can revive players from a safe distance while Hongying will need to be next to a downed ally (with the exception being with her ultimate ability, which can revive at a smaller but further distance).
For bolder fighters, Ryan (the bull) and Vladimir (the bear) are going to be their go to characters, not only because of their health but also because their abilities gives them an advantage at close range combat. For Ryan, he can literally charge at the enemy and stun them with a knock back that send them tumbling on the ground, giving him the opportunity to unload his shotgun into them. While Vladimir has the ability to put up a fortified shield for allies and toss explosive barrels at enemies, creating a small area of persistent fire that does damage over time, this can create a why to corner fleeing enemies and force them to fight to Vladimir’s tune.
And that’s where Wild Assault truly shines, the many ways to go about a firefight. Each characters’ ability fits their respective species in some fun unique form, from Ryan’s aforementioned charging ability to Marquez’s (the skunk) war crime toxin bombs that causes enemy players to choke and take damage over time.
The characters unique abilities are something to behold and makes everyone fun to try and experiment with, even if you’re not good with sniper riffles (and trust me, I’m dog water at snipping) playing as Jack (the wolf) was still interesting as you can still contribute to your team’s victory even if your kill count is low, Jack has the ability to see through walls temporarily and mark enemies for teammates and can also call down artillery rounds in a decently sized area of effect.
The gunplay is another story unfortunately, newer players may have a difficult time finding their favorite weapon as Wild Assault has some of the craziest weapons recoil when it comes to their base guns, weapons handling has quite the skill ceiling and will dictate just how much fun some players will have. When you have up to twenty enemy players sprinting around and jumping like they’re on trampolines it’s easy to get flustered and just hold down the fire button, but this isn’t Call of Duty, weapon spray becomes somewhat unpredictable and the slightest movement made by the player will drastically change where a weapon fires.
Players should also keep in mind that Wild Assault doesn’t have full controller support just yet, but it’s coming in a future season.
Weapon XP cards are earned quite frequently in season one, they can be used to skip some of the weapon grind and help players unlock new attachments such as barrels and sights, not every level will unlock a new attachment and every weapon has their own set at different levels to unlock.
Weapon attachments can be a tad confusing in Wild Assault, instead of a muzzle that simply makes the weapon easier to understand like how it affects a gun’s control, each attachment gives a vague description. For example, what in the world is the difference between ‘first-shot accuracy’ and ‘accuracy after firing’? I ask this to myself because there is an attachment that gives +40% first-shot accuracy but also -20% accuracy after firing, so does that mean my attachment is actually +20% accurate or is it 40% for the first shot only and every bullet after is automatically 20% and it reset back to +40% when I reload, how does that even work?
There is a training facility mode to help new players get used to the controls, but it’s so bare bones that it won’t help very much, you’ll learn be able to practice the basic movements and abilities, but it’s severely lacking for those who wish to test themselves beyond shooting cardboard targets. There’s a section with AI bots to fight against, but no ally bots for support players to test out their abilities and practice healing and revive.
As for shooting, in order to make any changes to your kit or to even try out a different weapon, players must exit the training facility completely, why there isn’t an option to have every weapon available in the facility to pick up and try is strange. Maybe it’s because players are allowed to use only two weapons, their primary and pistol, players can’t even pick up weapons from fallen enemies or allies. The only thing players can’t pick up is ammunition, no matter what type of weapon was dropped all ammunition works, everybody has the scavenger ability.
One of the trickiest things to get right is time to kill (TTK), if it’s too fast players will be left frustrated that they didn’t get a fair opportunity to fight back, but if it’s too slow players will become frustrated that their weapons feel like peashooter and they’re not getting the kills they felt they earned. Well good news on that front, Wild Assault manages to find a good balance where if players get caught off guard they can still recover and fight back, but if a player can handle their weapons recoil they can eliminate multiple players and get a sense of accomplishment that they earned every kill.
Even if you have a DMR, there’s still a chance a player can go up against a player packing a full automatic, this is because the winner in a firefight is the one with the better aim and not with the fastest RPM.
It’s also worth noting, the game’s bots are less than ideal teammates, the AI in Wild Assault is horrible and needs some serious work. You’ll be able to easily tell when you’re in a lobby full of bots, they don’t do a good job attacking points and you will often find them running into a wall and staring at it like they’re confused on why they can’t just walk through it.
Content Under Pressure
As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Wild Assault launched with only three maps and two game modes, and trust me when I say you’ll grow tired of these maps much sooner than later. The maps themselves are well thought out and allows for most characters to shine, especially Jack the sniper and Zenshan the rocket spewing panda, but they also feel cluttered in so many spots, especially The Ricky Mountains.
The biggest flaw to Wild Assault‘s launch is the content, the battle pass shows just how little there is at the moment, most of the rewards are weapon XP cards, and for some strange reason Combat Cat Studio is releasing this as season one, which would give off the impression that this is what players can expect from the battle pass in the future. They even put new characters as battle pass unlocks, it’s important to note that characters are free and can be unlocked simply by playing the game, which is a double edged sword as many players don’t like the idea of grinding to unlock characters.
Players who enjoy unlocking new gear, cosmetics, voice lines and emotes won’t find that here just yet; there are a few skins to unlock for a few characters and weapons, but don’t go in thinking you’re going to be getting a bang for your buck with the battle pass right now. In fact, there are currently no sprays, emotes or unlockable voice lines in the game, Combat Cat Studio is focused completely on gameplay and player enjoyment.
Wild Assault is so focus on gameplay that the game doesn’t even have a shop with micro-transaction, a welcoming thing to see when you spend money upfront for an online only game now-a-days, although that doesn’t mean there isn’t another way to spend money, players can buy premium ‘beast’ coins that will unlock the premium battle pass and receive exclusive cosmetic rewards and a chance to unlock 400 more beast coins.
But the premium pass has some egregious issues in season one, for some bewildering reason players can’t earn premium coins in the battle pass until they complete it completely, what makes this strange is that the ‘advanced’ pass costs 880 coins and the premium costs 1380 coins. What makes these strange is that by completing them players will only earn 400 beast coins, meaning you can’t even get the next pass for completing the first one, and in today’s age of free-to-play multiplayer games that has premium battle passes not allowing players to earn enough to get a future pass is very strange.
You’ll also have to deal with uneven coin distributions, you think with the advance pass being 800 coins that you can just get 800 coins, right? Not quite, 100 coins equate roughly to one dollar, players can choose to get coins in six different options. $0.99, $4.99, $9.99, $19.99, $49.99 and $99.99. Nobody is going to buy one dollar coins eight times so of course you’re going to get the $10 worth of coins, that comes up to 1150 coins and the $20 options gives 2400 coins.
It will be interesting to see what else beast coins will be able to unlock in the future, hopefully future season passes will make earning them more rewarding and even allow players who only has the free battle pass to earn a few too, unfortunately during season one I can’t recommend buying the battle pass, unless you really want to support the developers and feel like future passes will bring more rewarding items.
Defend Or Attack
Wild Assault has two modes during launch, Raid and Conquest. In Raid mode teams will be split between attackers and defenders, attackers will start with 200 ‘game points’ and must take five key points from the defending team before they run out of lives. Defenders must hold their points from attackers or continue to be pushed back further into the map until they reach their final flag, unlike attackers, defenders have unlimited lives.
In order to push defenders back attackers must capture both points simultaneously, as long as one point is still neutral defenders can retake a point and force attackers to try and take the point again, but if the attackers get both points the defending team will be forced to retreat to the next section. There are three sections, the first section is a singular point, afterwards the next two sections will have two flags and every time the attacking team wins a section they earn game points replenishment (but not fully back to 200).
So far two of the three launch maps belong to Raid, Ricky Mountains and Crescent Bay, the third map (Operation Mojave) is exclusively played during Conquest mode. Players who played the beta tests will be very familiar with this map, it’s a snipers playground with plenty of open space three points spread out to three different corners.
In conquest both teams will play both attackers and defenders, teams must capture three different points and hold them as long as they can, the more points your team holds the faster the other teams loose tickets. Both sides start off 2,000 tickets and must fight until one team reaches 0 tickets, to keep the game intense and competitive there will be moments where an artifact called the ‘Neutral Item’ spawns onto the battlefield, if your team can capture the item they will have to defend it for set amount of time.
By capture this artifact the team that controls it will be rewarded with additional tickets, this can turn the tide of battle and create a closer game, but the catch is if your team looses the artifact the timer doesn’t reset, so even if you capture the point and almost have it filled the opposing team can take it at the last moment be rewarded for your hard work.
Conclusion
Early access games are always tricky to review, they are always changing and being updated, but you can review first impressions and Wild Assault‘s launch doesn’t give the best impression. The game is fun, but newer players will have to suffer the big learning curve as they get stumped by veterans, but right now Combat Cat Studio is giving players a lot of XP cards that will help new players catch up with their weapon unlocks.
It’s mighty clear that Wild Assault is being built with passion, the small indie studio of around 20 people have been very hands on with their community and very responsive, their focus on delivering fun gameplay before trying to make a bunch of money gives hope that the team is in it to win it. This isn’t going to be a super popular game but it can definitely build a core audience to help support Combat Cat Studio’s future and create some new niche content for creators.
Despite its many shortcomings Wild Assault is a fun and interesting game that has potential, given time, I can see Wild Assault being more than just an online only PvP game. Once the team has the time and resources to put more focus on lore and characters, Wild Assault could be franchise that players latch onto as they find their favorite characters.
As it stands for now in season one, I find it hard to recommend Wild Assault to somebody who isn’t already interested in the game, but for those who are curious and are just waiting to see if it’s worth the $14.99 entry point? I would say that if you’re cautious of early access games, Wild Assault isn’t worth the risk yet, but if you’re just worried that the game was released way too early, rest assured that the game is already in a good state gameplay wise and that once you get past the recoil learning curve you’re in for an intensely good time.
Wild Assault is available now in early access on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store for $14.99 for the base game or $21.58 for the supporter edition, which will include instant unlock of Zhenshan and a few cosmetic items for the character.
Wild Assault
14.99
Pros
- Cool character designs
- Solid gameplay
- Maps are fun
Cons
- Characters stop being interesting at their design
- High learning curve with weapons
- Early maps are a sniper's paradise
- Content is barebones for a paid product
- Weapon attachments are poorly explained
