Chris InglisWorld War 3 is a free-to-play tactical online multiplayer FPS developed by The Farm 51 and published by Wishlist Games and The 4 Winds Entertainment. Originally released in early access in 2018 as a buy to play game, the game shifted to f2p officially on December 10, 2022. Gameplay is a middle ground between Call of Duty and Battlefield with two multiplayer modes within real world locations that provide hectic and fast-paced military action. If you tried the game during its first years of early access, I strongly urge you to give the game another crack, especially as it’s free to play.
It’s one of those annoying games where you press play in Steam and it loads up its own launcher, and you will need to have set up an account on the game’s website first. However, once you’re in-game it’s your standard affair where you have quick play, a lobby screen to choose between the two main game modes of Tactical Ops or Team Deathmatch, and an area to customise your loadout. With the December release came the game’s first season, Operation Redline and you can look through the seasonal unlocks, with a mix of purchased and free cosmetic unlocks. There are some gear blueprints you can get through the purchased season pass which is a bit on the nose, but these can at least also be unlocked by grinding gameplay.
The real-world environments in World War 3 are well detailed with realistic geography of locations like Warsaw, Berlin and Moscow, as well as featuring weather effects like dust storms. The Operation Redline season added two new maps, Gobi China (team deathmatch) and the Korean Peninsula DMZ (tactical ops). Maps aren’t too large and level design is fantastic with a decent mix of indoor and outdoor locations. There were not too many snipe or choke points that plague similar games and while there are tanks, they’re not as overbearing like in Battlefield and can be dispatched with some targeted RPG attacks or landmines.
The only problem I faced with vehicles was the big lag spikes. My connection was showing orange bars all the time, so not the best when everyone else has green bars. On foot, I didn’t feel any lag at all and when I shot, it hit the target every time. I could see vehicles moving around fine, however as soon as I jumped into one, the game lagged and jolted making aiming and timing impossible. Jumping out of the vehicle and back on foot, the game ram smoothly with no delay, so the lag spikes were likely the game trying to even out network performance between me and anyone else in the vehicle.
World War 3 features a huge arsenal of weapons, vehicles, gadgets, drones, artillery, and airstrikes are at your disposal. While you can customise each weapon with grips, muzzles, sights and a heap of other componets, each mod has positive and negative effects. Your operator’s gear can be modified with armour to better protect the head and chest, but these additions take a hit to your mobility such that you can’t sprint as fast, nor carry as many weapons which is an awesome feature. I found early on, most mods I unlocked had too big a detriment to ADS aiming or vertical recoil, so for the first few hours I just stuck to the basic assault rifle and I was racking up some major kills. Also the first sights I unlocked had lasers on them which gave away my position too easily.
Gameplay is actually really bloody good in the two game modes available. Team deathmatch has two 10-person sides fighting to get 50 team kills as quick as possible. As such, most of these matches only lasted around 7-10 minutes so it’s very quick gameplay which I really like. Tactical Operations are by far my favourite matches. They are similar to Battlefields Conquest maps where you need to capture points, however in order to uptick your teams score, you need to hold two nearby points together (A1 and A2, B1 and B2). This mode has maps optimised for 20 v 20 squad-based battles and it was a heck of a lot of fun.
I still don’t know all the maps well enough, but there’s plenty of versatility in the level design that you can escape if shot at. The time-to-kill is very low and while that means you can die very easily; it also means you can kill easily too. In my first few games, beginner’s luck had me at the top of the leaderboards in the few team deathmatch games I played. I was amazed actually at how many kills I was racking up even with the basic of assault rifles. The game features realistic bullet effects and the developers worked closely with military professionals to get the physics as accurate as possible. You can see bullet flares as they zip across open space, helping you to work out their origin and try get the upper hand on the bad guys. The map also shows your teammates death locations, so that’s another point of reference to try home in on the aggressors.
My playstyle is run-and-gun and I hate vehicles, so I am always on foot and constantly running between cover. As I was racking up kills and capture points, point strikes were being unlocked which are a combat utility similar to killstreaks from Call of Duty. These are only available in the Tactical Operations mode and unavailable in Team Deathmatch which I quite like as they would be far too powerful in TDM maps which are smaller than TacOps maps. The benefits of these point strikes vary from simple drones to deployable tanks, APCs, and drone helicopters, with lots of different artillery or airstrikes options. They never felt overpowered when activated as I was always on the move anyway.
Overall, World War 3 has been a surprisingly fun experience, especially in the Tactical Ops maps. I really like the map locations like the Korean Peninsula DMZ that I haven’t seen in a video game before, and the low time-to-kill meant I felt competitive amongst the field of veteran level 50 players. Definitely give this game a try as it’s free-to-play and a good middle ground between Battlefield and Call of Duty, in my opinion.
This review utilised a battle pass key provided by Heaven Media and World War 3 is available to play now on Steam. You can read more about the game and Operation Redline on the official website.
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Daniel Agius