Squad - Like Arma, but with a low entry threshold with no tons of DLC

Tactical online shooters with an emphasis on realism are a separate topic in the gaming industry. You can love them or hate them, but it's a sin not to try them once. After dozens of hours in Call of Duty and Battlefield, you get tired of the arcade, you want simulation, immersiveness, you want hardcore.

Arma and Insurgency: Sandstorm immediately come to mind; however, the first has a high entry threshold and a ton of expensive DLC, the second, on the contrary, is too easy to master and steps toward the arcade. What to do?

What if I told you that there is a game that lives on in the spirit of the old Battlefield. A Battlefield we once lost and have regretted 2042 times...

I'm talking about Squad, and that's why the game is worth watching.

The indie segment is again ahead of AAA projects...what a surprise!

But hold on to your rotten tomatoes, the Arma series is in decline, but still objectively a great game, the point is...Arma is at a standstill. Thanks to a decision that makes it impossible to use some vehicles and weapons without paid add-ons. That stump of a game, which Bohemia Interactivenamed Arma: Reforger under the sauce of the seed for the fourth part does not count, it's not even a demo, it's squalor. And the competitors do not sleep...

Offworlds Industries is a small team of developers, whose portfolio includes one interesting activity - they worked on Project Reality, a mod for Battlefield 2 with a focus on realism. Subsequently the mod grew into a separate game, and in 2015 Squad was released - buggy, unoptimized, but with ambition. It took Squad 7 years to catch up with Arma in terms of quality and offer players their own vision of online tactical shooters, and this is what they succeeded in...

Soldier, you have a summons. Mobigamization is coming!

Unlike Arma, Squad lacks such a wide base for modding, Squad does not allow to turn the original game as you please, Squad prefers to rely on the players themselves to generate the fun on the servers.

Of the game modes, the standard set: AAS - capture points, an analogue of Conquest from Battlefield; RAAS - capture hidden points on the map; INVASION - again, the mode from Battlefield - Rush; the classic DeathMatch and TERRITORY CONTROL - about capturing small hexes on the map, the most unpopular mode.

Having decided on the genre, players are given a choice of regular and irregular armies. In addition to the familiar NATO versus the Russian Federation or the Soviet Union, Sqd also offers a choice of Canadian, British, and even Australian armies...does Australia have an army? I hope they know how to shoot spiders and hold their kangaroo punches well.

Irregular troops are not limited to the unshaven Taliban, there are militias, the Middle East Alliance, and the "rebels" as well. How can we do without the stereotypical troops of eastern, radical formations?

The choice of faction will determine the equipment and vehicles. It is noteworthy that in the game you can not use enemy equipment and weapons. The regular troops have, of course, higher quality weapons, but the tickets are more expensive. What are tickets - about that later.

You don't have to get into all the intricacies of the game right away. Squad feels like a slightly complicated Battlefield: there is no grid with degrees, no commands a la "Flash to nine o'clock northeast longitude, thirty yards from the polar star!", the communication between players takes place on a different system. The gameplay core is hinted at by the very name of the game, Squad.

Teams of up to 50 players are divided into squads, each of which has a commander, strike groups and subordinates. If you think you're going to hit the jackpot by grabbing the Squad Leader position, you're very much mistaken. The Squad Commander is not the player who gets the privileges over his subordinates, but the one who is obliged to skillfully manage these very subordinates. Is there a sniper on the team? He does not have to sit on a tower and shoot the enemy infantry, a sniper can serve as a good scout, a little gunner and a little spy. Is there a machine gunner in the team? The commander can make him into a walking turret if he takes care of the improvements to the portable dugout - about that too later. A private wounded? The commander has to take care of that, too, if the soldier blows his nose.

And while the commander is essentially the babysitter, the strike teams are the conditioned subordinate babysitters, the most mature, obedient children. It doesn't sound very military, but the Squad hierarchy is immutable, everyone has to do exclusively his own thing. How is it possible to bend someone, ride around in a tank, and at the same time keep an eye on a map like this?

Without a squad, alone, most weapons and equipment are inaccessible to the player, but in Battlefield it was quite comfortable to get along without a squad. Yes, you had to be revived after death on the captured points, not from the heel of a fellow soldier; yes, you get less information and can not communicate with squads from a distance, but Battlefield condescended to lovers of solitude, Squad does not forgive it: logged onto the server, joined the squad, choose one of 18 classes and perform the duties entrusted to you. Speaking of duties...

Nobody cancelled the hazing!

Squad mechanics is the main difference between Arma and Sq. The local commander must be not only a skilled strategist, but also a bit of an architect. The squad head carries with him building templates: a radio, diagrams of trenches in his pocket and points with equipment.

Once the commander has set up the layout, the enlisted men with sappers shovels take over and erect the buildings. These can be as primitive shelters, as scatterings of barbed wire, camouflage netting, ammunition boxes, or even local equipment dumps. Building in Squad is not much fun, a little more boring than in any of the Survival-action games, but it is a necessary thing. Buildings replace revival points, provide access to vehicles, and generally allow the squad to be in the thick of things. Of course you can do without buildings, but then you'll have to shuffle from one part of the map to another, and no one can guarantee that some sniper won't take you down from the mountain. That's how twenty minutes of running (and your stamina is limited) goes down the toilet with one bullet. So listen to your commander, only a commander can win a battle without firing a single shot. Essentially, commanders in Squad play real-time strategy, only in first person.

Another Squad feature is the logistics element. No one will let you scatter the map with mobile command posts like this: building requires resources, and ammunition crates need to be replenished on a regular basis. In order to supply the outposts with everything they need, players must visit the base from time to time and receive tranches of military aid. These trucks are vulnerable, frequent, and densely targeted by the enemy:

By the way, the driver is also a separate class, not too powerful in contact combat. Squad is balanced on the "Rock, Scissors, Paper" principle: if a soldier is good in street combat, he can't drive a vehicle; if you took the Hippocratic Oath, patch up allies, not rack up the phrases; if you take on heavy grenade launchers and anti-tank mines, you owe a few charred remains of enemy vehicles; Even the seemingly dubious use of the machine gunner justifies itself - the corners of the screen become darkened under heavy fire, the protagonist stuns, and to replace suppressive fire by the usual recoil control of, say, AK-74 is almost impossible - the clamping recoil throws the barrel to the sky.

Notice, all of the above is Squad in the eyes of the experienced player. And how are things for newcomers?

The Young Soldier Course

However, nowadays one can hardly be surprised by a shooting gallery, so Sqqud went further and allowed players to try out off-line vehicles and even get a detailed look at the weaknesses in the armor. Tanks, APCs, armored vehicles - all have their "Achilles' heel", it is not enough to take RPG-7, shoot the tank and internally praise yourself for a good job. The grenade launcher is not the role here for those who are bad shots, but for those who are good at target practice and gravitate toward explosives.

Not all equipment is equal in power and performance. Remember I mentioned some kind of tikets? Well, tickets are those very same regeneration points. For capturing points you will enrich with tickets, for losing territories you will lose. The life of one soldier costs 1 ticket, but the purchase of the same tank can cost up to 20 tickets, the price depends on the party in conflict. The militia's tanks are Soviet, old, but cheap; Abrams are much better, but also cost more. This imposes additional responsibility on the grenade launcher, he just has to successfully destroy the equipment. By the way, there is more than one class in Squad that uses grenade launchers.

I would strongly recommend not rushing into battle immediately after buying the game, read the guide, get acquainted with the technique, and with the intricate interface you'll get used to a couple of hours of play.

Conclusion

Even though Squad is simplified in some places and more arcade-like in terms of shooting than ArmaIII, it's still a very niche shooter. The genre of a harsh online tactical shooter is imprinted on the gameplay, so there is no place for fans of shooters on Nuketown Squad.

Should I buy Squad? More likely no, than yes. During 7 years of its existence the game hasn't got a sensible optimization, especially it requires a lot of RAM, if you have less than 16GB - a pleasant experience may be drowned in a storm of freezes and low FPS. However, Squad costs relatively little, and if you're invited to the game by experienced friends, you shouldn't refuse.