Classified: France ‘44 preview – The path to victory is clear

Recently, I had the privilege of flying out to the Big Apple to check out Absolutely Games’ upcoming World War II turn-based strategy game, Classified: France ‘44. James Brooksby, CEO of Absolutely Games, and I discussed a wide range of topics as he walked me through the game’s foundational concepts and mechanics in our 30-minute preview. For a game I had no expectations of, I walked out thoroughly impressed and I expect others will feel the same. Especially when James said, “We want to do a WWII-era game in this genre not only because we didn’t see others doing this, but we could execute something more in-depth and not simply a clone of XCOM and others in the landscape.”

Classified: France ‘44 places you directly in Nazi-occupied France in the tension-filled days leading up to the infamous D-Day. You’ll recruit four elite soldiers consisting of commandos and French resistance fighters tasked with pushing back German control and expanding Allied factions’ territories. In the campaign mode, missions vary from infiltrating an underground bunker to rescue a prisoner of war to targeting specific leaders to weaken surrounding enemy morale. Whether you succeed or fail in these missions directly correlates to the odds of a successful D-Day invasion, so it’s paramount that you complete each to ensure victory.

There are two modes to choose aside from the campaign. Challenge mode consists of unique and objective-specific levels designed to provide an increased difficulty level separate from the game’s story. Creation is the game’s level-building mode where players can express their creativity and experiment with tools and features to try out for themselves. I didn’t get to preview either of these modes as they weren’t on the build available at the event.

The game plays as a turn-based strategy focusing on depth and realism. Players move each of their four soldiers during their turn, after which it shifts to the enemies’ turn. During your turn, you can move around the map to position for an ambush, strategically pick off one stray soldier after another, or go in with guns and grenades ablaze. However, due to the game’s realism with alarms and enemies hearing gunshots, it’s best to not go in without a game plan. I found out quickly how overwhelming the enemy can be if you disregard strategy or stealth.

Every player’s action requires a certain amount of Action Points (AP) and varies in cost depending on what you do. It wasn’t a surprising mechanic as this is standard in many turn-based games, but what did surprise me was the Morale System and the presence of friendly fire. The system is connected to friendly and enemy units where positive and negative stats change depending on if certain scenarios are met. This could range from suppressing an enemy with gunfire from two units or damaging a friendly soldier with shotgun damage because they were in proximity of your weapons area of effect.

Each member of your squad is adept in their roles of sniper, medic, assault, and stealth. One of the bigger differences in Classified over other titles is the absence of reinforcements. They want the squad members to feel more important and more impactful by allowing them to be revived versus just sending in a replacement. If someone did go down, they would simply flee from battle and not be available for the remainder of the mission. This change threw me off at first as I had to adjust to this realistic approach, but soon I grew to appreciate the significance each member represented to the mission.

Overall, my experience was fantastic. I was sad to stop playing as there were layers to the game that I didn’t get to try out. Visually the game looks good for being a build-in-progress and played wonderfully. The commands, player actions, and animations were fluid and felt complete. I wasn’t expecting a strategy game to hook my interest so quickly, but I’m glad I went and tried the game out. Absolutely Games have something fun on the way, especially for players who enjoy games like XCOM but want something that provides more intensity. No release date has been given yet, but stay tuned to Gaming Trend for more coverage of Classified: France ‘44.

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