Review: RAID: World War 2 – PS4

RAID: World War 2 is a bad game. I’d like to end the review there and call it a day but I can’t because, well, it’s my job to give a fair review, so I need to tell you exactly why you need to stay the hell away from this abomination.
I think it’s important to look at who’s making the game in this case. It’s a little-known developer that goes by the name Lion Games Lion. Why is this significant? Because this studio helped out on the Payday franchise. Why is that significant? Because RAID: World War 2 is basically Payday set in the second world war.
Except it’s shite.

You can play online with friends or offline with A.I controlled allies. Either way, you’re going to get frustrated so don’t get too hung up on which way to play. Playing with people is preferable, if only for the fact they won’t run around like mongs. Playing with A.I presents familiar problems that any solo Payday player will be familiar with. You know, you’d think that the developers would have learned from the weaknesses of what they’re copying. Unfortunately that isn’t the case.
Each mission plays out how you’d expect a Payday clone to play out: you and your allies have to make your way through a map while performing certain actions throughout in order to progress. Nazis come piling out of the walls, as you’d expect, and you’re invited to shoot them dead. You’d think this would be mega fun, right? Wrong! The A.I is so terribly dumb that there’s just no challenge in putting the fascists into the ground. It doesn’t help that you’re almost invincible, too. No, really, you can be stood still, surrounded by Jew-haters and you’ll only die if you make the conscious effort to die.

Gameplay wise, you’re looking at a straight lift of mechanics from the Payday franchise. I’d be able to overlook that if the setting and gameplay worked well. It doesn’t. It stinks. It doesn’t help that the game looks awful. If anything, it kind of looks like a WW2 mod that some bedroom developer has created for Payday, except I’ve seen some pretty impressive graphical overhaul mods in my time and many of them eclipse what’s being sold here. Poor show indeed.
There are some brief moments of fun that shine through at times – mowing down hundreds of Nazis is always going to be fun, no matter what – but they’re few and far between and often marred by the poor presentation and technical attributes of the final product.

What’s quite bizarre is the inclusion of British comedy legend John Cleese. Yes, that dude from Fawlty Towers and Monty Python. He makes an appearance as your handler back in England in some poorly put together full motion video sequences. While I’m amazed the publisher managed to sign on this great national treasure, I’m annoyed they didn’t pay him enough to bring his talent onto the filming set. These videos are cringe worthy at best, and downright awful at their worst. Like, when some dude is dressed up as Hitler and really going for it, I know they’re going for comedy but it just comes across as stupid and in poor taste.
That’s not the worst of it, though, as the playable characters don’t fare much better when it comes to voice talent. Each character is a stereotype of their nation – things we’ve seen a thousand times before, and mostly done much better – and after, oh, I don’t know, 10 minutes, their lines become old and annoying. Not a good thing for a game that demands you to grind for hours on end to level up each character.

Honestly, I only played for around 7 hours and I wish I’d stopped after the first hour. Why? Well, once you’ve played the first 60 minutes, you’ve seen everything the game has to offer, and what it’s offering ain’t worth your time or money. Plus, this is a game that demands to be played with other people online. Can you really picture anyone playing this in a month’s time? No? Me neither.

RAID: World War 2 PS4 Review

• 3/10
  Overall - Really Bad - 3.0/10

3/10

Summary

RAID: World War 2 could have been a decent Payday clone. Instead, what we got was a shoddy mess that plays poorly, looks downright crap, and just has no originality to it. It’s just a bad game. Plain and simple.