Beyond the Wire – Review

Beyond the Wire – Review

Overview

It’s really really hard to review a game that has so much potential but is overall abandoned by not only its developers…but the fans as well. Sadly, we received a code to review this game back in August of last year (2022). Since then we all hit some hard times, most notably, our battle with GoDaddy. That battle made us shut our site down and now we have since rebooted into the site you see today. But this is a review, not a remanence, onto the review.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1058650/Beyond_The_Wire/

Gameplay

Beyond the Wire looks like a ton of fun. Based on World War I it had a ton of potential to be a great game for gamers looking for a decent FPS shooter based in a time when technology didn’t exist. Ruthless hand-to-hand combat in trenches and tunnels, 50v50 multiplayer battles, authentic weapons…What could go wrong??

Well, a lot it seems. I first loaded the game up and was kind of excited to see how it played. Once I clicked “Multiplayer” everything game to view. There were only three servers, all of them bone dry of players. One did allow for 80 bots if you wanted to play and actually try to shoot at something. But damn did it take the wind out of my sails. Even the “Training” mode made absolutely no sense and just allowed you to shoot things without explanation.

What Happened?

Currently on Steam, Beyond the Wire is boasting a “Mostly Positive” with 4,753 reviews under the “All Reviews” listing. But under “Recent Reviews” it shows a “Mostly Negative” with 29 reviews.

The last update from Offworld Industries is from December 15th, 2022. Today is May 22nd, 2023. That is a long time for absolutely zero communication.

The past reviews are glowing, boasting a fun, cooperative teamplay WWI shooter. Giving you the option to have custom squads and boasts a build feature that will allow you to create machine gun nests, artillery, etc.

The negative reviews are begging the developers to come back, drop the price, make a free weekend, or ANYTHING to bring players back to the game. But let’s back up a bit. Offworld Industries is the same studio that brought the world Squad. Squad is still getting updates and has players still. So why did Beyond the Wire fizzle out? No idea, even their Twitter is active on the game. It’s very confusing and I feel bad for the players.

How to review a dead game?

Man, I asked myself this at least 15 times and even posted this in our Discord. I’m really confused about how to even go about this. So let’s talk about it.

Beyond the Wire, looks great. When walking around, it looks like an actual warzone. Hardly any trees and brush. The trenches are muddy and large bodies of watch sometimes have dead bodies and a tint of blood in the water. I mean that’s pretty damn impressive.

The sounds of war were impressive as well. The weapons sounded amazing, and the mortal fire and bullets whizzing by, was damn immersive. It really set the tone of war and helped set the environment of World War I.

With that all being said. It is a multiplayer game…with no players. It’s basically unplayable the way it’s meant to be played. If this was fully loaded with players, I can see Beyond the Wire being something special. With all of the little features, it has a lot of potential.

Without players though…Beyond the Wire is going to need a huge sale or free weekend to bring back the population, or end the war.

Bottom Line

Beyond the Wire looks damn fun. A real immersive multiplayer WWI shooter with great squad-based gameplay. But without a squad…or players, there’s nothing here to even look at sadly.