Graphics: 6.0/10
Sound: 7.0/10
Gameplay: 6.5/10
Replay: 8.0/10

With the emergence of EA’s Battlefield series, realistic war simulations have become one of the most widely emulated concepts in the videogame market. From Joint Ops to Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, it seems as if every videogame publisher has, at the very minimum, taken a crack at the genre. Not wanting to miss any of the action, Encore has entered the ring with Söldner: Secret Wars, a highly engaging shooter with it’s heart in the right place, but a victim of poor code execution.

In the year 2010, the United States and Russia have abandoned their role as the “world police,” due to the instability it caused within the countries to which their troops were deployed. Since some can’t seem to keep themselves out of trouble, however, offensive operations are now carried out by Söldner, the German and much cooler sounding word for mercenaries. As one of these Söldner, it is your responsibility to keep the world safe from harm. Armed to the teeth with an explosive arsenal of high tech weapons and a gargantuan list of over seventy available vehicles, you step onto the battlefield ready to unleash a world of pain on your opponents. Does the game deliver everything that it promises? Read on and find out.

Though the player models and graphics are on par with other war games, such as Battlefield: Vietnam, it is a sad day when one sees brilliant design fall victim to poor coding. Though the game recommends a 2Ghz P4, 512 MB RAM, and a 64 MB video card, it is safe to say that at this level, the game would be nearly unplayable. When clicking on the .exe to launch the game, and enduring the two and a half minute load sequence that follows, (an early warning sign of the programming staff’s terrible code implementation,) the player is treated to a chop-o-riffic fright fest desperately in need of a patch. Though only one character is rendered on-screen at this point (your highly customizable and sleek looking in-game persona,) the frame rate, even after a minute of not touching the mouse in order to give the game time to catch up, never exceeded more than 20 frames a second. Though I would except this if a 1.7 GHz Celeron with a memory integrated GeForce 4 MX, and 384 MB RAM was attempting to run Doom 3 on High detail, I was completely shocked when the test machine, equipped with an AMD Athlon XP 2800+, 512 MB of DDR400 RAM, and an All-In-Wonder Radeon 9800 Pro, was having the same amount of difficulty at 800x600 resolution on Medium detail.

Once you manage to successfully start a game, a process that from start to finish takes about ten minutes in and of itself, it doesn’t get much better. While environmental effects like glare and swaying grass are graphically impressive even at stuttering frame rates, the high amount of clipping seen in the game makes you shake your head in wonder of how it could have been released in this beta stage. Grass grows through floors, weapons and vehicles inconsistently warp through walls like that girl in X2: X-Men United, and tank shells, which should have blasted their way through walls on account of the games “destructible environment” feature, don’t to any visible damage to the structure.

On the plus side, weapons and vehicles are intricately detailed, (an almost requirement, since game oftentimes sports variations on the same weapons, for example three different types of panzerfausts,) and equipment that shows up on your character models. Since the game can be played in either first or third person, this is a cool addition that helps make the game more realistic, even if the real world doesn’t run at 20 frames per second.

While the game manages to produce all of the sound effects common to war games, like explosions, whizzing bullets, and the screams of enemy soldiers as they fall victim to an air strike, nothing memorable comes out of the affair, making the presentation average at best. Sure, us Germans like to use our native language in titles such as these, which not only helps boost national pride, but also communicates “this is cool” to unsuspecting buyers, but having the clerk at EB Games mispronounce the title of Söldner: Secret Wars” is about as much fun as we can get out of the sound. Though the box touts that it sounds best on a “24 Bit Advanced HD Sound Blaster Card,” there really is not reason to use anything but onboard sound and a standard pair of desktop speakers.

In concept, this game has it all. Up to 32 players can duke it out via online gameplay, staging small electronic wars with a grandeur that would put Battlefield to shame on maps massive enough to be mistaken for small countries. Over 70 vehicles and 60 weapons are available to destroy the terrain, using techniques ranging from knocking trees onto paths with tanks, making the aforementioned trails impassable, to destroying the enemy spawn houses, so fallen soldiers can’t reanimate. Hell, you can even be appointed squad commander and radio in support to your troops from your cozy desk, while they are busy taking fire on the front line. While the game certainly delivers what it has promised in the military tech department, making available every modern day weapon from a YF-22 to a tractor (!!), it falls flat on it’s face almost everywhere else.

While vehicles are ridiculously easy to navigate using what seems to be a takeoff from EA’s Battlefield: Vietnam, the physics and gameplay elements are very inconsistent. For example: Being the Rambo Commando that I am, I decided to rush into the enemy base equipped with nothing but hand grenades and my trusty tractor. After holding down the W key to move forward for twenty minutes, (controls are standard fare for anyone familiar with first person shooters, but gameplay speed is extremely sluggish,) I encountered the enemy tank, and decided that it was time to play chicken. Letting out a maniacal cackle, something that comes from years of online warfare, I sped head-on towards the mammoth Abrams tank, at a top speed of 15 miles an hour. Strangely, the tank did not seem to be afraid of my beastly tractor, and continued to head straight for me.

In real life, when a speeding Abrams tank is in a head on collision with a tractor, both the farmer in the tractor, as well as the tractor itself, usually don’t live to tell the tale. However, in the Söldner universe, vehicles, regardless of what size, merely bounce off of each other like bumper cars at Six Flags. This kind of hurts the realism, and makes it seem as if the developer's only concern was to get the game out of the studio as soon as possible. While the game looks amazing on paper, it is not playable in its current state.

While the game includes a single player campaign, it is apparent that, like EA’s Battlefield, the feature presentation is impressive online combat. Though a considerable amount of gamers did play the title online, the number was nowhere near as staggering as the high triple digit servers Atari's "Unreal Tournament 2011" sees everyday. Wanting to test out everything this game had to offer, I decided to start my own server, where I could manipulate game details on the fly, similar to the aforementioned Atari franchise. To my surprise, I realized that it is impossible to host a game and play in it at the same time. Söldner requires a dedicated hosting machine, meaning that if you ever want to create a private game room for you and your friends, you need not only two computers capable of running this game, but also two copies of the title itself. This is very disappointing and either lends credibility to the fact that Encore’s primary concern was to bring the game to consumers at a breakneck speed, or shows that the company has an impressive business strategy meant to make more money, more quickly.

While Encore’s Söldner: Secret Wars has the potential of becoming one of the greatest war FPS’ of all time, the poor execution destroys any great idea contained therein. Great gameplay ideas, such as being a commander to your troops and radioing in support, and being able to hinder enemy movement by destroying the environment are overshadowed by buggy gameplay that makes the title seem rushed and unfinished. Though many patches have already been released to help solve its many problems, in it’s current state, Encore's latest offering appears to be nothing more than a beta. Hopefully, they can resolve these issues, since Söldner: Secret Wars could be the greatest thing since Call of Duty.