I’ve been trying to figure out how to pin down CI Games’ upcoming story-driven first-person shooter Enemy Front without getting too worried about how the game will be received when it lands in stores on June 10, 2014. While it looks on the surface to be one more entry in the recent comeback of the WWII shooter, the rather nice looking CRYENGINE powered game uses the Warsaw Uprising as one of the destructible locations playable character American war correspondent Robert Hawkins ends up in and that’s probably guaranteed to get some historians and other people a bit ticked off for a few reasons.

 
Granted, the game isn’t supposed to be “realistic” or an accurate simulation at all and yes, it’ll be far too easy for some to pick it apart for any elements they see as inaccurate. But CI seems to want to bridge the game between the old Medal of Honor and Call of Duty games, while referencing Sniper Elite and its own Sniper games. There’s freedom to tackle missions in what’s being called “a richly interactive combat sandbox gameplay experience”, meaning the game should be nowhere as linear as the yearly Call of Duty action-packed guided tour thrill ride, which is a good thing for those players looking for a bit more variety and replay value…

According to the press release, Enemy Front will have a single player campaign that clocks in at around ten hours or so and online multiplayer modes are included for up to a dozen live players. I’m more interested in this for the story and how well the gameplay works in those more open maps than the usual MP shenanigans these games turn into with everyone running around shooting each other in the face endlessly, so we’ll see how the story stacks up. As you can see below, the game allows for stealthiness as well as scavenging for ammo and weapons, so even if players want to go in like hopped up Rambos on a caffeinated jitter spree, the need to be silent and deadly may overtake the urge to run ‘n gun throughout (not that this will do much good anyway)…

 
The game is hitting retail in two editions, a $39.99 standard edition (that if pre-ordered, nets buyers a Sniper Pack consisting of an extra character skin and WG35 rifle) and a $49.99 Special Edition (that gets you a soundtrack, two DLC character skins, a bonus solo play map and two weapons, a Webley pistol and M1 Garand). With only a few weeks to go before release, Namco Bandai Games is probably looking to recapture a bit more of the mostly positive attention it got for publishing the first Sniper Elite game back in 2005 on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. If this game manages to be as innovative as that one was, it’ll be a clear shot to some decent sales and perhaps more from CI like it in the future. Given that interest seems to be sliding away from modern and future war shooters and back to older conflicts, perhaps the old saying “What’s old is new” is going to be getting a new meaning that’s actually not derogatory when it comes to the very crowded FPS market. As always, we shall see…