I was looking around at what Steam had to offer for their 1st person shooter sale, and I came across Squad '44 under the mil-sim category. It’s a WWII multiplayer shooter that focuses on realism, tactics, and cooperation. It’s similar to Hell Let Loose and started life as a fan mod to the modern mil-sim game, Squad. Apparently it got so popular the developers of Squad bought out this game and changed the name from Post Scriptum to Squad '44. I chose Squad ‘44 over those other WWII mil-sim games because it was on the deepest sale.

My first few hours of Squad ‘44 was spent in the shooting range. In this simulated world, that looks like the loading screens in old Assassin Creed games, you get access to a king’s ransom of small arms. From the well-known M1 Garand & Kar98k, to the lesser seen Ross bolt action & Ruby pistol. Each gun has been lovingly recreated & they are fun to shoot. I’d honestly love a game that just lets me shoot a bunch of different guns at the range, especially the unique ones you see end up on Forgotten Weapons. I enjoyed learning how the different firearms operated, getting familiar with how to use mortars and anti-tank rifles, and having fun spewing lead down range with the machine guns. One minor thing I noticed, there are different reload animations for an empty gun vs a partially empty gun, very cool, but if you fire 2 or 4 rounds out of your bolt action, the reload animation always shows you loading 3 rounds. I do wonder if all of these guns at the shooting range are present in the actual matches. You don’t pick your loadout at the start of a match, just a class, which has a predetermined loadout. Most allies use either Garands or M1 Carbines. I don’t think I ever saw one that came with the Ross.

The game does lack a real tutorial area. There’s a training camp that seems more set dressing than actually teaching you anything. And the armor garage just lets you look at different vehicles, but not practice driving them. If this was game where everyone was just a rifleman, having a bare bones tutorial would be fine, but since there’s whole squads dedicated to support roles that have a bunch of different option at their disposal, being briefed on them before going live would be nice. I ended up finding an empty server and just trying out the different squad types to get a feel for them. That is one issue I’ve heard this game has, a lack of servers. I think it was fixed around when I got into the game, but yeah there’s usually only one or two servers with any substantial number of people on at one time. You’ll have to get into a queue for the server, but usually it’s only a few minutes wait to get into the action.

Before you pick your class, you have to choose a squad, either infantry, logistics, or armored. Infantry is pretty self explanatory, you are the grunts. Armored is equally easy to understand, you are the guys driving the tanks. Logistics, or Logi, is a little more varied. I’ve found it to be the catchall support role. They are responsible for setting up forward operating bases, which serve as spawn points, building vehicle repair stations, resupplying, building fixed positions and fortifications, and manning the mortars. Infantry squads have the most diversity of classes. 90% of the time I was playing as a rifleman, because that’s the basic class that’s always available. I never got to play as the marksman or machine gunner, but I did have a few rounds where I played as the radioman or medic. I think I enjoyed radioman the most because the class is more focused on supporting the squad lead vs pushing the enemy. The HUD is kept minimal for the sake of realism and I found it hard to pick out enemies on my screen, so I wasn’t much good in fights. This game also has friendly fire, so you have to be careful of your shots. I accidentally TK’d a couple soldiers. Some were better sports about it than others.

Communication is key to having successful matches. Whether conveying enemy positions or giving out orders, you need to be able to both listen and talk. This did break down a few times when I’d have a non-English speaker on my team. I also encountered the issue a few times where a machine gunner would just play his class as a rifleman vs. using it to it’s proper effect. The game did have this weird bug where sometimes it wouldn’t recognize my headset mic, so I’d be talking but no one was actually hearing me. When it was working, the teamwork made this game fun. I was part of a couple tanker crews where I’d be running the gun and my driver would bark out, “Tiger at 3 o’clock”. Like War of Rights, having a good squad leader is often the deciding factor of having a good match. My first match was in a squad that was very serious and to the point. The SL gave commands and there wasn’t a lot of chatter among the other troops. It was a bit tense as the new guy, because I didn’t want to perk up with a question and get chewed out. The other squads I’ve played in are usually a mix of serious and goofy, not outright “lol, meme” squads, but they know it’s just a game.

One thing this game has in spades is the design, from the art design to the sound. The maps all look like real WWII battlefield, whether a snowy forest or a devastated town. I always tried to bob and weave between cover to break up my profile, but there were a couple times I had to make a dicey run across an open field, or crawl through a crop field while under sniper fire. While this is a multiplayer game that doesn’t have scripted moments like a single player story game would, there were plenty of times the game just naturally creates them. When I was riding in a truck to the front lines and heard my first mortar shell go off nearby, it felt in the moment. The explosion sound wasn’t just a track that was pumped in, I could hear exactly where it detonated and I flinched a little. Another time at the end of a nightly gaming session, the server dropped down from 60 people to about 6. It was our mission to defend a house in this French city at night. The game went from being about grand battles to this more squad focused, intimate stealth affair. We’d be holding up in windows trying to keep an eye for the 3 enemy soldiers who could be sneaking around anywhere. It had a nice tension to it.

But my most memorable encounter that felt straight out of a story mode game was when I was riding in the Logi truck with my mate and we were setting up an outpost behind enemy lines. We were driving through the woods, avoiding the main road where we could. We got to a spot where we were at the bottom of a hill and the road was at the top. Just at that time, a German Panzer came rolling down the road. We shut off our engine and lights and just watched it roll by in front of us, wondering if it saw us. It kept down the road and we thought we were in the clear, then we heard the tank back up and knew we’d been had. We got blown up, but it was such a cool moment.

Most matches are setup as attack/defend objectives, usually with the Germans defending and the Allies attacking. There is some balance issues with that setup. The Allies usually just barely lose a match because it’s much easier for the Germans to dig into a defensible location. Defenders can make more use of the machine gun nest buildings vs the attackers who are constantly on the move. Still a good attacking team can win a minor victory if all the parts of the squad are working together. One of the roughest matches, which mirrors the real history to an extent, is the D-Day map. The Americans spawn in on the Higgins boats and have to push through a hail of German machine gun and artillery fire to get off the beach into the bunkers. Most of my time was spent respawning because I’d get murked as soon as the door dropped on the boat.

All in all, Squad ‘44 is a lot of fun for the WWII history nut who prefers something more teamwork and tactical based. You can see your stats at the end of a match, but its not the focus. You don’t see a big scoreboard of everyone’s kills, deaths, etc. There wasn’t that pressure of worrying the team will know I’m letting them down because k/d ratio isn’t the point of this game. For me, this game captured the feeling of being just another soldier in WWII and I loved having so many aspects of the fighting available. I can recommend this game to most any WWII history buff looking for a more grounded experience.