RAID: World War II

Raid: World War II disappoints on all levels. It’s not that one thing in particular is badly broken; it’s that so many aspects of the game are clumsy or incomplete. It made playing the game a chore, even in its best moments. Sometimes a terrible movie or game will still have things that make it enjoyable — hilariously cheesy dialogue or over-the-top action that I end up liking in spite of the low budget or poor production values. With Raid, there’s just nothing here for me, and I can’t imagine there being much here for anyone else.

Building off the success of Payday is a decent premise for Starbreeze to explore. Raid: World War II does not successfully lead a winning campaign, however. The poor A.I., repetitive design, and technical problems had me waving a white flag long before the war should have been over. If Starbreeze plans to turn this into a long-running service game, it has a lot of work to do.

On a whole, RAID: World War II feels exactly like what you’d expect from a Payday clone. It takes less of a political approach than other games featuring Nazis such as Wolfenstein or the upcoming Call of Duty: WW2, and instead moves away from the ‘war is hell’ narrative to opt for a more hyper-violent, stylised approach to the subject matter. While the choice of game engine severely lets itself down, there is still much to appreciate if you enjoy other co-operative shooters of its type.