​RAID: World War II Review

By Kevin Mitchell  |  Posted: October 16, 2017

What happens when you take four prisoners of war and set them loose on the Nazi war machine at the height of its power? For the betterment of humanity, these unlikely heroes must form an alliance to battle the unstoppable Third Reich and put an end to Adolf Hitler's regime. If some Nazi gold happens to go missing during missions of sabotage, high-ranking officer assassinations, and daring heists, well, it's better in your hands than the enemy's. Using the gameplay loop from the Payday series, which developer Lion Game Lion has experience with through past DLC creation, RAID: World War II falls flat due to poor AI implementation and an overall buggy online experience.

After creating your initial character from four different character and class options, you establish your base camp behind enemy lines in a destroyed church. This area serves as both an online and offline lobby, where you can prepare for any of the dozen or so missions, make improvements, upgrade weapons, and more. As the name suggests, you'll perform various objective-based missions (raids) including stealing gold from a Nazi treasury, demolishing a massive concrete fortress, or derailing a train to steal its contents. Objectives may change mid-mission, providing welcome variety, especially when running levels multiple times. While these variations help alleviate the grind's monotony, your four-person crew (whether human or AI) will still experience the same crunchy dialogue and one-liners repeated ad nauseum.

While confiscated gold improves your dwelling, mission completion earns experience for character skill trees. The setup mirrors Payday - as you gain levels, you select new proficiencies from available options. These might provide stat bonuses, such as increased mounted weapon damage or decreased vulnerability while lockpicking or completing objectives. One particularly useful upgrade increases movement speed while carrying heavy objects like AA gun shells or gold bar crates. Playing offline should be avoided at all costs in RAID: World War II. The AI proves unreliable, merely wandering around your character and occasionally shooting enemy soldiers. Sometimes they appear confused and fail to engage enemies, though generally hold their own. While they will attempt to revive you when downed, they often ignore incoming fire and get killed in the process. Most critically, they never help complete objectives, forcing you to transport gold crates and load AA shells alone. Without a full human squad, this prolongs missions significantly, leading to numerous frustrating experiences.

Though you'll face swarms of Nazi soldiers emerging from every possible opening - doorways to broken skylights - their intelligence proves questionable. Most charge blindly toward you, firing in your general direction. Given your AI squad's poor support, you'll often turn to find enemies and allies standing side-by-side, attempting close-range combat. While most missions allow initial stealth approaches, I've experienced missions that began mid-firefight, possibly due to loading issues. Standard infantry poses little threat, but elite soldiers can inflict severe damage. Heavily armored flamethrower units frequently appear with remarkable range. Red flares signal incoming mortar strikes or heavy equipment like tanks.

The game's premise suffers from poor performance both offline and online. Four-player sessions experience frequent slowdown, with significant freezes when players join mid-mission. Random crashes to the PlayStation 4 menu occur regularly, and end-game completion screens can take up to five minutes to appear. Beyond technical shortcomings, the gunplay feels lackluster. The game stutters when aiming down sights, and hit detection feels inconsistent. During the gold heist raid, I've died from minimal falls, rendering my character unrevivable.

Simply Put

RAID: World War II fails to capture the magic that makes the Payday franchise so popular. Despite Lion Game Lion's experience with that series, this game suffers from disappointing AI, severe technical issues, and other glaring problems. While not beyond repair if they commit to long-term support, as the concept of running raids with friends to steal Nazi treasures remains appealing, the current execution falls short. Basic character customization exists, but the grind for proficiencies proves excessive. It's particularly disappointing that a game featuring FMV sequences with John Cleese couldn't deliver on its promising premise.