The current build of Early Access Dagger Directive – v0.4 – contains one of the most entertaining game bugs I’ve come across in a long time. Unfortunately, it also sports a glitch that brought my campaign to a shuddering halt.
The Amusing Bug. For some reason, after one post-mortem reload, Arcane Alpacas’ £13.40 love letter to Delta Force decided to revive all the corpses in my vicinity. Because DD’s foes drop their weapons in a scavenger-friendly heap when they kick the bucket, and these born-again baddies didn’t have the wherewithal to reclaim their possessions before rejoining the fray, I soon found myself at the centre of a disquieting but harmless undead counter-attack.
The Annoying Bug. Mission 3 starts with some unexpected minigun action. As you ingress, you’re asked to man one of your air taxi’s M134s and riddle the heck out of some terrorist technicals below. Once on the ground, normal service resumes – you assault rifle, snipe, and grenade your way through a village and a couple of farms in search of a stolen nuke, before rendezvousing with the helicopter at a distant exfil point.
When I eventually got into the surprisingly overgrown Black Hawk for extraction, the pilot refused to take off, insisting I hadn’t cleared the last objective properly. This sparked half an hour of fruitless foe searching and provocative ‘I’m over here. Come and get me!’ shooting, none of which flushed out the enemy survivor(s) I presumably needed to slay in order to flip the victory switch.
Assuming the devs deal with the bugs, Dagger Directive should prove popular amongst shooter fans of a certain vintage. Unusually spacious maps and pleasingly consistent retro visuals give it rare character, and unpredictable foes and essentially plausible ballistics ensure its plentiful gunfights get the pulse racing.
I love it that I’m often firing at muzzle flashes in DD… attempting speculative suppression. The source of that incoming appears to be the clump of trees by the hut. I’ll lean out from my hiding place, give it a few rounds, then leg it back to the cornfield and try approaching from a different angle. The fact that enemies are also fond of suppressive fire, and can be inquisitive and circuitous, mean immobility can prove costly.
I love it too that binoculars are genuinely useful in-game. Tall grass, dense foliage, and effective camo gear make it very easy to blunder into opponents. Stopping regularly to survey the terrain ahead with powerful field glasses, greatly reduces the chance of unpleasant close-range engagements.
Some younger gamers may baulk at a milsim with hexagonal gun sights and painfully bare building interiors. To those of raised and conditioned in simpler times, Dagger Directive’s austere visuals should prove a draw rather a deterrent, especially as they’re complemented by some rather delicate and naturalistic physics.
One of the most cinematic moments I’ve experienced so far, came while sniping from a boulder top. In the fierce silence that followed a flurry of gratifying killshots, I watched gravity gently rolling ejected cartridge cases down the rocky slope in front of me.
This looks promising.
What I really miss from the tactical shooter games I grew up with (Rainbow Six, Delta Force, SWAT, etc.) was that they were very easy to get into and play. If I want to play a new tactical shooter like Ground Branch I have to map controls to change how I’m holding my gun, and controls to change which sight I’m using, and the main learning curve is just managing everything I have to do with my character.
I much prefer a ‘simpler’ game where I don’t have to use brain power just to control my character, and can use all of it to actually play tactically.
Have had my eye on this one. I think I’ll push the button.
I wanted to love this game, but it dies by it’s (lack of) ai. Enemies are either completely clueless to their surroundings or have ESP and zero in on you hidden in a bush half a km away. I like everything about the game except playing it. At least that was my experience from the demo, have they improved the ai simulation?
That’s interesting. I was looking at this yesterday thing it’s ideal THC fodder (topic, context, retro-graphic style, gameplay) but was deterred by the description of the AI in the reviews.
It’s Early Access so the development team may have planned updates, so for me it’s one to watch – something supported by the preview write-up here.
“Enemies are either completely clueless to their surroundings or have ESP and zero in on you hidden in a bush half a km away.”
It might just be a reflection of the way I’m approaching missions, but I’ve only had a couple of “I can’t believe I’ve managed to get so close to him without being detected” moments thus far. These both happened when I was approaching enemies from the rear. Foes will make for your ‘last known’ location. Break LoS, move away, say, 20 metres, and go prone in long grass, and you’re usually pretty safe.