Ironsight! Why Is No One Talking About This?
A Few Tweaks away from glory
A few tweaks away from Glory. Ironsight is an arcade-style arena FPS game made by a company called Aeria. This company is pretty famous for making crappy free to play shooters in an attempt to fill the void of Call of Duty fans on PC, their man catch is that their games are free to play and usually the microtransactions are either to help get better gear faster or cosmetics. If a game like this got enough of a following and it was actually good then it could have a good chance of being a big deal. Well, Ironsight is almost there and I know I’m enjoying it.
Ironsight wasn’t just inspired by Call of Duty, it was a deliberate copy of Call of Duty. It does well to replicate Call of Duty’s shooting mechanics, graphics style, smooth animations, and Holly Wood style call outs and reload animations. The logos for the perks, killstreaks and other on-screen animations all feel like they were pulled out of Call of Duty. The loadout customization is identical to the older Call of Duty games and so are many of the perks, killstreaks, and weapons. There are some differences, for example, the killstreaks don’t get interrupted when you die. They keep going but only the good players will likely get to use the best killstreaks since all killstreaks take longer to get than in Call of Duty. The killstreaks are divided between support and offensive abilities. This just means that you can’t have the best of both worlds would could, in theory, make a fairly overpowered player if they play their cards right. Other than that game modes are nearly identical in every way but sadly my favorite game mode, Capture the Flag is missing in action. The Maps of the game are also clearly inspired by Call of Duty and have the same level of thought process used to create them and the attention to detail. This means that the maps are very well designed, though you could argue that Call of Duty has fairly generic map design but nevertheless it works perfectly with the game’s player mechanics and game modes.
From my personal experience, they’ve done a great job balancing weapons. LMG’s have their place, SMG’s rule in close quarters, ARs are balanced for all ranges as they should be, Snipers are pretty similar to Call of Duty and the side arms vary from shotguns, a wide variety of pistols, and grenade launchers. From my experience, all weapons are well balanced, or at least they are just as balanced as any Call of Duty game. Now the game has an obvious and well known problem with its “Net Code”. For those who don’t know, that the name gamers have given the networking magic that happens when two online players meet one another. Using the game Ironsight as an example, the Net Code rewards those players that have a laggy connection meaning that they can see you first and shoot first before players on the other end even have a chance to react. The game network has a constant amount of lag between what actually happens and what the players see. This leads to unfair kills from laggy players or many moments where despite unloading a clip into a laggy player, the bullets don’t register as a hit creating many “what the F!@#” type of moments. This also gives an inconsistent illusion as to just how many times you need to shoot someone before they die. It’s hard to tell how many of the shots you fire actually register as a hit and therefore sometimes they die in a few shots as the game intends or they act as bullet sponges and take clearly a full clip to kill. Sadly this means for someone like me with good internet and in a city. I never lag behind and in this game, I am at the disadvantage (but I still tear up). This is certainly the main issue holding this game back from being a big deal and luckily they are planning on fixing it. Many fans and streamers have complained and their voices have been heard.
Other than this issue I can’t say that this game has many flaws. For a free to play shooter it runs rather smoothly and it’s a light game for a computer to run. It has some minor bugs but certainly nothing game-breaking or even really much of a bother. Heck, it’s making many triple-A companies look bad right now in my opinion.
Ironsight is on to something here. Even if they are just copying Call of Duty at every turn. As long as they fix the netcode and don’t fill the game with gimmicks, pay to win microtransactions, and doesn’t get a re-release every year, then the game should do well. I think this game has real potential. Next on their list should be adding it to Steam and getting a good ani-hacker wall on it.
Best of Luck and I will enjoy reliving my old school Call of Duty experience on this wonderful free to play shooter. I look forward to your future updates. Stay frosty.
