At gamescom 2019, our author Jürgen was able to play Wargaming’s new free-to-play shooter Caliber. Read here why the shooter might appeal to older players.
What is Caliber: At first glance, Caliber looks a bit like Call of Duty: a shooter with modern soldiers. So, is Wargaming thinking of a clone of these games?
Not really, because Caliber is more like a mix of World of Tanks and a hero shooter than a team deathmatch like Call of Duty.
More Overwatch than CoD
These are the hero shooter aspects: In Caliber, you play in teams of four. These consist of elite soldiers from various special units modeled after real military units. For example, there are the German KSK and the Polish GROM.
However, these are not just different skins: each unit offers four classes:
- Assault Soldier
- medic
- Support
- Sniper
However, the assault soldier from the KSK has different weapons, skills, and abilities than his comrade from Poland. Thus, the various soldier classes from different units are something like unique heroes, as known from hero shooters.
Later in development, the guys will also gain their own call signs in the local language to personalize them even more. New soldiers will be unlocked, as known from World of Tanks, through game progress.
A shooter for older players
This is how Caliber plays: During the presentation of the game at gamescom, the responsible developer offered me to quickly try out the game. Nothing I would like more!
A PvE session quickly began, and together with three teammates, we were to secure a building and take a landing zone at the end.
This is how tactical the gameplay is: Right at the start of the session, I was warned: “Don’t run ahead alone, stay with your team!” And they were right. Because Caliber is not a fast-paced shooter, it is a tactical positional battle.
To withstand the entrenched AI opponents, you must carefully advance and eliminate enemies with precise shots. Like a real military unit, we move forward slowly and take out enemies accurately.
Everyone must fulfill their role: like in an MMORPG, each of us has a specific task. If we mess that up, the whole team suffers. Because there are no respawns, and only the medic can revive fallen comrades multiple times in a row.
I, as an assault soldier, had the task of flanking positions and reacting quickly to situations. Our supporter provided covering fire, the sniper eliminated distant enemies, and the medic dropped healing packages without which we would have been in quite a bind.
If someone dies for good, they are permanently out of the current round and can only watch.
This is how realistic Caliber is: Anyone familiar with typical shooters like Call of Duty will quickly experience a few peculiarities in Caliber:
- Jumping off balconies in full gear really hurts! Use the stairs like a normal person!
- When you reload, your soldier changes magazines and puts the old one, if it still contains ammunition, on the belt. This means that it’s better to empty a magazine before switching, otherwise, you might end up with only three half-full magazines. And resupply is rather rare!
- Sprinting costs valuable stamina, which only regenerates very slowly. You also need stamina to activate your class skills. So running around all the time is not an option!
That’s why tactics are more important than reflexes: How important tactical action is became clear to us especially at the end of the mission. Just before the end, a helicopter dropped more enemies who pressured us from all sides. We were completely taken by surprise.
One by one, team members fell. I was also taken out quickly. Even the heroic medic, who wanted to revive me, was blown up by a grenade at the last second.
My 1st Highlight of Gamescom
Who should play Caliber? This final scene showed more than ever that Caliber strongly focuses on tactics and precision. Just having good reflexes is not enough here. Therefore, the game is especially interesting for older players who enjoy playing shooters but find the pace of games like Call of Duty or Battlefront far too fast and hectic.
The target audience is therefore virtually the same as that of World of Tanks: players over 30 with an affinity for military and realistic weapons.
Jürgen’s conclusion: I have always liked the idea behind Caliber, namely a shooter with a slower pace and more tactical depth. Frantic shooting and jumping around stress me out.
Therefore, Caliber at gamescom was truly my game. I had a lot of fun and was genuinely disappointed that we couldn’t finish the round properly. I would have loved to play a few more rounds of Caliber, also in PvP.
