Isonzo is what would happen if you sent me to WWI

It took me a while to figure out how to take Isonzo. Even more than in the biggest and most confusing Battlefield matches, I’m constantly lying in the dirt, with not even a faint idea why and from where it got me now. It’s clear: it’s World War I, in a game that wants to remain accessible in terms of its systems, but takes its weapons seriously. It almost doesn’t matter where you meet someone with their cousin, they’re usually down right there. Or in most cases I. Man, we just figured that out.

Isonzo also doesn’t care much about the legibility of player outlines, it seems to me. After all, it was not without reason that the uniforms were designed in such a way that they did not immediately stand out against grey-brown-green surroundings. And yes, of course, this means that snipers (and not only them) also act like snipers and lie around in safe positions for a long time and enemy positions from afar – sorry, think Position – decimate. How many colleagues fell to my left and right while still using the outpost we set up as a spawn point… I’ve lost count.

Doesn’t sound like fun. Oddly enough, yes. I keep catching myself launching Isonzo up and down the often very large maps for two or three rounds of this often tough but gripping battle for position. Every now and then I do have them, those moments in which I’ve been living for far too long, feeling like a superman with every passing second and then digging out a machine gun nest with three squad members. And if it’s this moment after which I then give up the spoon, something is already won. At least emotionally. Sometimes real too, if my people don’t give up the position right away.

48 players make life hell in this multiplayer recreation of the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Italy on maps that are sometimes really pretty. Bullet drop and muzzle velocity play a role, but aren’t a major factor because the bullets are way too fast at the ranges you fight at most of the time.

The interface, the classes and the coordination, which should enable both, go much more in the direction of hardcore: The game only really comes to life when at least half of the players have understood that they have to play their roles. As a technician, you fortify positions with barbed wire, reach machine gun positions or spawn points. As an officer, you coordinate airstrikes, mustard gas bombardments, and troop movements, and as long as those two classes in particular aren’t doing their job, you’ll chew the game through and spit it out.

And while the map is dotted with icons and symbols, it’s not all that easy to keep track of. This is part of the battle chaos, as is the high death rate when an aircraft bomb suddenly fell on my head.

In any case, I’ve been stuck in Isonzo for a good 20 hours – and I’m still not sure whether it will now be the great love that lasts for years. Too often there are moments where the game kicks me when I’m on the ground. And if something else lures me, I’m quickly on the jump. On the other hand, there’s plenty of glorious battlefield poetry that almost makes you unravel the age-old mystery of why even the most terrifying wars have haunted game and entertainment creators – and their audiences – for ages. If you are interested in the scenario, you are actually well served here.