Foxhole

Foxhole is a military strategy persistence game.  This is a game that will test your patience and perseverance.  As everything is run by players you will be playing against the ingenuity of other real life people in real time.  Get ready for a long, constant, strategic war!

Everything in Foxhole is run and managed by players.  From harvesting oil and scrap and materials to refining it to different higher quality items to make weapons and buildings and tools and armor and fuel and ammunition and so forth.  If you don't want to be on the front lines, you can stay in the back line and help establish supply lines and assist in refining materials needed for prolonged warfare.

Once you boot in and deploy from the training island you will see a full map of what the current state of the war.  You will choose which side of the war to fight on, whether you're the green side with the Colonials or the blue side with the Wardens.  There are different weapons and vehicles and appearances but overall the gear for the two sides is roughly the same. 

On the map you will see where active conflicts are happening.  Once you zoom into a sector of the map you can choose which town center or forward operating base to spawn at.  This will be vital in knowing what strategic points need to be held or where troops are needed on which front line.

As you can see in the image above there is a detailed map of where the different fortifications are built, as well as other intel that is being reported to the main army by different tools.  There are watch towers that can report the movements of enemy and friendly soldiers, as well as soldiers carrying communication backpacks that can send and receive info on the move as the state of the war changes.  When moving with a squad or platoon information can change the flow of battle, so it's important to keep up on what's happening.

Once you spawn into the war you will gear up.  There are different types of armor you can change into, depending on what you're wanting to do.  If it's cold you can put on thermal armor so the cold weather doesn't kill or effect you.  You can change to have different main, secondary, thrown, armor, gas mask, and backpack slots.  For example, if you're wanting a flame thrower you will need to carry the fuel tank back pack as well as the flame thrower main hand weapon.  If you want a sniper you can choose the rifle, binoculars, and ammunition for the rifle.  When you choose the weapon you'll need to familiarize yourself with the type of ammo you need to carry to use it.

If battle isn't your thing there are still a lot of ways to support your side in the war.  If you're wanting to stay on the front lines you can be a combat medic and patch up the soldiers as they get shot up, exploded, or gassed out by the enemy (or your friends).  You can also grab a trenching shovel and your building hammer and materials and upgrade, destroy, or build and dig the new fortifications.  Trench lines are to be built, upgraded, or destroyed.  Bunkers can be upgraded with power, tools, sentry guns, gun nests, artillery batteries, and so forth.  On the front lines you'll need to place walls or sandbags or barbed wire or mines or anti tank barriers or other such tools to strengthen your team or deter your enemies. On the back line you can build refining and mining buildings but we'll cover that later.

Once you're geared up it's time to head to the front lines.  On the most granular map you'll see the positions of where the fighting is happening, so follow the war to the front lines.  From there you'll either die or kill, depending on luck and skill.  

In my first month I spent most of my time on a single bridge.  We would spend one day pushing forward, clearing the enemy off their side of the destroyed bridge and killing everything we saw.  We'd push hour after hour, gaining inch by inch with blood, sweat, and tears.  Using the local voice chat and text chat it was a good way to maintain strategy to survive.  The following day we'd be pushed back to the same bridge, trying to fend off the enemy that were pushing on our side of the broken bridge.  We had to be careful of tanks, artillery, gas grenades, and so forth.  The next week we were fighting on the same bridge, but the trenches, bunkers, and all the buildings were different.  It was the first taste of what a long term, persistent war looked like.

As mentioned above if fighting on the front lines isn't your thing you can still help the war effort.  All buildings and supplies are harvested, refined, shipped, and built by players.  The supply lines keep the war moving forward. As there are necessities to even have a chance of playing then the back line is required to keep the war on.  On the map you will see the different harvesting nodes.  Once you take control of the nodes you will need to harvest the materials by hand, with a hammer or a sledgehammer.  From there you will take the raw materials to be refined into whatever parts you'll need to build automated harvesting tools, train lines, gas or petrol to keep the machines running to continue harvesting.  In the back lines you can find one or two people running the mining and refining processes to keep the front line supplied.

Once you get your materials you can have the chance to build or upgrade.  There are many guides to show how to build and refine, as there's way too much information to cover here.  There are entire guilds and teams dedicated to keeping the wars running, and between wars they broadcast training sessions to train new players or anyone interested on how to build, refine, harvest, and the like.

Regardless of which team wins the war there are off season activities.  Many times between war sessions there are mini-wars that will have a smaller map as well as faster advancement enabled as you research better tools and weapons.  Though there are many places that are considered neutral zones where soldiers on both sides will gather and have fun.  Many times I saw fight clubs where soldiers would show up and fist fight each other to the death for fun.  These zones are oftentimes built in no-mans-land and are protected by both sides so that players that are interested in having fun can join.  Many times players will try to grenade the gatherings, but as medics on both sides are on hand it's easy to keep players alive for the fight pits.  On some holidays there are some re-creations of the World War 1 ceasefire of the Christmas Day Truce in 1914.  Players from both sides would join on the front lines and chat with each other, having peaceful fun for the day.  The war would then continue the next day.

As the voice chats can be for all local players it's possible to chat with the enemies and have fun being ridiculous.  There have been more than a couple experiences where players will grab the enemy as they're bleeding out and take them to the back lines to "chat".  One time I was taken to a back line for a tour, where the enemy were goofy, enjoying banter back and forth before I was finally allowed to die by tank.

Overall this is one of my favorite games of the last few years.  It's an effort of madness and futility as you'll spend days or weeks fighting on the same place.  You'll learn to recognize the players on both sides as you kill and are killed, so it's important to have fun.  The controls are easy to learn and master, especially if you use guides to show you the basics of how to play.  Using the training island to learn the mechanics can be helpful, especially if you can find someone to walk you through and answer your questions.  As this game is constantly changing from day to day you may be fighting on the same or new battlegrounds over time.  This game is always changing, even when one side loses and the war re-starts.

If this game is on sale and you like war games, this may be a good game to pick up.  If you like these types of 3D top down games it may be worth picking up even when not on sale.  It's definitely a game that I'll come back to regularly when looking for some quick or long term fun.