Day of Infamy calls for backup with free weekend
Radio call for more troops
EXT. OMAHA BEACH, JUNE 6 1944
There’s blood on the beach. Artillery shells launch explosive geysers of sand and salt water into the air. Soldiers storm the shoreline, throwing themselves at the enemy. A harried CAPTAIN runs through the chaos and throws himself into a blackened crater.
CAPTAIN: Radio! RADIO! Where the hell is my god damned radio!?
An eager soldier appears at the crest of the crater. It’s a RADIOMAN.
RADIOMAN: Hello sir! How do you change loadouts?
CAPTAIN: Get down, private!
RADIOMAN: How do you go prone?
CAPTAIN: Get in here and give me that damn radio, trooper!
RADIOMAN: Okay but how do you--
A flurry of bullets tears the RADIOMAN and his radio to pieces, leaving the machine inoperable. The CAPTAIN grinds his teeth. It is a free weekend in Day of Infamy and the allies are losing badly.
Day of Infamy is an old-fashioned WWII shooter in which teams of vulnerable, fleshy players have to assault or defend their positions in snowy forests and dusty desert towns. It’s chaotic, atmospheric and more traditional than the speedwar of Call of Duty: WW2. There’s no radar or omniscient kill cam here, showing you where that last deadly bullet came from. Like the studio’s previous outing, Insurgency, it’s more about communication and teamwork. I have fond memories of running through whizzing bullets and exploding streets to get my radio to the Officer, a player who’s in charge of orchestrating your attacks, with the power to call in artillery with his binoculours.
But you can find all this out for yourself, because they’re having another free weekend on Steam, from 1pm EST today (that's 7pm British Summer Time) until Monday April 30. They’ll also be increasing XP earned over this weekend for all players.
Since its release the shooter has seen a few updates. Most recently, it got a new level set in a flak tower. Tight concrete corridors and grenade-tempting chokepoints aren’t my particular strong point when it comes to first-person shooters (I am much better at, for example, calling an artillery barrage upon my own men) but it’s an interesting setting for a fight. Here’s what they said about it in a December update:
Our new map, Flakturm is based on a series of German anti-aircraft towers (otherwise know as flak towers) built during WWII. Our tower is modeled after the Flakturm VII G-Tower in Augarten, Vienna. The area outside the flak tower is inspired by the urban area surrounding Flakturm V in Stiftkaserne, Vienna. Flakturm VII was the 3rd generation of flak tower design. It was originally equipped with eight 128mm guns and thirty-two 20mm guns. This generation of flak tower could double as a bunker that could hold 20,000 people. The tower is now home to thousands of pigeons that make their nest inside the structure.
That’s nice. I hope those pigeons are well. Previous updates have included adding a Dunkirk map and the African-American Black Panthers tank battalion. We don't know if the free weekend will be accompanied with a sale, although the last time they did this the game was 50% off. So, maybe? [Update: It will be, say the developers, this time: 70% off].