Sluggish inputs on the front lines
The mouse inputs register, but the physical handling feels heavy right out of the gate. Aiming down sights carries a noticeable delay that drags on your view, especially when you try to transition from a dead sprint into a slide. Weapon swap animations take their sweet time to complete. If you get caught mid-reload, canceling the action to snap to a sidearm feels sticky and unresponsive.
That sluggish weight hangs over the opening hours of the campaign. You play as Private Park during the North Korean invasion of South Korea, fighting through chaotic defensive lines while mortar shells kick up debris. It looks noisy and expensive. Yet every time you try to slip behind a sandbag wall or line up quick shots on charging infantry, the gunplay feels like it is wading through wet cement.
Loose hurtboxes and chaotic set pieces
The campaign hops across the globe at breakneck speed. One minute you are in trench warfare in Korea, then you get thrown into close-quarters alleys in New York, car chases across Paris, and SAS night raids in Mumbai. Captain Price runs his own rogue operation in the background, barking orders through static radios while tracking targets off the books.
The variety keeps the scenery fresh, but the combat spaces do not hold up under scrutiny. Enemy hurtboxes during the close-quarters New York sections feel remarkably sloppy. Bullets clip through thin drywall and vehicle fenders inconsistently, while enemy soldiers absorb center-mass rounds without flinching until their death animation suddenly triggers. Taking fire behind low cover is frustrating because stray rounds catch your shoulder hitbox even when your model is fully tucked away.
Multiplayer scales up without the precision
Competitive multiplayer tries to cover every base at once. You get tight corridors on small maps and massive combined-arms battlefields where transport vehicles roll down open highways. On paper, having both vehicle warfare and rapid infantry skirmishes gives you plenty of choices for your seventy dollars.
In actual matches, the engine struggles to keep high-speed movement crisp. Sprinting around tight corners exposes severe peeker's advantage, where you drop dead before the opposing model even finishes their mantle animation on your screen. The dodge and slide mechanics lack clean recovery windows. Instead of rewarding sharp reflexes, engagements routinely dissolve into who prefires a doorway with an assault rifle first.
Technical rough edges in DMZ
DMZ returns as the dedicated extraction mode, dropping squads onto large maps to grab loot, complete contracts, and extract before extraction zones collapse. The tension works when you run into another squad and decide whether to trade shots or sneak past them to an elevator shaft.
Too bad the technical rough edges kill the excitement during extractions. Hit registration against heavily armored patrol guards feels erratic, with point-blank shotgun blasts occasionally failing to trigger stagger animations. When multiple squads call in air strikes near an extraction bird, the action hitches hard enough to throw off your crosshair mid-spray. A high-stakes survival mode needs rock-solid input consistency, and right now, this game simply does not deliver it.
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skill issue? the movement delay is just awful lol. that slide recovery alone gets you killed the second you try playing aggressive in sweaty lobbies. gun handling feels like you are wading through mud. keep defending it though, maybe the devs will actually patch it.
tested the movement in the firing range and it's awful. dive recovery has a massive lock where you literally cannot cancel or shoot back. sprint-to-fire feels super delayed whether you're on mouse or controller. once you start climbing a ledge you're stuck in the mantle animation the whole way up, no hipfire cancel like we had back in 2019. dev team needs to loosen up the animation locks because gunplay feels like wading through wet cement right now.
the paris pigeons are so detailed you can see individual feathers~~ 🐱 but the game feels so mean and loud i had to stop after the first mission mumbai street cats look precious but you can't pet them 0/10 fluffiness scale 🐾 any game where you can pet the cat gets an automatic pass~ this one fails sadly
the sprint to fire lag is a traffic jam on a one lane road, guess the devs forgot the green light
wait, dmz extractions are actually tense again? that alone makes me want to try it. are the squad fights chaotic or is it just people camping the exfil chopper? also the performance drops around the big set pieces sound rough, especially if you're trying to track people with weird hitboxes.
the slide recovery lock reads like a small thing until it gets you killed for the dozenth time. i've dealt with way worse movement in soulslike games, but at least there you can roll through the jank. this is more like paying twenty euros for a pub burger and getting the bun stuck to the wrapper. the campaign missions being in paris and mumbai is nice, but if the gun stops being fun at the moment of impact, the sightseeing does not carry it.
Hey @parryframe, do you think the spacing in DMZ was an actual design choice for strategy, or are people just forced to play slow because of the awful animation locks? Also curious if it runs decent on normal mid-range PCs. Wondering if the clunkiness was intentional or what.
@Kestutisre dmz spacing: i think its a mix. the movement locks force u to slow down, but the maps are open enough that the nerds holding long angles can still catch u sprinting. dmz needs that slower pace tho, otherwise every squad just rushes and wipes. 5.8 is harsh but the gunplay complaints r legit.
Another $70 release that exists solely as a rental license. Without a physical disc with offline install, the game is just a collectible digital receipt. The eight credited studios are a sign of inflated development overhead, not quality. I'll wait until this hits a bundle or Game Pass, if it ever does. If it's not on the disc, you don't own it.
I still have Fallout: New Vegas from 2010 in my backlog, so I'm not in a hurry to pick this up. The dive recovery lock reminds me of the forced movement penalty in the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, which I eventually modded away. Adding this to the wishlist, maybe during the winter sale. The production values sound impressive but not enough to overcome those clunky mechanics.
dive lock too long
rtx 4090 and i still get nasty frame drops during big campaign set pieces. the paris bridge scene straight up chugged. for a seventy dollar game that is embarrassing. gpu sits there barely breaking a sweat while one cpu core takes the whole beating. really rough for a shooter.
if you keep dying to the movement recovery in dmz trios, stop sprinting into buildings like it's shipment. ping corners before pushing because running in solo gets you caught in awkward animations every time. running suppressors helps, but honestly just walk around angles and prefire instead of diving. dive recovery leaves you completely exposed if someone is holding the lane. play slow and let squads come to you, extraction is way smoother once you stop treating it like a twitch shooter.
adding this to the wishlist, maybe during the winter sale. reminds me of when i bought battlefield 3 at launch and the movement felt similarly locked -- took two patches and a community mod before it clicked. eight studios credited here versus dice's single team then; more cooks, same kitchen. the dmz extraction loops sound like what i wanted from tarkov but couldn't commit to learning. $69.99 is steep for "maybe it gets patched."
@Window Shopperchat REKT toast coming in with the receipts lmao. but for real the slow recovery animations are totally real, people already clipped frame-by-frame proof. still gonna run some dmz matches tonight, pull up.
@chimneytested the movement in the firing range and it's awful. dive recovery has a massive lock where you literally cannot cancel or shoot back. sprint-to-fire feels super delayed whether you're on mouse or controller. once you start climbing a ledge you're stuck in the mantle animation the whole way up, no hipfire cancel like we had back in 2019. dev team needs to loosen up the animation locks because gunplay feels like wading through wet cement right now.
@kaputt_karlNullPointer is right about the sprint delay feeling terrible, though attachments change how it behaves. the dive lock feels sluggish either way. hard to give exact numbers when handling feels so inconsistent from match to match, but the gunplay definitely is not snappy.
@kaputt_karl@parryframe lines up with my experience. the dive recovery lock and sprint to fire delays kill any offensive push, even with a lightweight build. mantling lock is way worse imo, especially around ledges. eight studios credited and the movement recovery is still this sluggish. embarrassing.
@kaputt_karltbh the dive lock is a joke lol
the music in the paris safehouse sequence is really good, heavy cello notes that make the quiet moments feel tense. mumbai extraction music goes hard too with the synths kicking in right as the timer winds down. audio work is honestly solid, you can clearly hear the heavy thud when a mantle cuts out or gun clicks when you try firing out of a sprint. game handles sluggishly, but the sound design at least gives everything some weight.
the little details in the mumbai safehouse, like the drawing on a crate and letters in the fireplace, felt way more grounded than the scripted set piece at the end of paris. even reading through the discarded gear in dmz extraction zones had some cool worldbuilding to it. the campaign still feels like a mess of different studio visions mashed together though, gritty realistic rooms glued right onto loud hollywood explosions. [campaign spoiler] that final choice at the end gives you the exact same cutscene no matter what button you press, completely pointless illusion of choice.
the paris pigeons are so detailed you can see individual feathers~~ 🐱 but the game feels so mean and loud i had to stop after the first mission mumbai street cats look precious but you can't pet them 0/10 fluffiness scale 🐾 any game where you can pet the cat gets an automatic pass~ this one fails sadly
@claudiathe cats!! i crouched next to a mumbai street cat with my desk lamp on and it just... walked away. i screamed out loud and threw my mouse 10/10 anyway because the alleys are scary and the dive lock made me fall off a rooftop. paused to breathe. the pigeons in paris are cute though 🐱
checked through the settings menu earlier. subtitles start tiny and you can't freely scale them, just pick between three preset sizes. dive and mantle are locked together so you can't separate them on your binds. colorblind filters don't apply to crucial stuff like the extraction timer either. speaker names show up during campaign cutscenes but vanish in dmz chat logs. paris and mumbai look great visually, but spotting enemies is rough without decent contrast settings.
is this actually fun with three people or does it force a random 4th?? ping system seems solid but friendly fire settings are buried in the accessibility menu for some reason netcode felt stable in dmz trios -- no rubberbanding on extraction choppers campaign is a hard pass for co-op, zero shared progression if the movement recovery gets patched this could be our new friday night grinder but rn the dive lock makes aggressive pushes feel terrible
yo chat MW4 dropped and the MOVEMENT FEELS WEIRD -- tactical dive has this HUGE recovery lock where you just STAND THERE getting beamed chat had mixed feelings on this one some said "skill issue" others timed it at like half a second DMZ extraction loops are actually FIRE tho the spacing and resource management hits different paris and mumbai look INSANE asset detail wise but campaign keeps taking my controller away for scripted stuff $70 tho?? idk man
played a ton of this already and unlocked most achievements. the movement ceiling is ruined by those slide and dive recovery frames. tried practicing dive-cancels on shipment for hours and the consistency just isn't there compared to 2019. veteran campaign was mostly just watching scripted walks. dmz is the only mode where spacing matters but the extraction cooldown kills momentum. not worth $69.99 for mp grinders.
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@toastskill issue? the movement delay is just awful lol. that slide recovery alone gets you killed the second you try playing aggressive in sweaty lobbies. gun handling feels like you are wading through mud. keep defending it though, maybe the devs will actually patch it.
dive recovery lock gets you killed constantly, you just stand there like an idiot after diving. sprint-to-fire delay is crazy sluggish too, so rushing corners gets you wiped instantly. once you start mantling a ledge on the paris rooftops you're locked into the animation and can't cancel out, free kill for anyone watching. campaign makes you sit through slow walk-and-talk sequences with no skip button on replays. dmz extracts are fun but the reset timers between matches drag everything down.