Preview – Every Day We Fight

I loved XCOM and XCOM 2 (The new ones. The old ones kick my ass), but I can’t say their style is a carrot I’ve been chasing. In fact, I haven’t played XCOM 2 since the expansion, though I remember really enjoying it. So, I probably wouldn’t have paid that much attention to Every Day We Fight if not for the preview opportunity.

And, really, Every Day We Fight isn’t that much like XCOM, it just feels like it. It has the same vibe. But it’s clearly a tactical strategy game for people who hate dice rolls.

MAYBE TRY COUPLES’ THERAPY

The preview took me about an hour and a half to get through. It starts off with the prologue/tutorial, which sets up the story. The world is screwed because of some sort of alien-like invader. It takes place in, um, the 1940’s or something. Like, alternate WWII. You take control of three resistance soldiers. They’re on a mission to meet with a scientist. The end goal is to stop the aliens. Simple enough.

But at the end of the first sequence, the characters get perforated to death. However, they wake up and find themselves alive, but a few minutes prior to their death. Things are different in small ways. This time, they survive the battle. I assume. I believe in you.

The unique feature that Every Day We Fight has over other tactical strategy games is its contempt for odds. You know how XCOM would present you with a 95% chance to hit a target and you still miss? Some people hate that, I guess. Clearly, the developers of Every Day We Fight are among those folks, because they have replaced those dice rolls with actual aiming. While the game is turn-based, when you choose to take a shot, you actually have to aim the gun at the target and fire. Like a first-person shooter, but with targets that stand still.

This may seem like it would just pit you against watermelons sitting on ledges, and it kind of does. However, once you take your shot, the enemy will usually move, and any subsequent shots you want to take are then at a moving target. There are also reaction moves on enemy turns, which means you’ll have a harder time landing your shots. It’s sort of hard to describe why it works, but it kind of does. On the other hand, there is still a lot of shooting at watermelons.

HOTEL HELL

After the prologue/tutorial, the preview has a stretch of the first act which shows off sort of how its open world is supposed to work. You and your crew can wander around the city, getting into fights, picking up scrap and other equipment, and completing objectives.

The objective given out of the gate is to get a gizmo that’s in a hotel. Of course, that leads to a big shoot-out, which introduces the grenadier unit. This wound up being a bit of a mess. I think the fight was maybe supposed to be lop-sided against me. I’m just assuming here, but I think I was supposed to lose the fight as a way of the game introducing me to the penalty for death and how the whole time-looping system works. Except I didn’t lose.

I’m not trying to flex here, because it was maybe 20% strategy, 70% luck, and 10% exploits. I took the high ground with my rifle wielders, while my fully automatic guy circled around back to flank them. It went beautifully, at first. The positioning paid off, and I downed the first four or five dudes in a couple of turns, clearing out the area. But then another round of Rifters (as they’re called) dropped in, and immediately annihilated machine gun guy.

Following that, another group dropped in, and I figured I was boned. I was severely outnumbered, facing armoured guys who throw explosives, and my survivors had bolt-action rifles. Even though I had the high ground, the enemy was getting 10 turns for two of mine. Looked grim.

WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER

The enemies even moved to flank, disappearing into a hallway that connected to the balcony where I couldn’t see them. I started picking off the smaller dudes to try and cut down the number of turns the enemy had.

But where my high ground advantage was boosted by the fact that the enemy has significant trouble with floors and walls. Frequently, they’d waste an action on firing when they blatantly didn’t have a vector to hit my soldiers. With my dudes being on a floor above them, they didn’t seem sure how to stay out of my line of sight, and just shot blindly.

As for exploits? Well aside from sticking my soldiers behind solid cover, a couple of times I took advantage of the way you can lean out from cover. Because the aiming system could be hampered by pieces of scenery, you can lean around corners and out from behind cover. I found there were some times when an enemy would be hidden behind cover, but when I leaned, I could get a glimpse of them for a split-second. So, in order to hit them, I timed my shot for that split-second during the midst of the lean, and I found that it worked. The game detects it as a legitimate shot and the enemy is helpless. I could use this to chase them out of perfectly acceptable cover and into the reaction shot of the other soldier, taking them out in one turn. Weird stuff.

BAKED IN

Anyway, we’re a couple months off from Every Day We Fight’s Early Access launch, so there’s time to address weird quirks. The foundation that the preview shows off is interesting enough, however. As I said, the real-time aiming may seem like it wouldn’t work, but it does in most situations. And the real-time exploration of the game world is an interesting twist, even if it seems like you’ll mostly be looking for crafting materials. Could be interesting.

If there’s one problem baked into Every Day We Fight, it’s the fact that environments aren’t destructible. This isn’t just because it was really cool to go into a location in XCOM and leave it looking like unassembled Ikea furniture. It’s because it has a major effect on how dynamic the gameplay is. For example, if the enemies could actually destroy the walls or the floors of the balcony, things would have gone a lot differently.

I’m guessing that this is because you may have to explore the environment after a battle to accomplish an objective, and if you blow up the wrong floor, it won’t be there. I remember a moment in Silent Storm where I blew up the stairs in a building and had to get to the second floor to finish a mission. However, I solved that by shooting a hole in the floor – with bullets – and climbing through. It took a while, but it worked. So, what I’m saying is Silent Storm is awesome. Also, that there are clever ways around the problem, or even creative ways to harness it.

Overall, I enjoyed Every Day We Fight, and I’m interested to see where it goes. However, at this early stage, it needs work. I mean, obviously. That’s why it isn’t out already. And most of the problems I ran into can probably be fixed. There’s promise here, but some adjustments are needed to make it a real thrill.

Every Day We Fight is slated to launch into early access on July 10, 2025.

This preview opportunity was provided by the publisher.