District 187 Review

District 187 is a new first person shooter and the latest to pit criminals/terrorists versus the SWAT team. By this point, everybody knows what to expect from these games. Quick paced, arcade action with ok graphics, a few less-than-friendly community members and gameplay that hardly strays from a given foundation – the sort of thing we played in WolfTeam and the sort of thing we expect to play in District 187. Generic is the name of the game and the question has to be this: is that a bad thing? Can District 187 please despite not being massively innovative? We took a look to find out.

District 187 Gameplay Video - Review

Looking for a Good Time –

"District 187 is fun, of course it is."

So was WolfTeam and all those other free-to-play shooters that look and play exactly like District 187. They might not be the most innovative games in the world, but they are good fun, and when you get into a good game you may as well be playing some AAA shooter for the amount of entertainment, tension and skill on display.

WolfTeam: Without the Wolves – The big thing I noticed when playing WolfTeam – as I’m sure many of you will remember – is that nobody actually liked playing as the wolves. There were hundreds of games and only a few of them would allow you to use the game’s biggest gimmick. Well District 187, I would say, is a much better standard shooter than WolfTeam was and you don’t have to avoid the gimmick, so jumping ship would make an awful lot of sense.

Looks Generic – It took me far too long to find out how to change the graphical settings (you need to get into a server and click the settings menu, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else from where to edit your preferences) and after maxing everything out, the game still didn’t look any better.

It’s generic – not bad – in its level design and in its actual graphical output and some won’t see the point in playing this when something like Blacklight is on the market.

Decisions, Decisions – I know it’s early days for District 187 and I may have been expecting too much, but I’ve been a little bit disappointed by how little there is on display. There are only a handful of maps, a few different game modes (most of which nobody seems to be playing) and not much else. It’s not a big problem – the game’s in its infancy and you’re bound to want to learn what’s available to you before moving on – but it’s not like the maps are stupidly amazing or anything and it probably wouldn’t have taken long to add a few more.

The Store – As of writing this review, the real-money store isn’t up and running as of yet and you can only purchase items with in-game currency. It’s still damn confusing, with plenty on offer and not many ways of comparing them to what you’ve already got. It’s not unusual to see people asking about which guns are the best to get during a match and I can promise you that as the game ages, everybody will end up using exactly the same sort of weapon. I don’t have any confidence in the balance of those available.

REPORTED – Whether it’s true or not, there are already rumblings of hacking and cheating in District 187 and I must say, from my own experience, there are times when somebody seems unnaturally good at this game. When your team is almost universally sporting a massively negative K/D (1/9, some of them) and you’re the only play with positive K/D (with 22/1) you’re either very good or very cheaty. At best, this is just a way of people justifying their high deaths, at worst this game has already lost the myriad of hackers and attackers that ruin other games.

Community – This kind of moves on from the last one. The community in this game sucks, partly because everybody is accusing everyone else of hacking. It’s one of those odd things to watch, actually – seeing a whole team start attacking an individual on the opposite team as being a hacker because he pulled off a lucky few shots (especially if he had negative K/D to start with) – and I’d hate to be a part of the moderation team considering how often I see the phrase “reported.”

Conclusion: District 187 Review

"District 187 isn’t by any means a bad game, it’s just very much a game you’ve played before. "

You might not have seen these maps or these exact guns, but there’s something very déjà vu about the whole thing. It’s still worth looking into if you’re after a new shooter, but personally I’d rather play something that seems a little bit shinier – Blacklight Retribution for instance. If you’ve got limited computing power and are desperate for something new, District 187 will be for you.

Similar Games

WolfTeam, Blacklight Retribution, Gunz