For this review of Foxhole, I will be as impartial and unbiased to the best of my abilities. 

In the current state of the gaming industry, you can expect to see thousands of games revolving around a single genre and possibly even the same theme. In the MMORPG business, there are more than a few thousand games and a hundred or more hit titles that are popular within that sphere of gaming. Titles such as World of Warcraft, Runescape, and Final Fantasy XIV have set a precedent for what a massively-multiplayer online roleplaying should be. 

But that precedent is only in line with the theme of a medieval fantasy world. In truth, there are few massively-multiplayer war games set in the contemporary era that truly capture the immersion sought by developers since the inception of modern video games quite like this one!

About Foxhole

Enter Foxhole. Foxhole is a massively multiplayer game that takes inspiration from popular MMORPG games of the past and puts a unique twist into how it is played. For the uninitiated, Foxhole is an immersive massively-multiplayer sandbox roleplaying game that puts the player into a persistent world war, where they’ll play alongside thousands of other players in a constant war between two sides or factions. 

All across the world, and in real-time, thousands of players from different countries and backgrounds are thrown into a global theater played from a top-down perspective that can last anywhere from a few weeks to a month.

Currently, the longest war in Foxhole gaming history lasted for over 42 days which is about a month and then some. By far the most unique aspect of Foxhole is the depths of immersion the developers have put into the game in order to fully immerse the player into the war effort. Every gun, bullet, vehicle, and drop of fuel in the game was crafted by a real person behind the scenes, gathering raw materials and transporting it to distant refineries and factories to turn it into equipment for soldiers in the frontline to use.

Every aspect of the game from the harvesting of raw materials on scrap fields to the making of supplies in factories and vehicle depots, to the transporting of these supplies to the frontline, and to their use by soldiers against the enemy faction is all managed by the player base in real-time. Every individual soldier is a player who contributes to the war effort through logistics, base building, reconnaissance, combat, and more. 

As a single soldier, you are but a tiny cog in the machine that is the war industry of your faction. But every contribution counts and holds weight in the war effort. The scale of the game and the level of autonomy given to the player from the start can be quite overwhelming initially, but throughout the game’s development and history it has garnered a diehard loyal fanbase of players who are dedicated to the game. 

A lovely stroll across the beach with the boys... and a few tonnes of armored support.

Foxhole Story

Set in a fictional alternate universe wherein the player is put in an era of Foxhole known as the Burnout Wars, a period of time after a distant series of Great Wars occurred that exhausted the resources and manpower between the factions of the Colonials of the Mesean Republic, and the Wardens of the Caoivish Empire, leading to a less wide-scale but just as gruelling theater. What is left is a war between the nations that is “frozen in time”, providing an opportune environment for the constant wars that Foxhole is centered around. 

A persistent warfare multiplayer game, the wars in Foxhole can only progress through the activity of players fighting and playing in real-time. Only through teamwork and coordination with other members of your faction can victory be assured.

As far as the developers are concerned, the lore and backstory of Foxhole and the sides fighting within are a mere backdrop for the game to immerse the player in. While there is an overarching lore for the war and the factions of the game, it is primarily maintained and kept up to date with each update for immersion and aesthetic purposes.

Foxhole Gameplay

Foxhole is played from the perspective of a soldier, viewed from a top-down view to create an isometric aspect to the gameplay. While you have access to controls that can zoom the camera in to provide a more cinematic coverage of the game, you’ll almost exclusively be fighting and playing the game from a top-down camera angle.

Massively Multiplayer Warfare
Foxhole prides itself on the sheer scale of its PvP battles, consisting of hundreds of players on each side fighting for territory on a single region, spread out across dozens of other regions interlinked closely with one another by logistical lines maintained by individual soldiers. Single battles can last multiple hours and days, as each side takes territory, fortifies it, then defends it against the other side. It is expected that while you can spend your entire evening playing on a single front and take a key point on the map prior to logging off for the night, you can just as easily expect to wake up the next day to have lost that position and then some more or vice versa.

The persistent warfare aspect of the game ensures that the wars of Foxhole continue even in your absence, with battles being won and lost every passing hour. Foxhole also possesses a fully dynamic weather system, greatly affecting how battles are fought due to the changing weather conditions. You can expect snow storms that can freeze entire fronts into a standstill as each side struggles to maintain fires to keep themselves warm and their vehicles operational. Rain storms also pose a threat to infantry, as exposure to mud can weigh you down and make it harder to maneuver quickly. 

Logistics and Base Building
Those that tend to gravitate behind the frontlines can enjoy a plethora of systems that allows players to fulfil logistical demands and establish bases all across the map that can be used by other players as a base of operations in the event that the enemy side pushes far enough into the backlines.

Foxhole employs a comprehensive logistics system where every rifle, shell, tank, and drop of fuel is produced and supplied by players in real-time. There is a caveat to the magnitude of in-depth work that comes with doing logistics as a solo player. In my experience, it has been extremely difficult to produce late-game vehicles such as tanks and armored vehicles due to the amount of hours you have to sink in just to prepare the facilities needed to make your desired item.

You’ll also have to contend with better coordinated groups of players that will often hog resource points on the map making it near impossible to get started in the first place unless the groups are willing to share. At the moment, the current state of logistics in the game requires a coordinated group of players to efficiently conduct operations, or as a solo player sinking many hours just to maintain the same rate of progress as players in regiments.

Nothing like a good, sizzling barbeque late in the night!

Foxhole Combat

With a ton of different weapons, artillery pieces, ground vehicles, tanks, and ships, you can play Foxhole for hours on end and still only barely scratch the surface of what it has to offer. In the same manner as another popular MMORPG game, Planetside 2, you can create vehicles with the appropriate amount of resources on hand and choose your loadout depending on what you intend to achieve as an individual soldier or as a crew of a tank or armored vehicle. As an individual soldier, you have access to weapons and technology exclusively to your faction that the other faction cannot produce, and vice versa.

The two factions tend towards different philosophies in their available weaponry. For example, the Wardens typically adopt a defensive and long-ranged mindset to war. Their rifles have longer effective ranges that outperform their Colonial counterparts. Their tanks are more heavily armored and also have longer effective ranges on average, and their ships are designed in the same manner with heavier armor in exchange for speed and less weaponry. 

On the other end of the spectrum, the Colonials boast an impressive and aggressive arsenal that’s based on agility and power. Their rifles and handheld weapons fire faster or perform better up close in exchange for having less range. And their tanks and vehicles have more health or are generally faster, but are more easily disabled due to lacking armor or speed. 

Travelling in the dead of night along a battlefield without any support? Rookie mistake.

Foxhole Mission System

While the game has an overarching mission of “winning the war” and “capturing the most key points” against the enemy, most players would generally agree that you can play the game as you please. 

You can pursue your agenda, whether that’s to help the frontline push further into enemy territory as a footsoldier, by building bases in the backlines to hold back the opposing side, or as a logiman with a truck transporting supplies from the backlines to the front where they are most needed. The game emphasizes the freedom for players to be able to do whatever they want, given they can spare the time and effort to achieve it.

When playing as part of a regiment however, you can expect to be invited to participate in player-made operations and offensives, where dozens of players from the same regiment or other allied regiments coordinate and bring up supplies and vehicles to a staging ground before conducting the intended operations. These player-driven missions can vary wildly; from armored spearheads that aim to cut through an enemy front, to a prolonged artillery siege to break an enemy’s fortress, to a quick reaction force to stop a potential invasion, to a naval invasion, or to partisan work that aims to disrupt the enemy lines. It all depends on the current resources at hand, and what the players are willing to accomplish within a given timeframe. 

Foxhole Graphics

Built on the R² Engine, a multiplayer game platform that Siege Camp custom-built to be able to put a thousand players onto a dense battlefield in a persistent online world, Foxhole’s graphics are inspired by 20th-century era technology and aesthetics at the time with a stylized twist added to it.

The style that Foxhole is built on is a mixture of realism and aesthetics, combining and balancing it well enough that it casts Foxhole in a world of cartoonish beauty and the morbid realism of war. The textures are high fidelity when set on a high graphics setting, but are also adjustable to maintain the style of the game while reducing load for players with lower-end devices. As for the graphics during battles, the game maintains an exceptional level of realism and beauty both visually and audio-wise. Rifles fire with power behind them, and tank engines growl as their cannons fire in loud thumbs and blasts. Artillery, both the firing and impact of the shells, are exceptionally realistic- from how supermassive shells can create craters on the map, down to how you can hear the shells whistle overhead before they strike the earth around you.

Foxhole Developer

Foxhole was made by Siege Camp, a video game studio located in Toronto, Canada with over 10 years of experience in the gaming industry. In their self-description, they have described themselves as best known for their innovative massively multiplayer game Foxhole

Despite its overall positive rating on Steam, there is a vocal group of players within Foxhole that is concerned with improving the game’s quality in coordination with the developers. Due to the game’s aspect of handling thousands of players playing in real-time in the same world, the game’s engine sometimes experiences delays which can result in bugs and glitches, disrupting players’ experience. That being said, after experiencing the game and putting a thousand hours into it, I have only ever encountered a handful of glitches that truly disrupted my gaming experience.

As a response to these glitches, which often put unsuspecting players under the map or stuck in it, the developers have implemented a mechanic that allows players to teleport themselves back into the world by typing a command word in the chat box and waiting a set time. Major glitches such as entire structures disappearing or regions becoming inaccessible are typically fixed by the developers in a reasonable time.
Siege Camp attempts to nurture a close-knit relationship with the player base of Foxhole. Their developers can be found on rare occasions playing as a normal soldier in the game, more often than not to see the state of play of the game and see what they can improve with player feedback. 

That being said, Siege Camp has also come under fire from the community for failing to address major disruptions in the gameplay and surges of cheaters in the game which makes it frustrating for players to play against. 
In terms of the frequency of updates and new additions to the game, Siege Camp posts dev blogs updating the player base on future additions to the game on their website every 3-5 months on average. The studio developers of Foxhole often create roadmaps informing players of future releases down the road, marked with scheduled milestone dates and the release dates for these updates themselves.

Foxhole Price

Available only on Windows, there has been no news from Siege Camp on the possibility of Foxhole coming to other platforms. After the official release of Foxhole and its exit from early access, the base price of the game has been set at $29.99 with the game sometimes going on sale for 45% off at $10.99 during the holidays or Steam-wide sales. The game offers no micro-transactions or pay-to-win elements of any kind, only charging for the base game. Everything else in the world aside from pre-generated structures can be made and reached by the player through progressing in the game.

Final Verdict

Foxhole is a game created in an act of passion by the developers to make a game that puts the player into an immersive war environment with thousands of other players all at once. While at present, the game might have veered off the path it was intended to take, the game still has a remarkable charm to it that few other games of its genre can replicate to any meaningful extent. That being said, while I can wholly recommend the game to anyone wanting an immersive war game experience or to enjoy the massively multiplayer world– I’d be careful, do your due diligence, and research the game thoroughly and see if you still like it after you learn the challenges that come with the game’s mechanics. 

Out of a scale of 1-10, I’d rate it a solid 8 stars where it is right now in terms of development, features, and gameplay. If nothing else, I’d recommend buying the game when it comes on sale rather than buying it for its base price of $29.99. If you're interested, Foxhole is available on Steam!

Pros:

• You can join battles that can rage on for hours or days without end.
• Can be played casually.
• A mostly nice community.

Cons:

• The logistics part of the game is hard to enjoy as a solo player.
• It's easy to get into, but equally as hard to master.
• Most of the late-game weapons and vehicles are locked behind intense resource grind.

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