Sumerian Six lets you become a werebear and tear Nazis apart, which made it an incredible game even before my preview. Now that I’ve played it, I’m even more enamoured.
In this tactical combat game, you control commandos of the special Enigma Squad, who are powered up by various technologies and semi-magical abilities. One member is a poison expert and can dissolve bodies without a trace, one can possess enemies to track across the battlefield, another can set catapult traps, and then, there’s the aforementioned werebear – his name is Wojtek, and he’s my favourite (mostly because you can send him into groups of soldiers and have him tear them all apart at once, while avoiding alarms).
Wielding the abilities of this crew, you’ll attempt combat, rescue, extract, and destruction missions through a world dominated by evil Nazis. Strangely enough, I would most relate this game to Mario + Rabbids in nature, as each area you come across contains a strategy-based combat puzzle where you’re required to deploy your moves with ample intelligence – although it is in real-time, rather than turn-based.
So far, in the opening hours of the game which comprised my preview, these puzzles have meant analysing soldier behaviour and movement, figuring out how to isolate each one in turn, and then picking them off one by one, using deft planning.
Read: Sumerian Six lets you fry Nazis using science and the occult
The art of a scot-free mission requires time and patience, because even on easier mode, your heroes have limited health – and Nazis are very quick to fire off their guns. If you’re spotted and you don’t have ample cover, you’re pretty much set for death, so it’s best to reload and start over. To that end, Sumerian Six is very well designed, with simple Quick Load options that restart from your latest save in an instant, with no loading.
That encourages a real experimentation in your runs, as you can essentially save scum to figure out the best paths forward. Sure, it’s not the most noble option and there are some players who would prefer to live with the consequences of their actions, but you can really, really mess up missions in Sumerian Six by putting even a foot wrong, so having the option to rethink is very well appreciated.
You’ll also need it when the game gets tougher, as the difficulty ramps up swiftly in its opening chapters. Again, I was playing on the easier mode – I know who I am – and even this was demanding of a quiet, thoughtful approach. In some stages, you’ll need to contend with soldier nazis, bigger Panzerwolfs (taken down in three hits or a bear kill), and a wily alarm.
The alarm becomes a very neat twist for that added challenge, because in some areas you’ll have to remove the alarm before you even think about tackling a Nazi – this alarm will call in a horde of Panzerwolfs that are near-impossible to contend with at once. That amps up the strategic needs of the game, and forces you to get more creative with your choices.
Sumerian Six stages are unpredictable
In twists designed specifically to annoy me, there are also stages where the more powerful characters like scientist Rosa and aforementioned werebear Wojtek can’t be used – there’s vines that are only climbable by a few characters, and some areas where certain characters can’t enter. That occasionally leaves you with a knife, a gun, and a dream – but getting crafty still gives you a way to get through.
Beyond Wojtek and his claws, I’ve so far relied mostly on Rosa to get by, because her abilities are incredibly useful when you’re leaning into stealth over strength. To start with, most of your characters will be fairly low-powered, but Rosa arrives with an incredible array of abilities – her most useful being that her kills immediately dissolve foes.
When I was caught, it was most often because I’d been hauling a body on my shoulders – I was too slow to escape detection, and holding a body means you’re stuck standing up until you drop it. With Rosa, I could sneak in, dissolve a body, escape detection, and then run back into cover easily. She’s a star, and has so far made my journey into Sumerian Six a fantastically strategic one. Even when she’s attaching bombs to roaming soldiers and meanly sending them back to their allies to explode, she’s brilliant.
For now, I can only talk about the opening stanzas of Sumerian Six and my early steps into the game, but regardless of this limitation, I can say I’m very impressed with the game’s combat and tactical elements. While its story has so far been lighter-touch and filled with familiar tropes, it paves the way for strong gameplay – and I’m keen to see how it evolves beyond its core concepts.
There’s plenty of room to grow from here.
Stay tuned for a full review of Sumerian Six closer to release. As confirmed by Artificer and Devolver Digital, the game will now launch for PC on 2 September 2024.
A code for Sumerian Six was provided and played for the purposes of this preview.
