RUNNING WITH RIFLES is a one-of-a-kind top-down tactical shooter that stands the test of time thanks to its inherent replayability and dedicated community. With a sequel around the corner, Osumia Games has kept active in extending the life of its first game with multiple DLCs that add new ways to play via new factions, eras, weapons, vehicles, and set pieces. However, you don't need the DLCs to enjoy the base game, as the 3 factions present in the base game offer enough replayability to warrant multiple playthroughs of the games initial campaign. Even outside of the main campaign, the community stays active on official PVE servers where players can team up as one faction to take down a rival AI faction. There are also PVP servers, but these don't seem nearly as popular. Gameplay and Replayability: You are just another soldier in the war. When you die, you spawn as a new soldier with a new identity. Between lives, you maintain XP, which determines your rank, from private, to sergeant, to general, and everything in between. While you spawn as a new soldier, that new soldier maintains the same rank as the previous soldier, guaranteeing permanent progression through dozens of promotions spread across hundreds of different soldiers. As you promote, you gain access to new radio commands, such as calling in an artillery strike, requesting a tank to be dropped off, or demanding reinforcements through an airborne squad parachuting in. You are also in charge of a small group of soldiers with limited command controls; you can choose for your squad to follow you, stay at a position, or push a position. These squad members will accompany you into a vehicle, taking up whichever seats you're not in. You can drive a tank and command a soldier to shoot at a target, or you can be in the gunners seat, commanding the driver to drive to a select location. You can also tell your squad to leave the vehicle, or stay in the vehicle while you run out on foot. While simple, these commands are effective enough to apply simple tactics and switch up methods of engagement. Along with the line up of available equipment, from RPGs to C4s to Artillery placements, you have a lot of options on how you want to equip our soldier, and how you wish to engage an objective. The game features many playable maps that all exist within one large overworld map which shows the locations of the three factions, all of which are fighting each other over territory, Your goal is to claim all available territory for your faction, while eliminating the two others. Within a playable map, there are many locations you wish to capture, and with the help of your squad, your radio commands, and your equipment, you can choose where and how you want to engage. Do you want to follow the commands of your general, and push the frontlines with your main army? Or do you want to take a secondary location with a smaller squad away from the frontlines? Do you want to go in silent, with a sniper and a ghillie suit, placing C4 on an enemy Radio Tower to allow your team to call in radio commands? Or do you want to drive a tank into their base, blowing up said tower with a rocket, and take it over with raw power? There are many ways to engage which is what makes this game so replayable. You can play the same map in so many different ways, that even two different playthroughs on the same map will provide different experiences. It's what has kept me coming back to this game so many times after all these years. There isn't another game like it! Audio and Visuals: This game has a pleasant cartoon visual that accompanies its lighthearted and oftentimes goofy tone that exists with a lot of the soldiers' in-game banter. You definitely aren't meant to take the game too seriously, and what you see certainly respects that approach. As the game restricts you to a top-down perspective, it does not allow you to rotate the camera. North is always at the top of your screen, South is at the bottom, and so on. Therefore, the world is built with this perspective in mind. You will always see the south side of a building, with the north side of the building being opaque, see through enough for you to get a visual on the other side. You will see enemies and objects through walls, as you would not be able to without an option to rotate the camera. While this works, there are times when it is a bit annoying to navigate. Sometimes it can be a problem trying to aim when your playable soldier is trying to decide whether he wants to shoot at the guy behind the wall, or the top of the building that soldier is hiding behind. While not often, it has happened enough to frustrate me, and I would much rather have a more open camera with an option to rotate. This would be my wish for the next game, a rotating camera with fully drawn buildings and scenes. Onto the audio, the audio for this game is pretty good. No two guns sound the same, you grow accustomed to the sound of certain guns to the point where you might think, "Oh sh*t" when a certain sound and pattern is being fired from an enemy soldier somewhere off screen. My only true complaint is with the game's one and only song that plays on repeat whenever you launch the game, move through the menus, or load into a game. It's good, catches the game's tone very well, but once you hear it for the hundredth time you just have to turn the music off. It doesn't need to play every time you open the pause menu. I hear it in my head as I'm writing this, as I've sunk a couple hundred hours into this game. Props to whoever wrote and produced it, as it is objectively a great song for the tone of this game, but I've just heard it way too much. And I will continue to hear it for the rest of my life.

May 4, 2026