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Hitler has an army, but we have superpowers, and you don’t need three guesses to know how that goes. Dead Nazis are the appetizer, main course, and dessert, but Sumerian Six has a refined palate. This isometric stealth strategy game is a Reich-bashing gourmand. The humor of Freedom Force, the brutality of XCOM, and the meticulous murder-planning of Hitman are here. In the end, however, Sumerian Six is its own game, a clockwork meat grinder that oozes style the way Kammler’s forces ooze blood.
Sumerian Six Review
In the wake of WWI, British engineer Alistair Sterling gathered a group of scientists. Together, the Enigma Squad studied a strange and powerful material named Geiststoff. Cut to the Nazis (led by former Squad member and Hitler fanboy Hans Kammler) weaponizing Geiststoff before the next generation of the Enigma Squad pushes back. Sumerian Six is an isometric stealth game focused on coordinated actions and juicy, tech-driven abilities. It can be a formidable experience, but the effort of pushing through is always worth it.
Story: Enigmas and Ancient History
Kammler promises Hitler that Geiststoff is the key to producing a Wunderwaffe, a wonder weapon capable of winning the war for Germany. Hitler rewards Kammler with his own unit, the SS-Geistesstärke, to assist the Nazi researcher in his production of Geiststoff-powered technologies (and keep the new Enigma Squad from righteously murdering him). Sumerian Six‘s take on Nazis follows that of Hellboy, the MCU, and most other popular fiction. It’s cheeky and funny but treats serious matters well, with good results.
The star of the show is Enigma Squad itself. Alistair’s adoptive son Sid, British archeologist (and Alistair’s daughter) Isabella, and the rest of the squad are all colorful spins on well-worn character tropes such as the unstable chemist and animalistic tank. The extreme differences in their backstories and abilities help separate them on and off the battlefield, and their bantering and bickering sell the pressure their mission is putting them under. Though the plot of Sumerian Six never wowed me, it remained fun and engaging throughout.
Gameplay: The Art of Exploding Nazis
If you boil Sumerian Six down, it’s about using special abilities to navigate enemy-packed levels and accomplish your objectives. That might mean stealing a plane, repossessing stolen research, or offing every SS soldier around a villa. Each of the six playable characters has an array of potent abilities, and most of the fun comes from combining them. Even simple actions have great complexity. Sid has a pistol, but bullets are few, shots are loud, and shooting draws you out of cover, exposing you to every watchful eye.
You could throw a Flash Bomb to blind the guard, then slip in close and cut his throat. Or use Hitchhike to possess his body and sneak deeper into enemy territory. Use Isabella’s Luring Lights to draw the guard in or Swap Places to teleport to one another’s former spots, leaving the guard vulnerable to knifing. If Rosa’s with you, use a cloud of Disperse gas to force the guard from his post or chuck a Stunning Link over the wall to disable him.
Consider Rosa’s Human Bomb. Stick it to a Nazi and wait. When said Nazi stops to chat up an Officer, detonate. Shoot a soldier and then plant a bomb on the corpse. When the other Nazis arrive to investigate, send them to hell. I’m pretty sure trapping bodies to kill first responders is a war crime, but Sumerian Six takes place before the signing of the Geneva Convention (and is fictional), so it’s probably fine. Between Alistair’s Launch Pad, Siegfried’s Zone of Invisibility, and…everything werebear Wojtek Galica, you have ridiculous combo potential.
The maps are arguably too big for this kind of stealth game. You will be thankful for the frequent autosaves. Early attempts at levels might take an hour or more as you learn layouts and enemy positions. Through snow-buried castles and scenic, oceanside towns, here are multiple paths to your objective. Side objectives, health, ammo, and XP pickups also tempt you away from your goal. Is it worth taking on three more guards for the chance to level up one of your characters’ abilities?
Sumerian Six feels much like Hitman: World of Assassination and Baldur’s Gate 3. You have a wealth of options, and you’ll need all of them. Sid and the team can one-shot most enemies, but they aren’t bullet sponges themselves. Even on Easy mode, the Enigma Squad can die in seconds. I’d consider myself a 7/10 video game tactician, and I struggled. To be fair, much of the initial struggle was a failure to meet Sumerian Six where it’s at. If you aren’t using cover and synchronizing your abilities, you will die. Often.
With six heroes, a 17-20 hour campaign, and plenty of abilities and levels, you might expect the devs to drop the ball on polish. They didn’t. The tutorial? Solid. Vision cones, cover, and interactable objects? Highlighted in clear but unobtrusive ways. Though the difficulty kicks off early, convenient autosaves make an otherwise rough introduction adequately forgiving. At first, you’ll be just scraping by. Soon, however, you’ll be earning end-of-level bonuses for beating the stage under a certain time or without raising alarms.
Graphics & Audio: War’s Red Orchestra
Snow blankets the castle, but the SS soldier and Officer are warm within its walls, chatting in quiet German. They’re guarding the research in Kammler’s study, outside which Isabella and Sid hide, waiting. A lure would draw the soldier away, but Officers can’t be baited. The Nazi’s head turns. Sid sheds his skin and leaps like a ghost into the soldier as Isabella triggers her Cloaking Device and runs behind the Officer. With the timing of synchronized divers, Isabella drops her cloak, Sid erupts from the soldier’s back, and they cut two Nazi throats before anyone can even think of the alarm.
Sumerian Six benefits from excellent art direction. Whether you zoom out and look at the pleasing placement of buildings and arrangement of paths or zoom in to inspect the scuffed floor tiles and polished buttons, the game triumphs. There’s nothing but juicy Game Feel here. The lumbering footsteps of the chaingun-wielding Panzerwolf? The agitated voices of soldiers after discovering their comrade’s corpse? Sumerian Six impresses with its consistency and quality. That said, I experienced a few instances of distorted audio, though they were rare.
The music alternates between soothing your nerves in quiet moments and electrifying every neck follicle in combat. Sumerian Six features a fantastic time-stop feature, allowing you to synchronize your next orders or take a breather after a surprise alarm. The audio flow, however, never gets disrupted. Though it’s no Inglourious Basterds, the violence in Sumerian Six feels visceral and gross, and that’s thanks to excellent SFX. The wet sounds of metal meeting meat keep the stakes at the forefront of your mind. A Human Bomb turns a soldier into blood and green goo, and then it’s on to the next one.
Admittedly, the isometric perspective can have a distancing effect, particularly in cutscenes. Still, I rarely felt separated from the drama. Whether it’s achieved through shaders or some magic combo of modeling, lighting, and textures, Sumerian Six strikes a fine balance between realism and comic book style. Levels are carefully decorated assassination playgrounds. Even if (like me) you bumble your way through encounters with all the grace and dignity of the Pink Panther, it’s always a treat to stomp through a field of Nazis.
Conclusion: Tactical Superiority
I experienced few glitches and no crashes. Sumerian Six rewards patience and perception. The sooner you understand patrol patterns, vision cones, and ability interactions, the easier this difficult game becomes. Mastering teleportation and launch pads in one playthrough, then bullets and acid in another, it begs to be replayed. Eat your heart out, Wolfenstein. If you’re a tactics fan with the patience to stomach a modest learning curve, Sumerian Six might be the best strategy game you play on PC this year.
Review copy provided by Publisher.
Sumerian Six (PC Reviewed)
Sumerian Six offers juicy tactical gameplay and a ton of polish, suffering somewhat from high difficulty and large levels.
Pros
- Riveting tactical engagements
- Ability combos add variety and replayability
- Tons of polish
Cons
- Levels are a bit too large
- Difficulty needs tuning
