The tactical shooter Nine to Five was surprisingly released on Steam. We have already played it and tell you whether it is worth a look.
Free multiplayer shooters are a dime a dozen. Whether they’re called Valorant, Counter-Strike, Apex Legends or CoD: Warzone: the market is saturated and anyone who wants to land the next hit here has to come up with an exciting new idea – like Splitgate, which combines a relatively ordinary arena shooter with portals and thus became a Steam hit.
The Finnish developers from Redhill Games now want to achieve the same feat with their new tactical shooter Nine to Five, which can now be played for free via Steam. We played a few rounds with the developers during gamescom 2021 and tell you in this article what to expect and whether the download might be worth it.
What to expect in Nine to Five
At first glance, Nine to Five looks like a pretty generic tactical shooter: Before you start, you have to create a loadout. You can choose from 19 different weapons – assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles and pistols. In addition, you choose armour, which determines which talents and gadgets you can equip – there are hand grenades, flashbangs and kick mines, for example. As I said, everything up to this point is pretty standard.
The big special feature of Nine to Five lies elsewhere: in each game, not two, but three teams of three compete against each other in entertaining 15-minute matches. Each game runs over three rounds, each of which offers different tasks. Sometimes you have to defend a zone, be the first team to capture a point or simply leave the map successfully.
The team that wins the third round emerges as the winner of the game and is rewarded with a particularly large amount of in-game money and experience points. The first two rounds are not pointless, however: Whoever triumphs here subsequently receives advantages for the further course of the game – for example, information about the position of the mission objective or a better starting position.
Monetisation
Since Nine to Five is a Free2Play game, it is obvious that there will be an in-game shop. The developers have promised us that no gameplay-relevant items will be sold here. Only cosmetic customisations such as skins for characters and weapons, which do not grant any advantages in the game, will be available for purchase here.
A look at the Early Access version proves the opposite: new weapons can only be bought with in-game money, but these can be bought for real money. So if you open your wallet, you can definitely buy advantages.
Rainbow Six Light
But of course the big question is: how does it even play? After about 60 minutes with the release version, the gameplay can best be described as a kind of “Rainbow Six Light”. The pace is relatively leisurely, tactical action an absolute must – at least that’s what Redhill Games CEO Matias Myllyrinne says, who was previously active at Remedy for 15 years and was significantly involved in classics like Alan Wake and Max Payne.
In our games together, he always comes up with ingenious tactics, which he not only explains in voice chat, but also draws on the minimap. Instead of running the shortest way to the goal, we carefully feel our way along the edge of the map to get into a good starting position. After all, one of the other two teams could appear at any time.
We eventually entrench ourselves in a multi-storey restaurant and secure the entrances with barriers and claymores. The developers take aim at the mission target – a toxic waste container – from the upper floors while we back them up.
The enemies are not long in coming: With a flying drone – which, by the way, every player has in his luggage – they discover us and want to storm our position. Fortunately, we were well prepared for this. The first enemy dies from our kicking mine, while we send the second to the ground with a well-aimed shot from the pump shotgun. We can only scratch the third before he takes flight and is taken out by the third team.
What quickly becomes apparent: The TTK (Time To Kill) is relatively low, about on the level of a Counter-Strike. If you manage to flank your enemy, you are usually sure of a kill – because there are no special talents or movement skills for a quick escape in Nine to Five. The one who is discovered first usually dies.
For whom is the download worthwhile?
Overall, we definitely had a good time in our matches with the developers, but this was also due to the fact that we played together with two full professionals. This made a very tactical approach possible, which of course contributed significantly to the atmosphere and tension.
Our recommendation: If you have two friends and want to try out a new shooter, then give the game a chance. Trying out new approaches in combination with the many available gadgets will certainly be fun for many tactical shooter fans. Provided, of course, you like the slow, perhaps even somewhat static gameplay and don’t want to race across the maps in Call of Duty style.
All other fans of the genre can also risk a look, as the download is free. However, we can’t guarantee that the experience will work as well with random players as it does with a well-rehearsed team. It almost certainly won’t either.
Despite this, last but not least, we have to note that Nine to Five lacks a clear identity: the gunplay works solidly, hits were always reliably registered. The gadgets also fulfil their assigned roles and the drones add another tactical component to the game. Only these are all things we’ve all seen before somehow. Mostly in Rainbow Six Siege. Whether the novel 3vs3vs3 mode is enough of a unique selling point to captivate you in the long term is something you should ideally try out for yourself.
Nine to Five is now available in Early Access on Steam . The download is free, you only need 19.7 GB of storage space.
