Playing war via video games is fun. There's huge explosions, lots of gunfights, and ultimately the player emerges victorious. But real war has serious consequences which go beyond just those in combat. For the civilians caught in a warzone, the fight is for survival.
1. Gameplay
There’s a fine line between a game that has a message and a message delivered through a game. No, actually, scratch that, there’s a very obvious line with plenty of signage. A game with a message focuses on making an interesting, entertaining experience first and using that to deliver the message. A message with gaming elements focuses entirely on the message first at the detriment of entertainment and mechanics. This War of Mine is one of the latter experiences. While certain games can get away with this, mostly via simplicity and a relatively easy experience, This War of Mine’s message requires the game to be brutally tough.
For example, the player can only send out one person per night to scavenge for items. This is extremely frustrating, especially when I have characters that are sitting around idle while one person does all of the heavy lifting. Most of the game will be spent waiting for night, and the rest of it will be spent scrounging through buildings looking for things to survive the next day. Survival games are interesting when the player has a clearly defined task in front of him, when the player must survive on his wits and knowledge of his characters’ limits in order to keep going. Survival games are boring when the player has to stand around and let fate take its course.
This War of Mine bluntly beats the player over the head with the message “War is tough, especially for civilians.” This is a scavenging, survival game that is purposefully designed to be an extremely difficult experience. Your characters will be put into extremely difficult situations and are very likely to end up dead. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the message is interesting and the scenario has a ton of potential. The problem is that the game is boring and the mechanics are obviously designed to balance against the player, even in ways that don’t necessarily make sense.
Some 4X elements would have made this game much more interesting. The ability to form partnerships with neighbors, the ability to negotiate for trade, the ability to take territory from enemies and try and establish a stronger position with which to survive. Maybe having the ability to try and form a more established colony, even if it was at the expense of more common raids on the colony, would have been an interesting set of elements that could have given the player something more to do during the day.
Unfortunately, the player will spend most of this game not playing the game. The message of this game is good, but the delivery leaves much to be desired.
This game is technically endless. You can restart any scenario and have different places to explore, different characters to work with, and different opportunities available. The possible scenarios and outcomes are not entirely unlimited, but there are a large number of possible combinations to try out. If that doesn’t seem enticing, the player can create a custom game with any of the games characters, or even create new characters to use.
I played this game for around 10 hours. While I never managed to successfully complete any of the scenarios I attempted, I felt like I got the point.
This game wasn’t as much frustrating as it was boring. It’s almost designed to make the player fail. But because this seemed to be the overall message, I never felt like the mechanics of the game prevented me from accomplishing my goal. My goal was to survive as long as humanly possible, not to survive the war. I survived as long as I could, so I never really felt frustrated.
However, if someone was actually trying to beat this game, the mechanics would be extremely frustrating. Without a good strategy guide and a key understanding of the different characters and their strengths, the likelihood of survival until the “end game” is almost zero.
2. Parental Notices
Violence is a distinct possibility in this game, although the mechanics of the game heavily discourage any violent encounters. Ammunition and bandages are extremely limited. The player can make melee weapons and armor, but this doesn’t prevent death. In those situations where combat is necessary, the player is heavily outnumbered. While there were numerous opportunities to engage in violence, I tried to avoid these whenever possible.
That isn’t to say that violence will never happen. When it does, hits from all weapons will result in a small amount of blood that disappears quickly.
Like I said, though, one of the main objectives is to avoid taking unnecessary risks. Risks of any sort can, and often will, result in injury or death to characters. So violence is one of those things I tried to avoid at all times.
There is a brothel in this game. The description of this brothel area mentions how women will do anything to feed their children. The player can see neutral characters coming in and out of this brothel. However, none of the controllable characters can hire the prostitutes’ services.
Substance use plays a minor role in this game, but out of the top four factors this is the most prominent. The player can find and, with the right ingredients, make cigarettes. These cigarettes are used primarily for trade, although occasionally certain characters will smoke them. These characters are almost always addicted to tobacco.
Characters can be addicted to other, more minor substances as well (i.e. coffee). The player can also find and make cigarettes out of other herbs, although these herbs are never specified and they have no obvious effects on the character that consumes them.
3. Other Factors
Gambling is not a factor in this game.
There are no modding tools for this game.
There is a church in the game that can house a small colony of faithful religious followers. The group is led by a priest that is willing to trade with the player. This is the only obvious form of religion in the game.
Anti-law is not a factor in this game.
There are no multiplayer modes for this game.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
Extreme sports are not a factor in this game.
Prostitution As I mentioned before, there is a brothel in this game. The player has the opportunity to free the women within the brothel if he kills the thugs who own the place.
1 Comment
Declan
9/2/2015 09:21:19 pm
Next to the house, there is some writing that says, F**k the war
Reply
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