Yes, I know that this game is all about how war is bad and all that, and I know that the story is its most prominent feature, and I know that it's all about the fact that you had a choice to play the game or not, and only bad people play it, and so on...
But I'm here judging the game as a game, and yeah, it's actually pretty annoying. Enemies drain your health if you pop your head out behind cover just so you can try and find them, they keep blending into the background making them hard to find even with the reticle, and it's just still another FPS game that's only unique gameplay feature is the sand that only occasionally pops in to kill enemies. Captain Walker keeps bouncing off walls I try to hide behind like a bouncy pinball on Mars. It's just not a fun game, meaning it solely relies on its story. Sure this worked for some people, but not for me.
If you really want a game that tells you that you don't have to follow the game's traditional genre structure, Undertale is a much better example. It actually gives you a choice to actually fight or not, making the fact that you DO go down the path of killing everyone more impactful. If you want examples of how war is hell, Saving Private Ryan told that story and it's been told over and over again. For video games, the Far Cry series has that as an overarching theme. Halo from 3 onward focuses on this aspect; hell, fucking Conker took itself seriously enough in the It's War chapter to give a much more deep and impactful conversation about war in half a minute than this game did in 4 hours.
The point being is that if this is your first foray into the war is hell genre then I could see you being impressed...or if you're Yahtzee and are tired of COD games and were impressed by a game doing something different with the story even if the gameplay is still the same. However, there are much better shooters to play, much better stories about the horrors of war, and much better games that combined the both, that I see no merit to this game existing, save for an entertaining DJ letting it have a full star instead of half of one. The fact that the game seems to think that just because I'm playing a game about war means that I'm just as responsible as the main character and that I'm a bad person for not putting the controller down is stupid. Sure, games do break the fourth wall before, but the fact that the game tries to say that it's both a game but I'm still a bad person for playing it despite the fact that it forces me to do these terrible choices and then shame me for doing so is the final nail in the coffin for me taking this game seriously.
Feel like a game designer yet?
But I'm here judging the game as a game, and yeah, it's actually pretty annoying. Enemies drain your health if you pop your head out behind cover just so you can try and find them, they keep blending into the background making them hard to find even with the reticle, and it's just still another FPS game that's only unique gameplay feature is the sand that only occasionally pops in to kill enemies. Captain Walker keeps bouncing off walls I try to hide behind like a bouncy pinball on Mars. It's just not a fun game, meaning it solely relies on its story. Sure this worked for some people, but not for me.
If you really want a game that tells you that you don't have to follow the game's traditional genre structure, Undertale is a much better example. It actually gives you a choice to actually fight or not, making the fact that you DO go down the path of killing everyone more impactful. If you want examples of how war is hell, Saving Private Ryan told that story and it's been told over and over again. For video games, the Far Cry series has that as an overarching theme. Halo from 3 onward focuses on this aspect; hell, fucking Conker took itself seriously enough in the It's War chapter to give a much more deep and impactful conversation about war in half a minute than this game did in 4 hours.
The point being is that if this is your first foray into the war is hell genre then I could see you being impressed...or if you're Yahtzee and are tired of COD games and were impressed by a game doing something different with the story even if the gameplay is still the same. However, there are much better shooters to play, much better stories about the horrors of war, and much better games that combined the both, that I see no merit to this game existing, save for an entertaining DJ letting it have a full star instead of half of one. The fact that the game seems to think that just because I'm playing a game about war means that I'm just as responsible as the main character and that I'm a bad person for not putting the controller down is stupid. Sure, games do break the fourth wall before, but the fact that the game tries to say that it's both a game but I'm still a bad person for playing it despite the fact that it forces me to do these terrible choices and then shame me for doing so is the final nail in the coffin for me taking this game seriously.
Feel like a game designer yet?