This War of Mine Reviews

This War of Mine is ranked in the 95th percentile of games scored on OpenCritic.
7.2 / 10.0
Nov 28, 2018

This War of Mine is setting up an unique setting and does this very well. Unfortunately sometimes the game feels a bit repetitive.

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8.5 / 10.0
Nov 28, 2018

This War of Mine encompasses most of the difficulties you’d expect from the survival genre and throws on a pretty grim and depressing layer of reality to boot. The tests here aren’t just of your ability to figure out what the best crafting paths or things to prioritize in gathering may be but also of your ability to manage very human problems as well. There will be many ways the game can frustrate you as you try to figure out how to survive in this bleak situation but it’s the glimmers of hope, small successes, and human stories in this horrible situation that also make it memorable.

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Geeks Under Grace
Cooper D Barham
6.7 / 10.0
Feb 14, 2015

This War of Mine is a fantastic jolt of dark, indie magic.

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95 / 100
Nov 14, 2014

This War of Mine creates a new panorama and provides us of a whole new scope from which we can see the true face of horror, the darkest side of humankind and the bravest color of human spirit.

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Digiato
Shayan Karami
Top Critic
89 / 100
Feb 20, 2018

This War of Mine is a wonderful experience which drowns us in its realistic urban war and tells us its tragic story, one that doesn't involve happy endings.

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8 / 10.0
Nov 26, 2018

As you begin to learn more about the systems with each passing day, it's easy not to notice real-world minutes turn into hours. I found myself restarting a campaign quite often after discovering a new strategy and my enjoyment increased each time. This is definitely one of those games that if you play late at night, you might just find yourself trading in some sleep to get through just one more day.

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81 / 100
Nov 23, 2014

This War of Mine manages to convey an important message very well. By turning the player into an active participant in the cutthroat rationale of life as an ordinary person attempting to survive a warzone, it encourages a level of empathy only possible through interaction. Instead of simply hearing the stories of people who suffer unimaginable hardship as civilians during war, the audience is asked to inhabit these narratives. When our choices became their choices—as completely awful as they may be—we can better understand the ground-level tragedies taking place across the globe at this moment. 11 bit Studios' greatest success with This War of Mine, it turns out, is in creating a videogame that is profoundly unpleasant to experience.

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9.6 / 10.0
Dec 11, 2014

This War of Mine is a fun, uniquely stylish and well-written game that gives players a fresh take on an old setting and asks them to try and survive.

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8.7 / 10.0
Jan 9, 2015

Real-life problems and real-life challenges. Nobody's gonna hold your hand. You have to fight for yourself and to protect the ones you care about. This War of Mine is a brave endeavor. We see wonders done with this game in a potential sequel; one that will hopefully get a bigger budget, so we can see the genre evolve even more.

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7 / 10
Nov 19, 2014

The decisions that you make and the situations that you are put in provide a pretty eye-opening experience, but the effect wears off. This War of Mine might not be one of the best games of the century, but is definitely one of the strongest games to ever be released on a mobile platform.

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Jan 9, 2015

A deeply atmospheric, emotionally compelling game that manages to treat war as a serious topic and examines the hard choices made by those caught in the middle of conflict. You might not particularly enjoy your time with This War Of Mine, but it's definitely a game you ought to play, being one of the finest critiques of war that this medium has to offer.

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9 / 10.0
Nov 18, 2014

This War of Mine is challenging from both a gameplay point of view and a philosophical one because it asks gamers to survive and then confronts them with the compromises and outright betrayals of their principles required to reach that goal.

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Cubed3
Top Critic
10 / 10
Nov 14, 2014

This War of Mine is arguably one of the most powerful games ever created at conveying the troubling reality of war in an emotional and thought-provoking way. That it does these, not through big explosions and fancy textures, is all the more impressive. These are real stories; this is a game that takes risks. There are no punches pulled in a world where everyone suffers, including children, and are shown as casualties, something other games have in the past shied away from. However, this is not just some experience to make a point. This is a damn fun game to play, it is incredibly hard to put down due to its incredibly tight mechanics, which all blend together to create something really special. Quite simply, buy This War of Mine.

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Jan 21, 2015

'This War of Mine' is one of the best PC releases I've played from 2014. It is not empowering like other games. It's very difficult, and the first couple of playthroughs especially can be frustrating. It's also poignant and lets players tell their own stories without a heavy script or distracting voice acting. It might make you sad, but it's worth experiencing.

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76 / 100
Feb 23, 2015

This War of Mine successfully blends exploration, stealth, crafting and survivor management in a bleak setting. As most games in the genre however, the gameplay becomes mundane after you've established a winning formula.

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9 / 10
Jul 23, 2015

Every now and again we like losing because then when we win it's the sweetest victory, though with This War of Mine it probably wouldn't feel like a victory at all

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GameSkinny
Zack Thompson
Top Critic
Jan 28, 2016

Deep Silver and 11 Bit Studios gives you a dark, unsettling look into the Horrors of War.

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9.5 / 10.0
Nov 26, 2014

This War of Mine's mechanics are so well polished that you will find yourself playing into the early hours of the morning continually thinking "just one more night", "just one more improvement". Everything from the atmosphere to the characters to the gameplay is presented in a unique and fantastic way.

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Nov 30, 2014

Where Spec Ops: The Line made me question being The Good Guy, this game made me question just how far off the reservation I was willing to go to preserve life.

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8 / 10.0
Dec 14, 2014

Of course, a great deal of impressive work went into the stylised visual of This War of Mine that might not have gone into something destined for a school computer or a museum plaque. Its pencil-shaded graphics touchingly evoke political cartoons and the dreary, dark colour palate of so much war art to sap life and hope from your course of events. Generally in games, the wonderful efforts put into visuals are to add to your enjoyment, but This War of Mine is instead making use of the medium of art to help put its message across - simultaneously establishing a valid place of its own within. This War of Mine blurs the boundaries of artistic and educational exhibition and in doing so demonstrates, significantly, how effortlessly the medium of videogames can lend itself to much more than entertainment, but if you're looking for fun, you've come to the wrong place. The message here is how fragile humanity can be when the comforts of modern society disappear and a question: Do 'good' and 'bad' choices exist, or just survival of the most ruthless? It's hard to score This War of Mine as a game, because you can't win it. You can survive with enough selfish tact. You can also be more community spirited at your own expense, but then if you die will the community fail without you around anyway? This is a poignant and reflective experience, thought through with meticulous depth. The gameplay is very simple, and that's probably deliberate too - the amount of thrill you get playing it will depend on what kind of beast you are.

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