This War of Mine Reviews
This War of Mine makes the most of its clean, attractive graphics, its moody ambient soundtrack, and the intense, emotional nature of its gameplay. You'll care about your refugees, and you'll want to work hard to keep them healthy, fed, alive, and well. Unfortunately, This War of Mine doesn't make it easy on you. Even when you keep your people alive, you're left with the feeling that you've only marginally improved their existence. If the typical war-based video game is the big blockbuster movie, with tons of special effects and rockets flying overhead as brave well-muscled soldiers stand and give speeches, this game is the indie drama about the consequences of war. It's gripping, a beautiful depiction of an ugly time, and, fittingly, depressing as hell.
While the human element of characters isn't as fleshed out as it could've been, This War of Mine is an interesting take on the war genre.
This War of Mine eats away at your sanguine disposition, and yet you are compelled and determined to keep trying to survive. Each fresh start provides new characters, new locations to scavenge, and new obstacles to overcome. As bleak as the world is portrayed, 11 bit studios has a well polished title that does a masterful job of never letting you feel safe in your home and secure in your belongings. No matter how many hours you invest into bettering your situation, it's a constant struggle to survive in This War of Mine.
This War of Mine creates an oppressively bleak landscape, but with just enough humanity shining through that you want to keep digging to find and hold onto that source of light. That earnest human touch keeps This War of Mine compelling even when you mess up and the rubble all comes tumbling down around you, leaving you just enough hope for the next attempt that you'll dive back in and endure it all again.
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.
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.
This War of Mine is survival horror game of a very different, very literal kind.
This War of Mine looks at war from a point-of-view rarely explored in video games, that of the civilians who have their lives disrupted by armed conflict.
Whether This War of Mine truly succeeds in saying anything more than 'war is hell' I don't know. Equally, I'm not at all sure it needs to. We play a lot of wars, and it is surely only fair to sometimes be reminded that war is not really about a muscle-bound American man saving the day. It makes its point very well, in that it is harrowing, it is careful, and its increasingly deadly Groundhog day approach supports rather than disrupts the atmosphere of extreme strife. It's without doubt effective and impressive at what it does.
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.
A stark statement about war delivered through deftly designed stealth survival and resource management. Important, but unrelentingly cruel.
The goal of This War of Mine was to showcase what life is actually like for the people left behind while the battle rages on, and it provides a marvelous representation of that. The choices are difficult, it's not easy to help everyone, and sometimes you have to do awful things just to stay alive. The power of video games continues to amaze, and This War of Mine is a shining example of the endless learning possibilities games have in store.
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.
It's hard to recommend a game that makes you feel disgusted or upset, but I'm doing it anyway. This War of Mine is great, it just asks a lot from its players.
Regardless of its shortcomings, This War of Mine is a hugely powerful game. Your reaction to those stark visuals and battles of conscience will dictate what you take away from it, but make no mistake, this is a grim, grim experience, and I'd hesitate to state that any of its content is "enjoyable" in a traditional fashion.
This War of Mine is one of the most emotionally investing games I've played in years, and it doesn't need a complex set of gameplay systems to be what it is… a great game, and a deep piece of art on the horrors of war. A depiction of things so cruel and of life so horrible that you couldn't imagine these things actually happening, even if you know they do.
This War of Mine is an eye-opening experience that offers a refreshing, albeit bleak take on war. It's so easy to glorify war these days that you forget about those who are really impacted by it -- This War of Mine is a much-needed reminder of that.
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.
This War of Mine is a gripping survival sim, and a great study of survival during wartime and civil collapse.