Zero Punctuation: Enemy Front & Valiant Hearts: The Great War

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Enemy Front & Valiant Hearts: The Great War

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Enemy Front and Valiant Hearts: The Great War.

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[bobdole1979]

really? you are blaming school shootings on gun control?

 

[Dragonheart57]

A game about WWI? What an interesting twist. Maybe even interesting enough to be worth checking out. I think it even got a recommendation.

really? you are blaming school shootings on gun control?

No, he's saying that because people oppose gun control so violently, we haven't been able to effectively stop them.

 

[AdmiralCheez]

Interesting. I've always wanted to see more of WWI in games. Not sure if I would like the minigame approach, though. I'll have to look into it some more.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Man, Yahtzee has been putting some thought into war as a concept. Long gone are the days of, "Chest-high walls are stupid," replaced with opinions on geopolitics, American gun control, and the nature of 20th century combat. He didn't even insert a photoshopped picture of a bum with an eye in the middle when he said, "But eye digress."

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

"Why do you keep calling it 'World War one?'"

"You'll see... you'll see"

---

Well... I imagine that this thread is going to be a pleasant and not at all incendiary exchange of ideas about US gun policy and foreign policy involving the Middle East...

 

[bobdole1979]

A game about WWI? What an interesting twist. Maybe even interesting enough to be worth checking out. I think it even got a recommendation.

really? you are blaming school shootings on gun control?

No, he's saying that because people oppose gun control so violently, we haven't been able to effectively stop them.

mental illness is the cause of the shootings.

 

[Wolf Hagen]

I defenatly liked Vailant Hearths. Even it's minigamy stile approch to it all.
The only downside I would have given it, is that they where rather unsubtle at a point, about a DLC or a second part.

Ubisoft cant just tell a story in one round. Even if they deliver good ones, theres always gotto be "another one".

 

[Zombie Badger]

I'd actually like to see the DayZ survival concept applied to WWII. You could start off without any combat skills whatsoever in Minsk and have to evade the Wermacht as you try to escape past the front-line into the safer parts of the USSR across a huge, open-ended map full of villages and people you could team up with, help or just steal their stuff to survive. Kind of like a game version of the film Come and See.

 

[Zombie Badger]

A game about WWI? What an interesting twist. Maybe even interesting enough to be worth checking out. I think it even got a recommendation.

really? you are blaming school shootings on gun control?

No, he's saying that because people oppose gun control so violently, we haven't been able to effectively stop them.

mental illness is the cause of the shootings.

Not for Columbine, which was teenagers trying to recreate Oklahoma City but without any bomb-making knowledge. Also if that's the cause why does America have hundreds of times more shootings than anywhere else?

 

[Something Amyss]

Funniest ZP in a while. But I have to get this off my chest, and I don't care who disagrees with it:

The Nazis were bad and something had to be done about them. That's my opinion, and I'm entitled to it!

mental illness is the cause of the shootings.

Prove it.

No, he's saying that because people oppose gun control so violently, we haven't been able to effectively stop them.

Going off what was actually said in the video, the issue he brought up is that the gun lobby has successfully made school shootings mundane.

Did "stopping" them ever even come up?

 

[Blachman201_v1legacy]

I think I heard crows or something making noise in the background at several points. It was kinda weird.

 

[thejboy88]

He raises an interesting point. Given that we have so many war games out there, why ISN'T the First World War depicted more often?

 

[Evonisia]

I think I heard crows or something making noise in the background at several points. It was kinda weird.

Yeah I got this too, unless that was just the audio fucking up.

Well, I am now very interested in Valiant Hearts.

Even if Enemy Front is incredibly generic, at least World War II shooters are making some kind of a resurgence now. Now, AAA games industry, can you essentially remake CoD: World at War's gory gameplay with the horrifically grim and destructive atmosphere in shiny 2014 graphics and lighting? Please?

 

[Silk_Sk]

I think I heard crows or something making noise in the background at several points. It was kinda weird.

I know, I was gonna say. What was with all the birds cawing in the background? That was really distracting. I was kind of hoping he'd mention it at the end in some contrived analogy (war=crows? I got nothing) but now I suspect it wasn't intentional.

 

[Sticky]

So the conversation we're having about these two games is that they're two completely different games with different playstyles and narrative structure? I don't think there's any front that they can really be compared on, except that they both take place during a war. At the end you took to comparing them based on how well they accurately depict the atmosphere of the war they were based on, but this isn't the history channel and I sincerely doubt people would ever confuse either of the two as being a historic documentary.

This leads me to only one conclusion. Mr Croshaw, did you get halfway into reviewing Enemy Front before you realized it was another poorly done WW2 shooter with poor controls, poor graphics, poor plot, the same two-or-three weapons, and some stealth mechanics that don't work in practice? This rings to me as both a review and a desperate cry for help.

It's almost as if you played into the part of the game that has forced stealth sections, like I know every one of these crappy games have; before you looked at the game you were playing, came to the realization that it was rubbish, and immediately went to look for another game that at least looked interesting and was of a genre that you were interested in. And then you finished your already half-written review by interspersing sections of the more interesting game you had found.

Really, I can't blame you if this is the case, because just looking at Enemy Front's steam page is making me feel bored and unimpressed by mere visual osmosis.

ENEMY FRONT is the first truly modern WW2 FPS, featuring stunning visuals, open-ended levels and a richly interactive combat experience that breaks out of the standard model of highly linear scripted FPS experiences, giving the player full freedom to own their playing style.

Even the description, which hits every key marketing point while not outright stating that it is 'revolutionary', is boring me to tears. I'm not even sure I can find the motivation to finish this post and my train of thought anymore.

I think I heard crows or something making noise in the background at several points. It was kinda weird.

It sounded to me like a mic is having feedback issues.

 

[proghead]

Uplay is the shit! And I do mean shit, as in "stop playing with it, and flush it down already, you scum".

Anyway, "hmm, yeah, I read a book once" cracked me up good.

 

[crimsonshrouds]

A game about WWI? What an interesting twist. Maybe even interesting enough to be worth checking out. I think it even got a recommendation.

really? you are blaming school shootings on gun control?

No, he's saying that because people oppose gun control so violently, we haven't been able to effectively stop them.

mental illness is the cause of the shootings.

Yes it is, but how easy it is to get a hold of a weapon and murder tons of people before getting stopped has nothing to do with how many massacres happen every other month here in the good old usa. Its odd how easy it is to get a gun and the united states has become high noon at the OK corral. The republicans idea to solve this problem? Keep throwing guns at it.

OT: Well the game Valiant hearts sounds like a good game but i wonder how much it costs.

 

[An Ceannaire]

mental illness is the cause of the shootings.

Not always. Also, the easy access to guns in America is the prime cause of school shootings. Hard to shoot up a school if you can't access a gun.

 

[varmintx]

I see this thread ending badly.

He raises an interesting point. Given that we have so many war games out there, why ISN'T the First World War depicted more often?

I would imagine it's due to the trench warfare employed so much during that war being too difficult to turn into entertaining gameplay. There's one of 2 scenarios: you man a machine gun and simply mow down people as they come out of the trenches, or you're on the other side, running through the onslaught, praying a bullet doesn't rearrange your brains.