This War of Mine Final Cut Review: A classic in the definitive version

0
42
this war of mine final cut review a classic in the definitive version
this war of mine final cut review a classic in the definitive version

This War of Mine arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X | S and Game Pass in its definitive version: our judgment on the Final Cut of the 11 Bit Studios game.

 

1984, Sarajevo. The city is an admired model of integration, in the midst of economic growth and ready to host the Winter Olympics. April 1992 – February 1996, Sarajevo. The city is annihilated by the longest siege of the twentieth century. Tragically known for the violence and savagery that have distinguished him, the siege of Sarajevo constitutes the main source of inspiration that led the team of 11-Bit Studios to shape This War of Mine.

Video game that is first of all a human experience, the title does not exhaust its identity within the confines of a pad or a screen. For this reason, the team’s willingness to propose the final version on PlayStation 5 And Xbox Series X | S. Available on consoles May 10, 2022 – also included with Xbox Game PassThis War of Mine: Final Cut it represents the last step of a management software that has the merit of outlining the silent and inexorable brutality of war in a non-trivial way.

The moon rises in Sarajevo

The debut of This War of Mine is structured in a package that represents – in our opinion – the best way to approach the work of 11-Bit Studios. Thanks to an updated technical sector and the inclusion of narrative contents that enrich the original experience, the Final Cut translates to a current and widely usable product even by those who are not familiar with the management genre.

There Stories mode present in the title, in particular, represents an excellent starting point for discovering the playful system of the game. Illustrating the main mechanics in a semi-guided way, the latter is in fact distinguished by the presence of a narrative component that allows you to explore the struggle for survival from the point of view of an interesting selection of protagonists.

The proposed stories are specifically three: A father’s promise; The last broadcast And Dying Embers. The context remains the traditional one of This War of Mineor that of a civil war that has thrown the country into chaos. There are no precise geographical coordinates and the nationalities cited by 11-Bit Studios are the fruit of fantasy, but, as pointed out at the beginning, it is not at all difficult to trace

what real historical events inspired the development team. In the midst of a violent and inexorable siege, the citizens who survived the continuous bombing face a daily life marked by deprivation and dashed hopes. In each of the three narrative experiences, the title explores different aspects of the setting, ranging from the role of the media to cultural genocide. While punctuated by predefined narrative events, the experiences proposed by the modality Stories offer the player a fair amount of freedom of action by proposing moral dilemmas with no easy solution. In Dying embers, for example, you will find yourself having to choose between the need to preserve the culture of an entire people, the desire to keep the history of one’s family alive and the harsh demands imposed by the desire to simply survive. As the hours progress, the characters of This War of Mine they open to the player, revealing their own story, but also dreams, hopes and desires, favoring a growing identification.

SEE ALSO  Neither anti-spy glass nor covering the screen: I have the definitive trick so that people do not gossip about what I do on my mobile

An aspect also facilitated by the work of remastering implemented by 11-Bit Studios, which on PS5 and Xbox Series X | S offers an artistic style of great impact. The increase in resolution and the complete reinterpretation of the lighting system give the nights of the destroyed metropolis a stylized but equally magnetic dilapidation. Among buildings torn apart by bombs, broken roofs, dilapidated basements adapted to air-raid shelters, This War of Mine: Final Cut arouses a spontaneous restlessness in the player, in whose ears the echo of the bombings and the notes of a minimal but effective soundtrack ring incessantly.

With the final version of its title, the Polish studio has also implemented a restructuring of the interface, which however would have benefited from greater linearity. Not always intuitive, the latter also clashes with a control system that does not convince. Children of an experience originally linked to the PC ecosystem, the commands of This War of Mine struggle to find their size on console. A defect already a child of the previous versions of the management software, which we would have appreciated to see resolved in this definitive incarnation. Several times, in fact, we found ourselves having to insist on convincing a character to go down / up the stairs, or to struggle to select the desired one among the many prompts scattered in our refuge. Obviously not disabling circumstances, but which in any case end up generating frustration, especially when the day or night in-game is about to come to an end.

A merciless but modelable gameplay

As already described in the first review of This War of Mine, the gameplay proposed by the title is in fact structured in a constant alternation between day and night. Over the course of the day, the incessant shelling of the city makes it impossible to leave your shelters. To worsen the state of siege we also think the snipers, who stationed in strategic areas aim at civilians, with the clear intention of weakening the morale of the population and pushing them to surrender. When the sun is high in the sky, therefore, there is nothing left to do but try to organize your resources at best, transforming the walls that separate us from the outside world into a functional and – as far as possible – welcoming place.

SEE ALSO  From the ambitious Xiaomi 14 Ultra to the versatile Band 8: everything that Xiaomi has presented at the MWC in Barcelona

The hours of daylight are then spent cooking, cutting wood to accumulate fuel and manufacturing the most disparate objects, including shovels, picks, beds, chairs, stoves or rudimentary radios. To try to speed up operations and maximize efficiency, the player can switch freely from one character to another. The latter, as mentioned, will be predefined within the modality Stories, while they will be generated more or less randomly in the traditional game mode. However, the group of survivors will not have too many activities to engage in in the absence of essential materials, such as lumber, electrical components, vegetables or medicinal herbs.

To try to collect these and many other items, players have only the night at their disposal. With the favor and protection of darkness, the players of This War of Mine: Final Cut they select a single character with whom to venture along the streets of the besieged city. The other members of the group will remain inside the shelter, where we can choose whether to give them rest or to have them stand guard. Once the preparations are complete, it’s time to choose one of the many points of interest located on the map – here more numerous than in the original game – to leave in search of fortune.

Between looted supermarkets, nightclubs that have remained incredibly operational, houses dismembered by enemy fire, players will have several minutes to try to collect as much as possible, compatibly with the

capacity of your backpack. Room after room, each setting will offer, depending on its maturity, greater chances of recovering food or medicines and other tools. An old bakery could thus still hide some food supplies, while an abandoned shop is a rather safe destination if you are looking for electronic components. To fully explore an area, especially in the early stages, one night is hardly enough: rubble, blocked doors or other obstacles can in fact slow down our advance, requiring us to carry tools such as shovels or picks. Unfortunately, in the reality of the conflict depicted by This War of Mine, even weapons they represent a resource not to be neglected, since not all the survivors we meet on our nocturnal wanderings will have friendly intentions. For this reason, during the night the title gives away glimpses of stealth gameplay, inviting us to make our alter-ego move with caution and to exploit every crack to find out who or what is behind a closed door. After all, the player also has the freedom to adopt – at their own risk – a predatory attitude, robbing other survivors or acting violently. Attitudes that, thanks to the chronic scarcity of resources, could end up seeming more justifiable as the hours of play go by.

Is it legitimate to rob an elderly neighbor of his food supplies to save one of our comrades from starvation? Can we kill a hostile person to get the wood we need to survive the harsh winter? These are the questions raised by This War of Mine, without rhetoric, but only through the strength of a mechanical but profound gameplaywhich rewards the ability to organize one’s own action plan aiming at the long-term survival of the group.

SEE ALSO  Android Auto 11.5 is now available: news and how to download the new beta version

Despite the efforts, however, death is a shadow that follows our every step: disease, hunger and cold are always lurking within the fragile walls of our shelter. One reason why even trying to keep the morale of your mates high is an important task: the company of a book, the luxury of a cigarette or a glass of liquor, or even the possibility of playing a guitar are all apparently secondary details. , but that could make a difference when you discover in the morning that one of your survivors has decided to take his own life.

This War of Mineeven in his Final Cut, it is a merciless game, which has no intention of sweetening the experience of war. Not for this, however, 11-Bit Studios has neglected to devote attention to the issue of accessibility. Before starting a game, it is indeed possible customize different parameters, such as the number of days we will have to survive before the siege comes to an end, or the harshness of the winter ahead. The editable elements are actually quite numerous and allow an appreciable degree of customization, without this distorting the experience as a whole.

 

This War of Mine Final CutVersion Analyzed PlayStation 5This War of Mine it’s a painful game. The hardships and sufferings imposed by conflict are portrayed here with painful silence and total absence of rhetoric. What strikes the heart are not long narrative sequences or rivers of descriptive cards, but the inexorable repetitiveness that accompanies every night and that resounds constantly in the echo of the bombings. Returning from a particularly fruitful expedition to discover that the shelter was looted in the night, seeing a companion affected by the disease as snow or shelling prevent us from venturing outside, deciding to trade the books that keep morale high for food rations : these are the only words the 11-Bit Studios title needs. Despite a control system that remains imperfect, the console version of the Final Cut is confirmed to be the best way to approach the title, thanks to the renewed technical sector and the inclusion of the modality Stories. This War of Mine is a video game that, despite its crudeness, manages to capture the player, who in a very short time finds himself fully involved in the attempt to ensure the survival of his characters. An experience whose moral value probably exceeds the playful one, and whose didactic value manifests itself spontaneously and apparently unconsciously.