We Happy Few: The Preview

We Happy Few is my first foray into both early access and indie survival games. My only knowledge of both niches are that they have a tendency to be seen on Steam, but We Happy Few caught my eye for being the first time early access has been prominently featured to me on my Xbox One. I suppose the era of game demos are replaced by early access, so it was worth having a look to see if it was worth trying.

The game itself looked interesting solely because of its premise; In an alternate WW2, the Island of Wellington Wells committed an unknown atrocity on an invading force. Guilt ridden, the population invented a new drug called 'joy' that they take at regular intervals to feel all cheery and forgetful of the awful realities. From this setup, we end up in 1964 (if the clocks are to be believed) and take on the role of one Arthur Hastings. If my gameplay was anything to go by, he loves censoring articles for a living, at least until a woman with a smiley face mask comes in and invites him to the company party.

After refusing to take the joy pill, you discover the unfortunate realities of what is going on in the party, and run to hide from the bobbies, a very 60's dressed police force with creepy smiles.

Now in a safehouse, you begin to explore the world, and complete a few quests and side missions, while surviving on rotten food, water and bandages.

For an early access version, the story was set up fairly well, even if it is a bit abrupt. On top of that, the opening animations are smooth and the world they set up is well crafted in the opening scene, even if some tiles like exterior roads are missing in the build. There is a constant sense that nothing feels quite right. A filing cabinet has papers flung around, a coworkers clock has the wrong date, a mysterious agent drugs a colleague....wait

Yes, there is an Orwellian 1984 vibe running through all of this, with influences from Kubrick and with other Unreal engine powered games like Bioshock and Dishonored coming to mind from the aesthetic. Dishonored especially comes to mind when you are in the safehouse, within the sewers and where you can collect anything not tied down. Even so, it has its unique look, and the vibrant aesthetic works to hammer the joy addiction rather pleasantly.

Once outside of the safehouse, it is quite a large playable area, with sidequests and a few missions. It feels generous knowing a lot of other games on the 360 had tiny contained demos. However, the procedural generated map felt a bit samey, with few real surprises in the architecture in a way that other games with fixed levels tend to have. The sidequest of clearing a pond of syringes felt like it could have been placed anywhere within a hundred metres of the safehouse for example.

Then the actual game happens, and the unique facade begins to reveal this as a survival game. Being a novice to the whole idea, I didn't really enjoy the way you need to constantly sleep, eat and drink. The meters felt like they were draining far too quickly, or that the minute you sort one of the meters, another would drain almost too quickly or inconveniently. I feel there could be tweaks needed to make the game more enjoyable for novices of the genre; maybe have it so that the ramifications are less severe than death, or the meters drain slower, or perhaps an option to change settings in a difficulty menu.

Being a fan of the later Far Cry games, I did dig a full crafting system. The inventory for the preview build is large enough for most needs, and you eventually take any little item just because the space is there for you to. Having items you craft break after a few uses was a nagging issue. Like the survival system, the degradation was too quick to be enjoyable, and looks like it needs a set of difficulty tweaks for a wider range of players.

 I hated the combat, but since the game emphasises stealth in public in areas, it doesn't look like its the games intention for a full combat experience. However, I did feel like the use of weapons on downers and bobbies was a weak point, with stiff animations and a lack of enemy feedback to how much damage you are inflicting. You also get downed an awful lot from even trying it out, so avoid at all costs. This looks like another aspect to improve.

Finally, there are a few other interface issues that are notably absent or could do with a tweak. The lack of a safe zone for the HUD hurt my enjoyment, as the main menu text cut off to the side of my screen, and gamma correction could do with a picture that needs adjusting to the suitable shade of grey. Otherwise, options are fairly standard for a console version, but add in the aforementioned difficulty adjustments and this may be a lot better for the novice players.

My takeaway thought is that I am not sure if the Xbox One should adopt early access the way Steam has. While We Happy Few looks like it will be more polished and narratively stronger in the final game, its not as enjoyable as a demo might have been, and I have a feeling that some players may be turned off by the existing chinks in the armour. A demo of the full version would have got me more excited for the final game than testing the unfinished build that starts out strong, but gets clunky when in the actual game. Still, its worth watching out for when the final build comes along because of its art style and setting. I do want to see what comes of its world and the characters attempting to escape it. Reviews and player feedback on the final game will be a better bet than buying at midnight on launch.

IGN Early Access Playthrough

Split/Second Velocity: The Review

I can understand why a game like Split/Second exists; take the desperate explosive filled vehicle escape sequences seen in other games and turn it into a fully fledged spectacle. A racing game where you must evade all manner of destruction while also having the ability to knock an air traffic control tower on top of the racer ahead of you is something you just cannot get anywhere else. Add in an interesting framework and some solid, if derivative arcade racing and you get a game well worth picking up, at least to experience the novelty.

Split/Second came out in the Summer of 2010, alongside other strong racers such as Blur, and while its tragic that both studios closed, both games released show the efforts the developers put into the game. I have already talked about Blur, so let's give Split/Second its time to shine, specifically its single player component. Multiplayer is strong when you find players, but its not as populated as you would hope for an in depth analysis. 

The games single player is set as a TV series, where you start off by applying for the eponymous show of the title. After a quick tutorial, you become a contestant vying to be the greatest racer of the series. As a contestant, you must race through the season, with 12 episodes, and 6 events per episode. At the end of each episode is an elite race, where the championship points are won, and whichever racer has the most points at the end of the season is the winner.

The TV show style is what sets this racer apart from the rest in terms of presentation. There is a lot to like about how it gets the feel of american gladiators style TV right. TV recaps, the end credits after the final event in an episode, the slow-mo replays as half the city crumbles apart, and instant replays as rivals get smashed by obstacles all contribute to what Blackrock studio is going for. If there is one element that could have been added, its an option for studio commentary, though if its anything like Burnout 3 it may have been for the best to omit it.

Speaking of which, Burnout's gameplay DNA is certainly present in Split/Second, specifically Burnout Revenge for the darker tinged aesthetic of both cutscenes and design of the city streets. A big part of the game is about dodging obstacles to win, while filling a power bar by drifting, drafting and jumping. Of course, the emphasis on destruction to win cannot be ignored, though it is definitely done in its own unique way. So if you liked Burnout games when they stuck to closed circuits and not open world, this may be the game you are looking for.

What Burnout did lack was the ability to drop bombs on opponents, and this is where Split/Second shifts gears into a league of its own. You could argue the whole point of the game is to give players the chance to collapse tunnels on racers that are getting away. With enough of your power meter turned blue, you can unleash small scale traps that require some timing in most cases to crash a rival racer. When your meter turns full, and red, you can unleash the large scale destruction. Entire sections of the track get rerouted as a plane crashes into the airport, or a train derails into the city centre. This tends to wipe out most of the pack ahead, and is very fun to watch in the instant replays the first few times you trigger them. How well you do in the game depends on how and when you use your power plays against rivals, and equally if you can survive your own devastation.

The racing itself is of the arcade style, which is sadly becoming all too rare in gaming these days. The three types of racers are cars that stick to tarmac like glue, cars that can drift with ease and the off road vehicles that can withstand explosive shockwaves, but with painfully slow acceleration to get to top speed. The lack of a boost meter feels like a problem, especially when you are far behind and not even triggering traps ahead can catch you up to opponents, so your only option of a speed boost is from drafting opponents a short distance ahead. The sense of speed suffers a little bit in comparison to Revenge, likely due to the lower framerate, but it still gives the oomph as motors roar to peak performance down a long straight.

My big issue with the game is the lack of diversity in the tracks. Many routes reuse sections of track on future routes, and after your initial burst of energy playing it is a shame it grinds a bit as you start seeing the same rain derailment or airport exploding. Even if you can take the low track count, you may tire of the fairly repetitive feel of the city in general. Back to Burnout, while that game also reused track sections, it also had world tour, where the changed continents and locations gave a new feast for the eyes when you got tired of the american city tracks or waterfront trams. This is definitely a game that needed a season 2: International mayhem, with more interesting flavours of destruction.

Imagine blowing up the Pantheon!

On top of that, the game modes are fairly limited, although they do work in the sense of the TV show. besides standard races, there are time trials to outrun the destruction, eliminator modes where every 20 seconds last place gets destroyed, outrunning helicopters firing missiles at you, dodging exploding barrels falling out of the back of a truck, or even deflecting missiles at a helicopter, where the fastest racer to shoot it down wins.

Then there are smaller issues, such as how early on the cars speed seems a bit too slow to start with, the difficulty in drifting at times in a game with an emphasis on arcade driving, the aforementioned lack of boosting, or how it can get frustrating at times when you are winning for the whole race only to get hit by a bomb and finish 5th, but in the grand scheme it doesn't matter too much.

A final gripe is how you need to unlock the final event, but it turns out to be just another race, similar to ones you had done before. A final race joining up the best elements of all the prior tracks would have been a much more satisfying climax, with preset detonations of all the large scale power plays as you race to the finish.

All in all, while Split/Second is a flawed game with some annoyances, it is still a fun arcade racer that has had a great amount of effort put in place. Any time you see a cruise ship crash into the port, or have a bridge collapse, you can just imagine the effort needed for this sort of idea to come to life. And to Black Rock Studio's credit, their idea of a TV show with infinite resources spent on a touring car season with explosions everywhere works within context of the game, and is a joy to behold when it all comes in place. The game may not be an arcade classic, but it definitely deserved a Season 2.