Developer: 11 Bit Studios
Publisher: 11 Bit Studios
Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Tested on: PS5
This War of Mine: Final Cut – Review
Back in 2014, This War of Mine garnered a lot of positive attention, and we even gave the game a perfect score ourselves. We found the game to be thought-provoking and engaging, and it showed us a glimpse of the hardships civilians have to endure during times of war. We also covered the different DLC stories of the game, and we even took a closer look at the Switch port. Sadly, the game is still very relevant today, and it’s unfortunate that at the time of the game’s release many innocent bystanders are living in the conditions depicted in the game. As we already gave extensive coverage to the base game and its different DLCs (The Little Ones, The Last Broadcast, Fading Embers), we will only discuss the relevance of this PS5 release and how smoothly it plays.
The game once again threw us into a wartorn world where civilians have to stick together to survive. This also meant having to go outside of the building our civilians were seeking shelter in. When going outside to scavenge, the game would also present us with moral conflicts, as we sometimes had to use violence to obtain much-needed supplies. We still very much liked the concept and offset of this title, and we found ourselves quite enthralled with what was on offer here. We did our very best to keep the civilians we got to control alive. After the ‘main’ game we also explored the additional content.
We do have to mention that the game could have used a mild graphical update, as character models tend to look a bit blocky by today’s standards and they actually don’t mesh that well with the backgrounds. The backdrops are still very nice to look at, even though a lot of assets do get reused over and over again. Complementing the darker color tones of the game is the fairly gentle background music. The atmosphere is spot on, and our earlier remarks about the graphical prowess of the game will probably be negligible for many players who are just looking to experience what the game has to offer.
Our biggest issue with this console port would probably be the controls. We found the game to control very clunkily, due to the fact that your characters would ‘snap’ in place when you try to interact with items. This wouldn’t be such a big issue if you could properly select the object you want to interact with. More than once, when two objects were close to each other, we would constantly start to interact with the wrong object, causing a lot of frustration.
Conclusion
Even now, This War of Mine is still a great game, even though some items are starting to feel dated. We mainly disliked the very wonky controls and the game could have also used a graphical update, but other than that, we still found the game to be very engaging. After getting used to the controls, we did our very best to ensure the survival of the characters in our care, and sometimes it was extremely hard to decide what course of action to take. The latter is certainly one of the game’s strong points, as when a game with a heavy underlying theme makes you think, it already succeeds in what it sets out to do. If you don’t own the game yet, and it has been on your wishlist for a while, it’s a no-brainer to get it. That being said, if you have the option to play it on PC, we reckon a mouse and keyboard setup will do wonders here.
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