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by Shadow on 11.04.11  When I found out we had a copy of The War of the Worlds to review, I was hesitant to try it out. My complete knowledge of The War of the Worlds comes from the bad Tom Cruise film. My curiosity got the best of me and I just had to download the demo to see for myself. When I found out War of the Worlds was a platformer in the vein of classics such as Prince of Persia, Out of This World, and that one game where you’re this nerd and you’re stuck on an island and you become less and less frightened as the game goes on, I was hooked. I just had to play the rest of the game. That was a big mistake.
The War of the Worlds is a side-scrolling platformer that takes on a new vision of the classic H.G. Wells novel. The gameplay parallels the events of the 1953 movie adaptation while introducing new characters, locations, and side stories. All of which is new to me. It also has Sir Patrick Stewart in my ear telling me the story all the way through. You play a man who is just trying to get to his family. You don’t know how this happened, hell, you were on a train when the shit hit the fan. All you know is that you need to find your brother and your Fiancee. With all communications cut, you trek through the ruined streets of England to find them. The visuals for The War of the Worlds is nothing short of stunning. Other Ocean Interactive does a tremendous job at using the foreground and background to create such an image of destruction. There’s a lot going on and there needs to be when the World is under attack. There isn’t much color throughout most of the game, but Other Ocean Interactive doesn’t let that get in the way. There isn’t one spot where I was confused as to what’s going on with the visuals. They’re sharp when they need to be and they’re off when they need to be. I can feel the tone of the game and it can hook me into the gameplay. Too bad the gameplay isn’t worth it. When I passed through the section where the demo left off, I started experiencing a different game. The War of the Worlds became a game that hates you. It became such a difficult game but one for all the wrong reasons. The controls aren’t tight so when you need to pull of quick moves you can’t and end up dying. This happened all the time in The War of the Worlds. You can’t cancel out of an animation so once you start, you’re stuck in it for a moment. A moment you needed to dodge that alien death ray that just killed you... for the tenth time. Timing is another thing that falls flat in The War of the Worlds. As soon as you’re introduced to danger, you will be killed over and over again unless you already knew it was coming. You see, you cannot dodge the enemies unless you already know how they’re going to attack. Death comes constantly and it never feels your fault. Either you were supposed to jump off a platform onto another (which you won’t see for another two seconds) or you end up rolling in the wrong direction because the game doesn’t read your inputs fast enough. You will die over and over again and sometimes the checkpoints are forgiving while other times you’ll be left hearing the same narrative over and over again. Look, I’m as big of a Patrick Stewart fan as the next guy, but when he ends up repeating the same words because I died on the one spot over and over again, I can get a little tired of ole’ Cap’n Picard. Then sometimes the game respawns you ahead of the place where you died. I don’t know why but I’m not complaining. I didn’t want to go through that section anyway.
The War of the Worlds confuses me at some points. On one hand I absolutely love listening to the atmospheric sounds and the story from Sir Patrick Stewart. On the other hand, I don’t want to play any more of this game. I can’t stand getting killed by an alien death ray when I’m completely covered in shadows or running through these “blind” enemies who track you by sound, but kill you on site. I wan’t to know what happens but ultimately this is a game and the actual game parts are so terrible, I can’t go any farther. This game scratches my nostalgia itch, but does it so hard I’m left with a bloody wound.
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