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THE WAR OF THE WORLDS REVIEW Posted by PlayDevil.com Staff on Jan 10, 2012 14:14 (132 days ago) |
Written by: Mark
 Bringing the War to XBLA:
It is hard to begin to imagine that the original science fiction novel of "The War of the Worlds" was first released over a century ago (1898 to be precise). Such has been the popularity of the novel that over the past century we have seen various movies, TV shows, musicals and more based upon the HG Wells classic.
Perhaps more surprising has been the lack of video games to support the story and in fact you could probably count on one hand the amount of games released. That is until now as the story makes it’s way onto the XBLA service and from early screenshots looked to have enormous potential. But as we all know screenshots do not give away the true picture as to whether the game will be any good once played.
In this review we take a look at the game to see if it lives up to it’s early promise or whether it is a case of looks can be deceiving.
Story:
The game starts with the player taking on the role of Arthur Clark as he is on a train ride to visit his family when disaster strikes in the form of alien attack causing the train to crash and the country facing mass destruction.
 Clark survives the train wreck and sets out to rescue members of his family at all costs through many different locations which all follow a similar theme with each being well narrated through a superb voice over by Patrick Stewart helped by radio clips which helps proceedings flow.
Gameplay:
In essence War of the Worlds takes the form of an old school style platform game with running, jumping, avoiding enemies and using items to progress, however the difficulty level in the game is so intense that there really is not much enjoyment to be had.
The difficulty is not helped by the trial and error aspect as almost from the very beginning it becomes a case of experimentation as to what to do. Jumps often see you plummeting to countless and unnecessary deaths in addition to some of the worst collision detection I have ever experienced in a video game.
On top of this is the poor character animation which sees you move along at a snails pace even when running and this adds to the monotony of what is an awfully flawed experience.
Even if you were to persist just to see the full game you will notice that checkpoints are spaced so far apart that more often than not you will have to repeat levels over and over and as previously mentioned this is not good as frustration soon sets in and also sound gets repeated and becomes very tedious indeed.
I am aware that the game is supposed to replicate the high challenge of the older platform style games but War of the Worlds is just wrong on so many levels. Whilst older challenging games offer rewards for persistence this is one of those games which could see you throwing your joypad across the room out of sheer frustration.
 In addition the game is not worth persisting with to pick up achievement points because let me assure you it will take hours upon hours to get them all as they are set out for rewards such as completing the game and I guarantee that the gameplay is so poor that very few will get this far.
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Jan 11, 2012 23:21:01 (130 days ago)
