First off…this game is narrated by Patrick Stewart, yeah, THAT Patrick Stewart. Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about The War of the Worlds. It is currently available via Xbox Live Arcade. Based on the H.G. Wells novel of the same name, this interpretation of story is not related to the 2005, $200 million grossing Tom Cruise/Steven Spielberg film. Following closely to the art direction and atmosphere of the book, War of the Worlds seeks to capture the feel of the story while building a compelling gaming experience, and it almost succeeds.
Borrowing heavily from XBLA darling Limbo, The War of the Worlds is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer. Your character, is traversing post-Martian invasion-London. He’s not only trying to survive, but also trying to find his family. During this journey, he faces several different types of Alien enemies and organisms. The puzzles are typically straight forward and there’s never a question as to where your character should be going.
What the game does well is atmosphere. Both the visuals and sounds are amazing. Its not a graphical powerhouse, but more an artistic canvas. Your character is for all intents and purposes faceless and his surroundings are the real star of the show. The Alien tripods are creepy and destroyed London is gritty and haunting. Like independent games have proven in the past, they are the current venue for artistic freedom. In regards to the atmosphere of the game, there are a lot of really cool things going on in The War of the Worlds.
The sounds design is epic in scale and fits both the time period of the game and the sci-fi nature of the fiction. Patrick Stewart sounds like Patrick Stewart. Him being from England helps the narration feel genuine, almost like he’s visited the landmarks he’s mentioning in the game.
Like Limbo, the gameplay relies heavily on trial and error. Aside from small hints on the load screens, no direction is given on how to kill anything, or avoid traps. Expect to play sections numerous times until you find out how to get through. I died alot during my playthrough. Part of that was due to the difficulty of the game, but most of the dying was due to the infinitely clumsy controls. I can’t count how many times my character did something I was not intending to do.
Whether it was taking too long to crawl, not grabbing a ledge properly or accidentally leaping off a building, the controls are too responsive in some places and unresponsive in others. This combined with the over prioritization of animation sequences give the game a watered down pace and left me as this game’s victim rather than participant. The closest game I can compare it to is the classic Prince of Persia. Fundamentally Prince of Persia is great game, but nearly broken controls make it damn near unplayable.
Had the controls been more refined, the developers could have gotten away with better puzzles and more combat. As it stands, the puzzles are too straight forward (with the exception being a gas-mask handoff “puzzle” that just doesn’t make sense) and for the most part the combat is completely optional. I’m not saying the game needs something deep like a God of War or Devil May Cry combat engine, but it would have been nice to actually fight the Martians, instead of just sneaking up on them and putting an axe in their head.
Like most XBLA games, The War of the Worlds is not going to please everyone. If everything you just read excites you, then get The War of the Worlds, you’ll love it. I can honestly say the only major flaw in the game is the erratic controls. If you are a big fan of The War of the Worlds as a story, and really like Patrick Stewart, this may be right up your alley. If you get frustrated quickly and don’t like replaying areas for dumb reasons, pass on this one.
Verdict: The fact that Tom Cruise is not in the game actually makes it better.
