The War of the Worlds

The story of the famous, The War of the Worlds, was first brought to my attention way back in 1978 when I first heard Jeff Wayne’s musical version.  It made such an impact on me that any time there is a new, or old, version of the story, I am compelled to check it out.  When I heard about there being a game of one of my dearest sci-fi stories, I thought all my Christmases had come at once.  The previews I saw of the game looked to tick all the boxes I needed to love it. How could it possibly go wrong?

The War of the Worlds has always worked due to a strong narrative, not always easy to convey in a game, but with the inclusion of Britain’s leading thespian, Sir Patrick Stewart, doing the voice over narrative, it seemed that I could be in gaming Nirvana. The game starts with Patrick’s dulcet tones telling us about the attack of Earth by alien forces from Mars. At the same time you are treated to a lovely monochromatic steam train puffing through countryside.  The art style looks very reminiscent of  The Dishwasher games mixed in with a little Limbo.  So far, so very good.  A little hell breaks loose and soon the train lies smashed, in Paddington Station.  Here, the game starts proper and you engage in some classic style 2-D platforming action, featuring some decent multi layered parallax scrolling ( that is, the foreground, middle ground and background all moving individually from each other).  Intermittently, Patrick pipes up with some narration to keep the story moving along, and pretty soon, you have made it though the station and got outside.  The game is flowing beautifully so far.

When you get outside, the full scale of the Martian invasion hits home. You see destroyed buildings, people running for their lives and there is the occasional glimpse of the Martian war machines.  Sadly, this is the first point where the game starts to unravel in a hair pulling out way.  As I was attempting to escape from the martian heat ray I died for the first time, then I died again, and again, and again, and again.  I had no idea why I kept dying, or what I should do to stop it happening.  I must have heard Patrick repeat the same line around twenty times before I figured out what to do.  Sadly, the effect that this has is to totally ruin the gorgeous narrative style that had previously been a pleasure to listen to.  As the game progresses the problem is amplified as you die, lots!  You soon discover that certain jumps have to be performed with pixel perfect precision; infuriating when you are being pursued or under pressure to escape.  The narrative that had once flowed was chopped into pieces and repeated to a level where you would like to turn the sound off.

Later levels see you in a switch pressing nightmare, where previously you had been tasked with merely outrunning the aliens.  To make the switch pressing even harder, you are also being pursued by intelligent black smoke that leads to several more deaths.  The save points are either punishingly long or stupidly close together. More than once I switched the game off because I was finding the going so hard.  When I switched it back on again I had been put back a fair bit from where I was. Infuriating!  There are no way points to follow, no map, no health bar and no button prompts, so sometimes you will find yourself completely flummoxed as to what you should be doing or trying to work out why you died or where you should go.  Some may argue that the game’s difficulty is an homage to the classic games that it borrows ideas from, most obviously Flashback or Prince of Persia. This may be true, but it just destroys what should have been a flowing narrative driven story.

It’s not all bad, though; some of the ideas and visuals are nothing short of stunning.  My personal favourites being the appearance of a giant war machine right behind you. The sense of scale is impressive and a battle taking place in Hyde Park.  As you are running and climbing across the park, war is raging around you with the ground being up-heaved and troops running in front of the screen, all done to wonderful effect. Some of the explosions in the background look gorgeous, especially when the first black smoke canister erupts.  The Martians and their war machines look great with their flashes of bright greens and reds being used in great contrast to the monochrome colour scheme.  Sadly the bad points far outweigh any good points and make the game frustrating.