Valiant Hearts - The Great War
I got this game towards the end of last year even though I was interested in it upon release, but not so interested that I wanted to drop $15 on what I figured would be a fun 3 hour experience. Turns out it was actually a fun 6 hour experience that does a pretty good job of showcasing the horrors of war but not in a brutal and completely disturbing way that could alienate younger players. It also has my favorite type of logic based puzzles where I get to feel really clever after solving them quickly so it has that going for it too. The story does seem to rely a little too much on convenient encounters when taking place during a time of great upheaval but the characters are all likeable and their motives are all relatable and tragic. The game does a really good job of not making anyone out to be a badguy, well at least everyone who isn't the mad Baron who wears a skull on his cap but even he just gets beaten up on-top of a tank and then demoted for incompetence.
World War I is a war very infrequently showcased in video games, and when it does it's either as a multiplayer shooter or as a grand strategy game, neither of which do a great job of just showing how messed up and horrible that war really was. I dunno if
Valiant Hearts - The Great War is the ideal game to really go into what WWI was all about, but it's definitely the best attempt so far. If you like sidescrolling puzzle games with a big heart, likeable characters, and a dog, then I'd definitely say give this one a try.
Oh I forgot to mention that there's a ton of historical facts brought up throughout the game, some of which I knew and many of which I didn't. They don't just focus on the big things, but like I learned that soldiers would wear their used mess tins around their kidneys to help them survive shrapnel from shells and grenades and the like. It's those kind of little details that really help make the world more convincing and gives it a real sense of authenticity. They also include photos from the war that have been colorized, so that was pretty cool too.