Valiant Hearts: The Great War

[ratsoalbion]

Please share with us your experiences and opinions of this intriguing multi-format downloadable title from 2014.

[Baron Phil]

I was really looking forward to Valiant Hearts after seeing the trailer at E3, the art style really grabbed me and especially as i had recently played Child of Light i wanted more like that.

It didn't disappoint visually and the music was also so good i bought the soundtrack not long after. I really enjoyed the story it told and the main characters especially as WWI was a setting i don't think i'd even visited in a game.

There were a few mis-step however, escaping Paris and dodging bombs to the sound of the can can, although a fun moment to play, the music and gameplay didn't really match the situation and the moustache twirling villian that really didn't need to be there.

One thing i really loved was the prompt you got when entering a new area to open a menu with a load of information about the actual events and locations of WWI. I was fasinated by this and honestly felt i learned more about WWI during this game than i had at any other time in my life.

The more i think about it the more i realise how odd Valiant Hearts is. I really enjoyed every moment i spent with it but at the same time lerning just how horrific WWI was and the sheer amount of losses on all sides really was a sobering throughout.

I would highly recommend Valiant Hearts to anyone who hasn't played it.

[Chopper]

I thought it was excellent. It was a bit of a mish mash of styles - platform puzzler, the dodging scenes, the historical notes overlaid - and this was matched by wild swings in tone, from the fights with the pantomime villain to the pathos of the characters' situations, via the horrors of war. It was really bursting with life, I thought. I enjoyed it all.

As far as deeper meanings, and the contemplation of war go, I thought it was interesting in that it was able to convey contradictory feelings simultaneously - for example the sacrifice of the soldiers is lauded at a couple of points, while the game also highlights the immense (wilful) stupidity of the leadership and the huge waste of life. It's difficult to get into that without writing hundreds of words, but I think the game managed to deal with it all amazingly well. It's not just black and white - there's a fair bit of ambiguity, particularly at the end, and the game treats its subject really well, even with all the knockabout stuff.

And that ending....fantastic stuff.

Looking forward to hearing the podcast and reliving it all!

[Lokhe]

What were they smoking over at Ubisoft when they came up with this game? Because they need to smoke more of it!

I was recommended this game from a friend and conveniently enough it popped up on PS+ a week or so later. I had only heard about the game and seen promotional images, nothing in-game, and had little to no grasp on what kind of game it was. Downloaded it one evening and set about playing it with my girlfriend and we were instantly hooked.

This game is a work of art, quite literally, down to every fiber of its being. The graphics are simple yet brilliant, and invoked the feeling of watching a puppet show of sorts, albeit with more explosions. It's shock full of historical facts and trivia for the curious player, but doesn't slow the one who just wants to experience the story down with needless walls of text. Last but not least, the soundtrack is simply amazing. The hauntingly beautiful tunes of the main menu theme still chokes me up a bit when I hear them.

I've played a myriad of games that I have since forgotten, often before I had even moved on to the next. This will not be one of them. A worthy homage to the sacrifices, made for all the wrong reasons, in one of the most horrific tragedies of our history.

[FollowMyRuin]

I wonder why they chose to interject some really harrowing subject matter with comedy. I don't find it so much jarring or insensitive as bit of a waste of opportunity. I found the finished product to be similar to an educational game you'd find in a school. Like a vehicle for imparting information and scratching the surface of some historically formative human interactions so as to be sensitive to children.

It seems cruel to talk about a game like this, but I can't help but look at the game from the perspective of what skills, subject matter and equipment they were working with when they imagined it. You've got this stunning stylised art style, liquid smooth animations and interesting dialogue-lite delivery from the characters themselves. It could have been a really impressive, if not challenging way, to bring a player in and create an unforgettable, emotional interpretation of the Great War. The potential was there to impart and elicit more of a sense of the War, as well as historical knowledge, all delivered through the art, the music and gameplay direction.

Admittedly I have no doubt this would not have made for a better game, especially from a puzzle platformer. Equally, I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't help sales.

Perhaps what I'm looking for is a film, but surely gaming is the type of medium in which you can challenge the interaction between humans and history better than they did here.

Ultimately, I know that I picked the game up to try and support more Ubiart Framework projects, and games covering this type of subject matter. But I can't shake the feeling that I liked it, when I wanted to love it.

[Bakers_12]

I picked this up on the ps4 on playstation plus

From the beginning I really like the European comic art style that reminded me of Tin Tin and Asterix. The historical content which does not go into deep detail but does a good job in conveying evens and how it affected the people evoked.

The puzzles are well implemented yet quite easy but this is understandable, it seams the makers main aim was to teach the play about the events and baring content would hamper that.
Saying that there where a Couple of bits that had instant deaths that did give me a bit of trouble and i though that it was a bit unforgiving , only to then realise this was probably intended to show the players the reality of war though the gameplay.

There are only one thing that I did not like in the game was the narrator I felt sounded to much like a bad documentary voice over. I think when the game has a very European feel a European voiceover would have worked better

I recommend this to any one with an interest in history or to play through with a child who would learn much from this.