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Fuck



I’m sorry. I really didn’t want to have to talk about this game. I didn’t even beat it, and for good reason. It’s not a fun game to play. Coming from the guy who could beat YIIK and play a dozen matches on Morphies Law, I could barely get through the first of three stories and gave up around the second cause the game glitched out a necessary item and I just decided fuck it, what’s the point of prolonging my suffering. So We Happy Few is a 2018 game that was in development for a while and was going off of Kickstarter by Compulsion Studios who are now owned by Microsoft. The game was going through some troubles in the development but were miraculously saved by Gearbox, who are currently known for...



Ladies and gentlemen, the stage has been set. Let us talk about We Happy Few. So We Happy Few follows the story of Arthur as he tries to find his brother Percy in the great old town of Wellington Wells where everything is great except happiness is only in a drug called Joy, everyone is on edge and ready to kill over the smallest reason, and a bunch of creepy doctors wander the streets with an urge to inject you with more drugs. But then you play as Sally who has to take care of a baby which are not allowed in Wellington Wells and Ollie does… a thing *Reminder, I fucking quit around Sally’s plot*. So the gameplay in this game is just not fun at all. Aside from the long loading screens at the very start of the game, it usually takes a miracle to prevent the game from crashing twenty minutes apart from each other. Around the near end of the game, my game crashed three times. I had to do an entire long mission again and was scared of the game crashing yet again as a result. I told myself if the game crashed again, I was quitting. Fortunately, it managed to make it through. Unfortunately, I had to play more We Happy Few and I was hot and ready to eat some shotgun shells. Not only crashes, which are consistent, I feel I should reiterate, but just a ton of technical issues. Glitches aplenty. Items not loading in, enemies spotting you and losing interest immediately, a whole lot of graphical screw ups, guards walking in circles (Which is always followed by another crash, so watch out). Most of my deaths were because the game glitched out and sent a horde of enemies after me than they were thanks to my actual screw ups, which a game should never do. The game barely functions, but oh boy, when it does.
So the game is as such. You run from one location to the next, you get a mission which is either collect an item, sneak past enemies, or even better, sneak past enemies to get an item. Most of the time, I didn’t feel like I was progressing the story at all. I felt like I was in a bunch of road blocks. To get to Sally, you gotta get across the bridge. To get across the bridge, you need a guards note. To get the note, you gotta find him at a nightclub. To enter the nightclub, you gotta come back in revealing attire. But even then, you need to get a pass. And even when you get the pass, you gotta come at night and night only. And when you finally meet Sally, you can apologize so you can go to the bridge, only to be told to collect more items. What the fuck is this!? I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere. I feel like I’m just shopping at a local grocery store checking things off the list and all I have left is to wait for the old woman at the front to get done yelling at the cashier who hates her job because her coupons expired. None of this is fun. It all feels tedious. And combat isn’t much better. It’s either you are a brute who is just knocking down everyone with a plank of wood or you are a string bean and you’re fucked. It’s better to just hide in trash cans, cause as long as they never see you, you are safe. Does anything in this game have a redeeming feature… well, one thing.
The story of this game is incredibly interesting. Inspired by dozens of dark dystopian stories like 1984 and especially the MaddAddam trilogy. The story shows each character in this morally grey dilema. When you find out about Arthur’s past, you are shocked and kinda mortified. It was a genuinely upsetting moment that worked cause despite the flaws of the gameplay, Arthur’s dry wit and awkward humor made me enjoy his company. It wasn’t some stale performance and it wasn’t lackluster writing. The writers really put their effort into the story and the characters and the world. The setting alone made me interested in We Happy Few. A 1960s British style with all these creepy faces and dystopian oppression, I was more than excited for the game. But even with the interesting ideas and story, I couldn’t finish the game. It was just too poorly designed and not fun to play and I couldn’t stomach another minute of it.
We Happy Few is in fact a better written game than say YIIK, but YIIK had descent gameplay. In a sense. It functioned, it worked, and I was able to complete the game without any frustrating glitches and the insane visuals kept me going long enough to see the end, for as bad as it was. But We Happy Few doesn’t offer anything new in gameplay or in setting. It was just tiresome by the halfway point and I couldn’t complete it. Sorry, but I cannot recommend this game at all. I’d say wait for a patch, but it’s been a year and I don’t see that happening.

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