Valiant Hearts

Being an adult is taking three weeks to beat a 6 hour game that, when you were younger, would have taken you one sitting. But being an adult is also the ability to appreciate a heartfelt tale, even if it wasn't full of action.

I just finished playing Valiant Hearts, and it pretty much gutted me. In a nutshell, it's a simple puzzle platformer about the first world war. To write a full-length review that'd do it justice would simply take too much time and yet be somehow inadequate. So in the spirit of the game, I'll keep it short.

The art is incredible. It's like you're playing through a comic book, and not in a "look at all this awesome stuff going on" kind of way, but a "let's be immersed by visual storytelling" kind of way. Even though you could say the visual style was fairly basic, the set pieces were magnificent and small details brought the world to life. To argue that this needed "better graphics" would be to admit a lack of taste. Some settings were light and beautiful, and others were just as horrifying as they needed to be. What more could you want?

I want to say that parts of the game were frustrating. Usually I get quite irritated when the only way to beat a section of a game is through trial-and-error. Here though, it felt oddly appropriate.

The story was very educational, yes, but also emotional. I have a lot of respect for the writers for the amount of ground they covered without diluting the impact of the experience. It all just felt right.

I applaud Ubisoft for taking on this project. I'm sure it was a brave undertaking, but it turned out to be exactly what it needed to be. This will sit high on my list of examples of "games as art" for those who don't really know the medium or understand what it's capable of. Because how could something that makes you deplore the world and simultaneously rips out your heart be anything less?
-Cril

Ludovico Einaudi - Two Sunsets