Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform(s): PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows (reviewed), Xbox 360, Xbox One
Release Date: June 25, 2014
Genre: Puzzle adventure
Price: $15
Intro
A strong emotional resonance evokes from the first melody struck by the piano in the opening title screen. It sets the tone perfectly for a story of sacrifice, suffering, struggle and the tireless exertions and dedications of duty. Valiant Hearts – The Great War follows the story of a few individuals as they struggle to find their love and family amidst The Great War.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War describes itself as a 2D animated comic book adventure, mixing exploration, action and puzzles.[divider]
Gameplay
Breaking free from the shooting and killing precedent set by other games that focus on the theme, Valiant Hearts brings a human element with its focus on individual characters. Majority of the game you will find yourself finding items to solve, point and click style, A opens B unlocks C puzzles. There are a few stealth sections and environmental puzzles thrown in but nothing too difficult or noteworthy. There are hints if you get stuck only a button press away. Everything is built to encourage you to move on to the next stage and progress the story, which is the centerpiece of the game. There is however a lot of variety in the gameplay with many mini-games and clever use of fast and slow scenarios. The gameplay is simple and often too easy, but I was able to finish the game without it feeling tedious even once.
While the game deals with concepts of a serious tone it doesn’t forget to have a light side, be it a rhythm based car race section with nostalgic comic tunes, or the boss fights that act similar to villains in a children’s TV show. Where the gameplay breaks down is in the numerous bugs. You might find yourself with characters stuck in the environment to break the logic of a puzzle, rendering it unsolvable as your character fails to interact with the levers. The fairly generous checkpoints help alleviate some of the frustration. However, the biggest hindrance comes before you even start the game, in the form of Uplay. With its constant failures and forcing me to re-download GB’s of data because of an issue that failed to start the game. This sucks, especially if you’re in India where your downloads are capped and your data plan has a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) that’s fair only to your ISP.[divider]
Story
The story follows around a few individuals whose lives have been severely affected by years of the ongoing war. While the game never goes too dark with its story, there are heavy elements of love, friendship, sacrifice and tragedy. Mixing the reality of the war along with the struggles of the characters add a human touch that force you to contemplate on the human frailty amidst the devastation all around. The characters are not complicated, but this simplicity works well in their favour as this keeps their motivations and actions clear. The main characters are also cycled between often to keep the perspective fresh. [divider]
Graphics and Music
The cartoon art style with its use of bright colours and a warm design, may try to hide the ghastliness of the war. In stark contrast however, the pages of the diaries and the photographs from the war may be disquieting. Your experience with the game may change depending on how much of the provided details you go through. If you do, it would show off the brilliance of the creators into replicating those scenarios and implementing them into a coherent gameplay. The art style carries well with the explore and solve mechanics of the game and the levels are often set up cleverly, with clear markers for buildings giving you hints about what you are supposed to do.
Similar to its siblings like Rayman Legends and Child of Light the studio’s work with the UbiArt framework powers a more creative take on gameplay than we have seen from major publishers in the past.
The music is wonderful with a variety of soft melodies to grand orchestral music. The loud pitch and tempo for the more comical parts conveys happiness or joy, while minor tonality expresses sadness or fear. The music not only helps convey an emotional message to the listener, but also creates it; you absorb the piece’s expression as their own emotion within the given context of the on-screen action to create an engaging experience.[divider]
Conclusion
Valiant Hearts tells the story of the life of people caught in a war. It commands worthy narration and tackling of the subject matter breaks free of patterns with which video games have been associated for ages. While the game is not perfect in execution, the complaints are mostly minor compared to the enjoyment to be had in this cheap low budget title. There is ample gameplay and collectables to keep you engaged for at least the 7-8 hours before you see the credits.
