It Takes a War

Lovely experience! For someone who had a party of people in CS:Source playing almost daily like this, it was kinda nostalgic and creepily accurate.

It Takes a War is impossible to review without spoilers, so if you're curious on what this game's about, it's a CS 1.6 clone which despite its multiplayer-like appearance is a singleplayer game. There's a story there and that is pretty much all I can say without ruining the entire experience for you. It's cheap and you can nab the dev's other game in a bundle which cost less than buying the game by itself (at least in my region). The game is fairly short, with a runtime of 40-60 minutes. If you're not keen on spending the money for such a short game, there's also a couple videos on Youtube talking about it. It Takes a War truly is something unique despite how it looks on the surface and I have nothing but high praise for Thomas Mackinnon. SPOILERS ON WHAT IT'S ACTUALLY ABOUT: It Takes a War explores the fragility of online friendships and how easy it is for anonymity to obfuscate the fact that a real person is behind (almost) every screen. I genuinely like the approach of faking a multiplayer shooter here because most friend groups spend their time in competitive multiplayer games rather than party or co-op games, thus making it relate to more people. Throughout the game, you'll receive fake Steam messages from people on your friends list and at one point, your whole Steam profile and even webcam gets exposed in the museum for you (and Sophie) to see. While I love this element of the game, I am unfortunately one of the few people to not have much online-only friends. Most people on my friends list are people I know IRL, and that kinda takes away the "horror" element a bit. The part where it exposes your webcam also fails its job because I didn't have a webcam plugged in so the game instead showed a screenshot of my desktop, with my anime bunny girl wallpaper, which subsequently made me laugh more than I should've. Though if you're friends list is filled with people you don't know or ones who have been offline for years now, I'm sure the messages and museum was a very pleasant suprise. As the credits roll and the game reveals its actual title, I found myself in awe at how smart the game manages to utilize Steam for its storytelling. Despite, its simplistic gameplay and admittedly bad graphics, It Takes a War has solidified itself as a game everyone should experience at least once. In an age where friendships are mostly formed online, the fact that you don't really know whoever's behind the screen is not something new, yet people don't really think about it that often. It Takes a War to Say Farewell is a pretty solid narrative-driven shooter with good voice acting and a banger credits song. Definitely worth it despite the short runtime, and I'm looking forward to what other stories Thomas can tell.

I genuinely want to like this game, i really do, but its just too short for its price. It's a walking simulator with a linear story and no puzzles. the voice acting and writing is great, the idea is great, but everything else is very.. meh. I assume that's the idea, but its just not for me. It's too high a price for 40m of gameplay and no replayability. It's a lot less of a game and more of a movie disguised as a game. If you REALLY like psychological horror then buy it, its pretty good in its story, but nothing else.