REVIEW – Indeed, We Happy Few is far from what it could have been. The way it hit the stores makes me feel that this is an unfinished game, and nothing else. Not even taking a ton of Joy won’t help it in its current situation.

 

The game has three characters’ stories crossing each other’s path in the 1960’s Wellington Wells, located in the United Kingdom. If I remember correctly, the year is 1964 in an alternative history timeline where the Nazis managed to win World War II. The citizens of the UK escape from reality by taking a hallucinogen drug called Joy that distorts the truth for them. The real world is, frankly, looking like dogshit, and Wellington Wells is effectively a police state by the time the game starts.

Joy

If we don’t take the drug, because it IS a drug, we will be called a „downer” – an understandable terminology, as we ruin the joy of the others. The society thus will ask us to take our pill or else immediately we are taken away… and I’m pretty sure we end up as a meal to the others. But let’s not run ahead this much: the beginning of the game (if we pick Arthur Hastings, who is the only available characters as the start, as Sally opens up after Arthur, and Ollie becomes unlocked after Sally, respectively) isn’t that bad, and if you end up taking the Joy, the credits roll immediately. The memories start to come back, and we try to escape to find our sibling somewhere out there.

Gameplay-wise, We Happy Few is a survival RPG, but the survival part didn’t seem to be much of a problem, as the game, which started out from a Kickstarter campaign, tried to bite too much off from the cake in front of it. In other words, the game is unpolished in multiple aspects, it feels incomplete, even with three years being in development, and meanwhile, Gearbox jumped in to be the publisher, and in June, Microsoft announced the developers’ (Compulsion Games) acquisition as well.

Arthur’s main goal makes the minimally revealed story somewhat redundant and exaggerating at some points throughout your escape. That’s not all: the artificial intelligence is ridiculously stupid – one guard didn’t find me in a bush that he kept staring at for a minute, then he went to take a piss that took two seconds (!), only to continue his brainless wandering around the environment. The guards, all complete with names, which, frankly, felt somewhat useless, can be tossed into a barrel after knocking them out, only to see ALL of them have the same position and facial expression in it… I’d rather not comment on it. That’s still not all: you can craft, collect items (like bottles that can divert the guards’ attention), and sure, that’s good that We Happy Few has a ton of checkpoints, but you’re going to need them. Technically, the game is far from impressive. The frame rate can quickly fall from thirty frames per second into the twenties, and there are several bugs despite the game being in early access for a long time. In general, We Happy Few doesn’t feel like a 60-dollar game. It seems like an indie title trying to wear big boy pants. It seeks to make itself look more significant than what it is, and it fails miserably.

Positive?

Do I have to say something positive? Okay, the way the Joy changes the world around you is exciting. The environment looks a lot like the hippies’ sixties style with a touch of the seventies as well. The graphics are not that good, especially not on the PlayStation 4. (And don’t forget the frame rate issues either.) Audio-wise, the game is alright, but that’s all I can say about it. Sally and Ollie have a bit of different gameplay (the former has more of a focus on stealth than Arthur, the latter is a bit of explosive character).

The redundancy also shows during the exploration of the procedurally generated world. You get hungry, and guess what? I don’t think it’s even a problem if you don’t eat anything. I never died from starvation. The gameplay has additional gameplay systems, and thus, I wasn’t that curious to check out the sandbox mode.

No.

We Happy Few gets a five out of ten for one reason: it severely lacks polish. I think it came out a good six months too early: initially, Arthur’s story is quite good, but it becomes boring far too fast, and I don’t think you’ll end up checking out Sally’s story after completing the game for the first time… and let’s not even go into Ollie’s chances. We Happy Few wanted to be a first-person survival RPG, but what did it become? One of the disappointments of the year. And this team developed Contrast in late 2013, which was a good game (and also one of the first PlayStation Plus titles).

-V-

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Publisher: Gearbox Publishing

Developer: Compulsion Games

Genre: first-person survival sandbox RPG

Relase date: August 10, 2018