We Happy Few

Beaten in: 19 Hours

We Happy Few takes place in a timeline where Germany reigned victorious after World War II and has England bowing to their whims. Children are sent to the German mainland without reason, and the quiet town of Wellington Wells is plunged into a drug-induced mirage of peaceful, happy co-existence. With pills called “Joy” helping citizens forget the atrocities of the past, uprising is far less likely. But this fake sense of tranquility brings about its own problems. Citizens refusing to live under Joy’s medicinal spell are outcast to the borders of city, forced to live in decrepit, crumbling houses while they wait to starve to death. The citizens of Wellington Wells are always happy to see you, but only if you abide by their rules.

As soon as i finished “We Happy Few”. I had a feeling of Well!! not so happy but also not so sad. “We Happy Few” is a “ Diamond in the Rough” game as of current stage, It has some great positives of the game but many negatives overtakes those positives, Here is my review / thoughts on “We Happy Few”:

Pros:

• Let’s start off with the story, It’s pretty amazing, you play on 3 acts, Controlling  3 different characters throughout the acts in the game, All of them have their own aim to accomplice and problems to face and at the end each of them have an impactful ending to them. During those missions of each characters, there are indeed some memorable moments to twist and turns throughout the story. What may start out as a relatively simple quest to cross a bridge or enter a building can suddenly transform into a quiz show, or an indoctrination seminar, or even a game of Simon Says. These moments strike the right balance between comedy, horror, and drama.

• Apart from the main three characters, I also have to give a shout out to the face of Wellington Wells, Uncle Jack, who’s played byJulian Casey (Arrival). Unlike most of the performances in the game Uncle Jack is live-action,appearing on television screens everywhere and sharing his messages to help keep spirits high. Uncle Jack is quite charming and adds great atmosphere to the game, while also being super creepy at the same time. He makes you a little uncomfortable, but you still have to sit and watch his program. Because come on, it’s Uncle Jack! I actually found myself wishing they used some clips of him during the game’s load screens, which can be lengthy at times.

• Speaking of story, it’s a pretty long story to playthrough it. As you play 3 acts in the game. It took me around 18 hours to beat it with doing the story, doing many side-quest ( but stopped doing them at the mid of the game ) and just exploring the world of “We Happy Few”.

• “ We Happy Few “ has some excellent voice acting and amusing dialogue throughout

• Some of the characters you meet during the game are interesting with their backstories and how they go here. Some of them can be lovable and have great humor while other characters are hateable and not lovable.

• If you are the guy who loves soundtrack in video games. This game have some great soundtrack indeed.

• The concept of “ We Happy Few “ is outstanding. Letting people forget about the horror past by giving them a pill called “Joy” is mind-blowing. If a person is not on Joy or they overtake them, Cops / Doctors chase them down and take them down is amazing to experience, On short the concept of the game and the story driven by it is an A+ from me.

• With the concept of the game, Its creates a perfect atmosphere. As you walk through The villages if you are on “Joy” pill, You see everyone happy and butterfly flying around you but if you are out of “Joy” you see the horror of people eating animals to killing.

• As “ We Happy Few ” is an open-world game, The world is huge to explore and see different activities happening around it. The world of Wellington Wells that Compulsion has created in We Happy Few is worthy of much praise. It can be dark and massively depressing at times. But once you reach Hamlyn Village—the city of Joy where people simply pop a pill into their mouth from time to time and carry on with their happy lives, blissfully ignorant of the real world—it’s something not quite like anything I’ve ever seen in video games before. These areas look like they were designed and built by Willy Wonka himself while on LSD. Lots and lots of LSD.

Cons:

• Perhaps the biggest issue in “ We Happy Few “ and Number 1 problem, are the many bugs and technical issues that plague the game. The UI for Dig Spot chests sometimes doesn’t appear. Characters often hover in the air. People despawn and cops respawn during the curfew time in the villages. And it isn’t uncommon to see an NPC get stuck in the environment, or to get stuck yourself. The AI is oddly inconsistent, and often unpredictable. On the one hand, I’ve managed to sneak up to a guard and quietly take down his buddy 2 feet away without the man budging. In other cases, simple break-in attempts while crouching in the bushes would often alert the entire town of Hamlyn, which brought the aggro of a huge angry mob wielding blunt objects. This unwanted combat will likely occur quite a bit, and force you to inconveniently dash to safety or leap into a garbage can to painstakingly wait it out until they’ve forgotten about you.It’s grievances like this that further detract from the overall experience and make it hard to get properly invested in the game. The game needs an patch to fix them ASAP.

• While the Village’s in the game are full of activities of main story to side-quest or just exploring around, The garden district and other parts are just full of emptiness as it’s only useful on collecting flowers for crafting ( which is not great ) or if you wanna run around for some reason.

• Another huge problem ( either i faced it or its game’s fault ) is the performance issue, i had low FPS on high setting when playing though the game ( from 10 to 30 FPS ) and the same issue continued on setting everything on low. This made me  frustrated and angry at lot of points during my playthrough of the game. This game also needs an optimization patch ASAP.

• Another frustrating thing of this game is the loading screen, while you’re moving across the map quickly. When sprinting to escape enemies or even just walking at normal speed continuously for a bit, the game will sometimes stop dead and jump to a loading screen. It’s extremely frustrating when it happens. Like being punched awake from a dream.

• This game have a bad stealth mechanic, where you can sneak around a play and do the objective but it fails to recreate stealth as Dishonored game has, Its pointless as combat is not great and if you get seen, you either fight it on or hide.

• Speaking of combat, Fighting is first-person melee and it’s the same dull hit-or-block approach is made worse by the daft juggle of controls to try to get a weapon in hand, by which point the haphazard damage modelling might mean you’re all but dead after a single hit. Or indeed the enemies might start spinning on the spot, walking away from where you’re stood in the open, calling out to try to find you.

• Another problem is the implementation of the crafting. You can get through most of the game without crafting, beyond making the odd consumable or story item. I expected crafting to be more central to the experience and give me the chance to get creative, but you can approach nearly every fight the same way: you just need to hit your opponent, block, and then repeat the process until you win. You’re never encouraged to go deeper than that with the tools you can construct. And, even when I actively tried to use the caltrops, tranquilliser darts, and vomit bombs, it felt far less efficient than simply going in and thrashing someone with a cricket bat.

• The upgrades in the game are a bit of a letdown, too, acting more as an admission of guilt. Most of the upgrades simply remove the survival mechanics that bog the game down, which begs the question of why those mechanics are there in the first place.

• Another problem is with the game’s save system. You can save anywhere you want, which is a big plus, but you won’t be right where you saved when you load. You’ll either be at the nearest hatch shelter, or somewhere near where you saved. This can be both problematic and helpful, depending on your situation. If you’re stuck out in public and your Joy is about to run out, for example, saving and then loading that save could get you to a safe spot. But the real problem lies in actually loading a save file. There’s no way to do this from the pause menu that I could find. Which means if you’re screwed and want to load a save file, you have to pause, exit to the main menu, choose the save to load, and then wait while the game loads back up again. This is where I really wished there was something entertaining from Uncle Jack to enjoy while waiting.

• An important factor of “ We Happy Few “ is the survival elements. The survival elements feel massively underdeveloped, and though you can technically customise them prior to playing or pick another difficulty level to tweak them, it’s hard to understand what impact your choices will have before getting started on a normal playthrough. While completing quests, you‘ll need to keep a constant eye on multiple status bars detailing your level of hunger, thirst, and the amount of sleep you’re getting. On top of this, you also have to take Joy to blend in with the population inside more affluent areas. These mechanics do nothing but inflate the game’s length and test your patience, rather than add any real value.

• Speaking of side-quests, while a lot of them are interesting and fun to see what they offer. The reason i stopped doing them is the main issue this game currently have, Bugs to respawn of enemies and performance issue made me un-interested on side-quests

Final Verdict: 6 / 10 ( Alright ):

In “ We Happy Few “ I had a great time playing the main storyline and seeing where it takes me with the 3 playable characters in 3 acts and the ending were worth the time i spend it it and must be played for the story and setting it is for. But then It’s a “ Diamond in a rough “ Game as of current stage and i got pissed off and frustrated on the bugs, Performance issues, Empty world, Annoying mechanics to bad stealth and combat system. So is it worth $49.99 asking price, NO! Just wait for it to get fixed and maybe than it can be an 7 or 8 / 10 game or get it if it’s on sale ( 30$ minimum or less than that )