I abandoned them to their war, their dreary house, their misery. Marko curled up in his pencil sketch of a bed, Bruno standing at the stove cooking the last of the rat, Pavle slowly bleeding through his bandages. I left them there, my three friends, coded into memory. So I turned the game off and I walked away. And there was no way this story was going to end well. There's no way you can play and not see yourself in it. The storytelling in This War is heartbreakingly present. He couldn't stop talking about the men he'd murdered. In the morning, Bruno checked the rat traps and found a little food, but we saved it. We used our last bandage on him, but it wasn't going to be enough. But This War of Mine won't let you forget that even when all the choices are bad, some are worse than others. So rarely does a game make you feel the weight of the awful things that you do. And I felt every inch of Marko's remorse because, really, I'd killed those men. He laid down in bed and stayed there until Bruno went to talk to him. He just kept saying I killed them and I can't do this anymore. Marko was in shock when he got back to the apartment. It was a simplified version of the reality lived by people in terrible places all over the world. We are champion zombie killers, hero alien-slayers with infinite lives. They are projections of our best selves or worst selves under impossible circumstances.
Much of the time, videogames are stories that we tell ourselves. But 'This War of Mine' won't let you forget that even when all the choices are bad, some are worse than others. Hope that what you have will hold you as the days pile up and the weather grows colder and the radio you built from scrap and scavenged parts tells you that there's no end in sight. Or you hide and hope that no one comes to take what's yours. During the day, you perform tasks: You build beds and cook food and clear rubble and try to make the time pass. The way it plays out is as a resource management game, but one with brutal stakes. No, you're just a civilian (three civilians, really), trapped in the ruin of an apartment and trying to survive while the war surrounds you on all sides. It's feels like Sarajevo during the Bosnian conflict, but change the art a little and it could be anywhere because you're not playing as a soldier, some indestructible front-line Rambo with machine guns and hand grenades.
It's a war game, based in a city under siege. A make-you-never-watch-the-news-the-same-way-again machine. This War of Mine is a survival simulator, but that's maybe putting it too gently. 'This War of Mine' is a survival simulator, but that's maybe putting it too gently.
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