World War 1 was probably one of the least glamorous conflicts in European history.
Men fought and died crawling in muddy entrenchments, thousands of soldiers were thrown into machine gun fire just for very small forward advances, and it was the first time in history chemical warfare was used and the only defense was a urine soaked rag strapped across the nose and mouth.
So it's not surprising that the video game industry hasn't tackled it in any meaningful way as of yet.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War is the first in that respect. It is a game built by Ubisoft Montpellier, the studio that worked on Rayman Legends and even lives in the same Ubiart framework build for that game and is shared with Child of Light.
Make no mistake, this is a puzzle adventure game through and through. In the midst of a raging battle you'll need to stop and find a lever, operate a crane to grab a wheel to turn a crank, and throw well placed dynamite to clear the way.
It's a side scroller, but with the parallaxing layers and other background elements, the world feels truly larger than you would expect. You often move between the foreground and background which makes the environments feel even bigger. And the level of detail in the scenes is top notch but true to the theme of a dirty and gruesome war.
The gameplay tries to incorporate anything and everything that you're familiar with about World War One. Gas attacks, tanks and sappers. But they are really just window dressing for the puzzles. What gives you a break from the convoluted puzzles that you would expect from the genre is stealth sections and action sequences.
Stealth sections require waiting for guards to look the other way before you take them down, and also sections where you can only progress if you avoid the patterns of machine gun fire. Both of these and other situations utilize a really cool picture in picture that looks a lot like a comic book panel. It helps convey action happening out of your immediate sight and works really well in that respect.
The story is based on actual world war 1 letters and rewritten to create a 4 character, intertwined story that is delivered very effectively. Where the game shrines for me is the characters. I found myself rushing through all the puzzle sections just to see what happened next. While everyone only speaks a few words, everyone has their own motivations and goals.
There's Emile the French dairy farmer, who was conscripted into the French army. Karl, his German son in law who was living on the farm with Emile and his daughter until he was called back to the fatherland to fight. Freddy the American who was living in Paris when war broke, is seeking revenge after a German bombing run ruined his life. And Anna, a student who is trying to find out what happened to her father who was working in Germany when the war began.
The little story beats during and the long cutscenes in between levels really set the game apart from other adventure puzzle games.
The game in generally does a nice job depicting the horrors of the great war while telling you the personal story of the 4 main characters, however, there are some parts that take away from it.
One is during the game you will get a notification to pop open the menu and read more about the war with a photograph and a little but of history. These are nice because you can learn about this period in history, but it makes it hard to recommend a game that will randomly show you photographs of disfigured soldiers while you were just trying to find a lever. It's a little heavy handed sometimes, but I appreciate the notion.
Speaking of levers, there are a lot of levers. There isn't a huge variety of puzzles but enough to keep things varied, and the goals thereof are mostly in context, albeit still rather convoluted. It seems there aren't many problems in the first world war that can't be solved with a shovel and well placed dynamite.
Overall, Valiant Hearts is a gorgeous adventure that plays to it's strengths of it's art and story while offering puzzles that are just the right level of difficult. For a $15 dollar title, you can't really go wrong for a 5 hour experience that may tug at your heartstrings and maybe even teach you something.