Though only the second game to date from Compulsion Games, We Happy Few proves one thing about the studio – they know how to create a captivating world to explore. The studio’s follow up to 2013’s Contrast is an incredibly ambitious title that has grown leaps and bounds since it first hit Early Access nearly two years ago. Their ambition growth as a team paid off in some ways and in other ways they seemed to miss the mark.
Story
The story is the heart of We Happy Few. Through Early Access and now as it hits full retail release, the story has been what has stood out the most to everyone who has played it. You play as Arthur, a man dealing with a past he is supposed to forget, while navigating a present and future he just doesn’t understand. In an alternate World War Two era where the Germans have invaded and taken off with most of the children in the countries they have taken over and Arthur finds himself in a dead-end job trying to remember exactly why he wasn’t taken by the Germans and why his brother Percy was. The reason Arthur has trouble remembering comes down to one key aspect to this reality – he and everyone he knows has been forced to take a new drug called Joy to forget everything bad about their tragic pasts. “A Happy Country is one without a past.”
Arthur has the choice in the very beginning. Does he take his Joy and become snug as a bug on a drug? Or does he stop taking his Joy and suffer the consequences. The choice is yours.
Choosing to stop taking Joy will lead Arthur on a journey to search for answers to all his questions. Your adventure will take you to many different locations and you’ll interact with all sorts of interesting people both friend and foe.
Upon completion of Arthur’s story, you’ll also have the chance to play through two other characters stories: Ollie and Sally.
At one point in development the game offered permadeath as a gameplay staple and, while this is still present on the hardest difficulty, they found that people cared way more about the story than any of the roguelike elements of the game. The story is really something and if you don’t play We Happy Few for any other reason, check it out for the story.
Gameplay
Most of your time spent playing We Happy Few will be searching for items and crafting others while solving puzzles and making your way from location to location. You’ll also have some stealth and combat sections to break up the monotony of crafting as well. These areas play out a lot like the game Dishonored, they just aren’t nearly as interesting.
As you travel through the game you’ll be picking up any items that you can to craft lock picks, healing balm, bandages, weapons and even clothes. The biggest problem with this system is the fact that no matter how much you gather and how many items you craft, unless you are playing the game on the hardest difficulty you rarely need them. The crafting system is incredibly ambitious and you can create a ton of objects that can help you along the way – yet you’ll find that every time you need something (like a lock pick), if you don’t have one on you there is something in the vicinity that bails you out with the exact item that you need. It’s because of situations like this there really is no sense of urgency about the game. No situation feels dire and even the combat sections never make you feel like you’re in actual danger.
To that point, there is a very intricate system involving your stamina. As you play through the game you’ll need to continually eat, drink, and rest to maintain peak physical form. Failing to do so will cause such minor penalties to your character that the system feels nearly pointless. Run out of food in your belly or need water? You’ll simply be able to sprint for less time until you replenish whatever resource you need. This becomes a slight annoyance, but never makes you feel like you’re going to die because of it and, truthfully, you’ll never actually die due to running out of any of those items.
Combat is mostly hand to hand and you’ll use your fists along with a variety of melee weapons to block and attack the Bobbys and other enemies you’ll face. However, even if you’re outnumbered most the time, running away will allow you to escape unharmed if sneaking around has failed you.
Graphics and Sound
We Happy Few has a certain cartoony charm about it that is sort of reminiscent of the Bioshock series of games. The alternative history setting will also seem familiar to fans of Bioshock as well. The amount of control that you have over the graphical settings is spectacular. You can find the right configuration for you and your PC that will make the game look and perform perfectly. The procedurally generated elements of the game are flawless and load times are nearly nonexistent. With the lack of permadeath on most play modes, you may not even realize the areas are procedurally generated unless you play through the game a second time.
The sound is great here as well. Music fitting of the period and spectacular voice acting will ensure that the game sounds as great as it looks. With the story being front and center here it was important to have such great voice acting to really sell the story and they nailed that.
Recommendation
Fans of walking simulators and story driven games will find a lot to love here. While some of the systems in the game are rather intricate they tend to be unnecessary and even tedious at times, making the gameplay and puzzles overall drab and boring. With such a mixed bag of elements it’s hard to recommend We Happy Few to anyone that isn’t up for a long game that is story based. If you’re here for the combat and gameplay alone then the game probably isn’t for you. Having said that, few games out there are like We Happy Few and it almost feels like their problem may have stemmed from too much time in development where too many ideas had time to cook for too long and not all of them had time to be fully realized. Since their acquisition by Microsoft recently, we look forward to seeing what Compulsion Games has in store for us next since their first two games showed a lot of unrealized potential.
*We Happy Few was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
