As a lifelong gamer, I’ve never been a fan of “Early Access” or most of the games funded on Kickstarter. Before you give me grief, think back to when you first started this hobby – if you’re old like me, you probably relied on friends, gaming magazines (before the age of the interwebz), or box art to make your decision when looking for something new to play. In the present day, we have so many ways to research a game before we purchase it, it’s not even funny. While this is good for the consumer, game publishers and developers need new ways to draw us in, and since demos are on a steady decline (which many devs say actually hurt their income), they seek out other ways to draw us in. With these newer methods, they will often release slick trailers or promise certain mechanics that sound amazing on paper, but often fail in execution, all the while asking for your hard earned money long before the game is finished. That is without a hair of doubt the case with We Happy Few. 

The story follows an alternate version of Europe where America did not intervene during the Second World War and much of the country is in shambles. To combat depression, the powers that be fed the masses a drug called Joy. Joy makes you happy whether you are or not, and in a unique way, changes how you view the game world and takes away any negative thoughts that plague you, essentially erasing them from your memory. If you decide to take the drug at some point, the world will appear clean and orderly. Off of the drug, you see the truth – everything is in disarray and the population has completely lost their minds and treats others that they discover not on the drug as criminals, calling them “downers.” If you’re discovered as one of the dreaded unhappy people, you’ll be bludgeoned into submission and left to die. The story follows three protagonists in an intertwined tale of loss and how each of the characters is trying to piece together their own mysteries. The story is well crafted and drives the player to want to explore the world, but sadly, everything else sucks the joy out of the experience.

The game blends scripted events with randomized sandbox/survival mechanics. The scripted areas, such as the opening that was included in the original demo, are great; it’s everything in between that is awful. The majority of the open world gameplay will involve trying to locate specific items within a randomized game world, which wouldn’t be that bad if the world didn’t have a habit of changing mid game, also resulting in one of the longest loading screens I’ve ever encountered. On more than one occasion, I thought the game locked up during this only to have a sliver of the bar fill up a second before rebooting the software. This will occasionally work in your favor, moving one of the items closer to your current position, but often results in meandering around one of the most frustrating open worlds in recent history.

On top of the survival mechanics, you’ll have to manage your inventory in a careful manner, as crafting is a huge part of the game and many districts within will attack you simply for wearing the wrong clothes. In other situations they’ll attack you because, well… I honestly have no idea, but when they do, the enemies come in huge swarms and are relentless in their pursuit. Sure, you can fight back (good luck if you’re dealing with more than a couple of them) or  hide in various containers, but all of the dastardly Joy users seem to have acquired X-ray vision as a side effect of the drug. You can try to sneak around the enemies, but the randomized areas make trying to experiment or find alternate paths fruitless, as failure results in a new area being loaded. Once frustration set in, I simply found myself running from point A to point B, hoping for the best with a trail of enemies following me.

If you’ve played the demo or Early access version, very little has changed in terms of presentation. The abstract character and level design works well and succeeds at making We Happy Few feel like a spiritual successor to Bioshock or Dishonored; however, the comparisons end there, with the game feeling like an utter failure on every other front. The fetch quests are boring, the crafting is never-ending, and the overall mechanics fail to impress, with combat being the weakest link. As I mentioned previously, our protagonists are barely able to defend themselves against the hordes of enemies, even when armed and going up against enemies who are using their bare fists – this is due to your attacks feeling as if they lack any power and are often heavily delayed. With this being said, the game would’ve been better off taking the route Outlast and countless other titles have done, which is simply removing combat entirely and requiring you to hide.

While the scripted elements and story are worth taking note of, We Happy Few is anything but a joyous romp through an alternate reality that could have rivaled the games it clearly drew inspirations from. The game still feels unfinished, despite the Early Access phase having ended, leaving an empty, joyless shell in the place of a title that many, including myself, were looking forward to as “the next Bioshock.” Even at a deep discount, I would strongly recommend leaving this game in the gutter with all of the other downers on the market.

3 out of 10

Pros

• Interesting Story
• Scripted Elements

Cons

• Literally Everything Else
• Horrendous Loading Times
• Lackluster AI and Mechanics

We Happy Few was developed by Compulsion Games and published by Gearbox Publishing. It launched on PC, PS4 and X1 on August 10th, 2018 for $59.99. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of We Happy Few, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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