QCF: Broken Lines (Steam)

hen deciding to review Broken Lines I was unsure why I was so interested in playing it. I am not good at all at strategy games of any kind, and I have very little interest in war themed entertainment. Then I realized what it was that drew me to the Steam digital game released by Super! Publishing. I thought back to other games that tackled turned based strategy in an alternate timeline of war in the twentieth century, and I was eager to see how the developer PortaPlay would approach this hybrid of RPG and tactics. I was happy to find out that Broken Lines takes influence from strategy games from the current generation and the recent development of mental state mechanics of newer independent role-playing games to create a solid entry into the genre. A story that sometimes misfires and AI that can frustrate does not take too much away from a challenging and satisfying experience.

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QCF: Papers, Please

oral choices in most games are easy. Save enough little sisters in Bioshock- you get the good ending, kill any and you're the worlds biggest monster. These choices are so ultimately binary that it's easy to even forget that they're questions of morality to begin with. Even when dealing with a complex issue, there's always a prompt telling you what kind of decision you made, regardless of your reasoning. "Yes and no" or "right and wrong" stick firmly into our heads to the point where we'll always know where our choices take us and what kind of end game they'll eventually lead us to.

However, Papers, Please doesn't play by those rules. In fact, it doesn't really play by any. There's no right or wrong here, only moral uncertainty and shades of horrific grays that lead to an experience which is devastatingly horrific, monotonous, and perplexing fun at the same time. Basically, it's one of the most interesting and creative video games you'll play all year.

Just don't expect to leave it feeling good about yourself.

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