Finished up Valiant Hearts tonight and wow, amazing game and my 2014 GoTY (with Far Cry 4 behind it).
It's basically a super fucking depressing realistic depiction of World War I told through a 90s point & click game in a bite-sized modern layout. You play as 3 characters through like 20 mini-chapters. Each being one focal point of the war and being a few screens long with puzzles to solve through item usage and puzzle boss fights. The story is of the characters is fairly good, but not amazing because they have a bit of plot-armor. But the atmosphere and way the game presents the background of THE WAR is excellent.
Every section has historical facts (they teamed up with the history channel) about the battle, or time period or weather or weapons that relate to the section and for once in an Ubisoft game, the collectibles are actually good and have value besides stat numbers because each collectible is memorabilia from WW1 and many of them are real historical items such as letters, or objects made by soldiers in that location of WW1 whose stuff has been passed down by descendants or is in museums. Experiencing the overwhelming hopelessness of Chemes des Dames, French push against the impossibly fortified germans and finding a real letter by a soldier talking about how little care he has for the war effort and really just wants to be home is heart breaking.
The second most poignent moment of the game, and what really struck the point home for me was in that Chemes des Dames mission where you're being pushed by a bossy commander to keep pushing forward against impossible odds. At one point when I was walking forward and saw turret fire incoming I ran back only to run into my commander's sword, be impaled and die; because that was the choice these soldiers had, keep moving or be killed by your boss behind you. Seeing the game over screen almost made me drop my controller going ..."wow". It really strikes the point home. PS. That's not a story spoiler, you're not supposed to run back and die; the character doesn't die from that. You're supposed to wait for a pause in the bullets and keep moving forward; this is just an example of what happened when I choose to run backwards instead.
The art is very good 2d art and the music is hauntingly beautiful. There's a few problem spots where it goes on a bit too long at 8 hours and so it repeats some of the ideas multiple times, but that's a small blemish on what otherwise is a breath of fresh air and incredible game. It's the Thin Red Line of war videogames.
I'm really glad Ubisoft took a chance with this and sad that I've heard the game didn't make it's money back even with a small team. But there wasn't a lot of marketing for Valiant Hearts (hell, I didn't even know what it was at release because I thought it was that shitty modern Vandal Hearts jrpg remake XBLA). But wow is it good. I highly recommend it and if I taught a history class I'd make everyone play it when we covered WW1. Up there with some of the best war films and books imo and one of the best adventure games I've played in the last few years.
It's also available on every platform known to man. PS/Xbox/Steam/iOS/etc...so pretty much everyone can play it if they want.
