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A Force More Frustrating

It's a shame. The game "A Force More Powerful" has the potential to be a great game but there is simply too much in there. It suffers from the same problems that most educational games have. Namely a poor interface, pages and pages of needless text and little visual payoff.

Let's start with the graphics. The screen is dominated by a cityscape that serves no purpose that I can see. The only interaction options you have with the city is to view the names of certain building and some basic info on them. The navigation Looks purposely analog, as if it's all hand-written. There is also a huge disconnect between the people within the city. The politicians and the police are literally three times the size of the citizens, this strikes me as more of a mistake than having any sort of reference to the power difference betweent he leader and the people.

Now lets look at the interface. Menu upon menu upon menu upon menu. You have to dive through several pages of menus just to get any of your "character" to do anything. Most of these screens are bogged down with way too much needless information about the fictional country you are in, its economy, and its people. Successfully navigating the interface requires you to abandon everything you know about games and think like a designer who stopped playing games in 1976.
I can see how the idea was to show you how non-violent protest is a complex affair, but I really don't need to attempt to bring someone to my side for three months, only to find out that they need an additional three months of training to do anything useful.

Games like this work best when they are pseudo-realistic. Could you imagine how tedious The Sims would be if it forced you to realistically go through every mundane activity required to live? This game needs serious streamlining as well as a complete graphics overhaul. If you are trying to convince a player that nonviolent forms of protest are the way to go, don't make it next to impossible to succeed. Even a serious game needs to be entertaining. Without any entertainment, the game basically become the interactive equivalnt of a soapbox; hard to empathise with and easy to forget.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on October 10, 2007 1:27 PM.

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