Game news Forget Call of Duty! This video game lets you experience war… the real one!
War isn’t just about frantic fighting, lots of action, and incessant boom-boom. However, when it comes to war video games, we mainly remember these FPS like Call of Duty and Battlefield. But some die-hard war games still resist the invader and seek to offer a different vision of armed conflicts. And this is particularly the case for the game that interests us today!
In the genre of war games, we mainly think of FPS. When we play war, we mainly play war. Except that instead of miming a simulacrum of a pistol in the hand, we find ourselves controlling an MCW with its controller. We shoot, we hide, we camp a position, we grab ground…In the minds of most people, that’s what a war game is. Except it’s a little more complicated than that. There are different games that offer another approach to armed conflicts, whether in terms of message, story or gameplay. Moreover, a few years ago we did a whole article on the subject: Battlefield, CoD, Unknown Soldiers…: can war really be a game?. We were of course talking about This War of Mine, a game which has made an impression in particular thanks to its somewhat particular angle with a question that we unfortunately rarely ask ourselves: what is the daily life of civilians like during the war? And it’s funny because at the time of this article, we were also telling you about another game, not yet released but which wanted to tackle another unusual question: what happens in a hospital of war ? This game is War Hospital, “a war-themed game that celebrates life, not death” the developers tell us. And, you will no doubt have understood, it is he who interests us today.
War Hospital, another look at war
Before giving you our first impressions of the title, a factual point is necessary. War Hospital is a game developed by Brave Lamp Studio, which also works on the cooperative shooter Enemy of the State. On the publisher side, the title appealed to the Nacon teams. But then what is it? Well it’s a management game in which, as its name suggests if you speak the language of Shakespeare at least, a war hospital (also called a field hospital). As Major Henry Wells, your goal is simple: save as many people as possible. Except that it’s easier said than done, especially in the context of the First World War. The injured are pouring in and resources are fewer. We recall that the First World War left more than 9 million dead and missing and 21 million wounded, and that only on the military side. The role of field hospitals was therefore essential at the time, and this is what the developers of Brave Lamp Studio wanted to transcribe with War Hospital. And to bring this new perspective on this era, which is nevertheless adapted to numerous occasions in video games, they got closer to the greatest. The game was indeed produced in collaboration with Imperial War Museums. This is the first title produced in partnership with this British organization which administers museums such as the Churchill War Rooms, HMS Belfast and the Imperial War Museum in London.
But if this partnership could have predicted a title full of information and historical details explained, this is strangely not the case. People who are fond of new historical knowledge alongside the games (as Unknown Soldiers: Memories of the Great War did on a similar subject) will not find anything to satisfy their hunger here. The expertise of the members of Imperial War Museums was mainly used to transcribe a credible reality and operation into the game. Not being a historian, it’s difficult to judge the game categorically on this level. But it is still possible to share with you my modest impressions. A priori, we are on a very documented game. Between the different buildings, questions, positions, ways of proceeding, resources or even decisions, there are many elements to take into account. We don’t just skim the surface of the subject, we plunge both hands into its bowels. Did you know about the existence of medical evacuation stations? Well now you will be able to understand the important place they played in the entire care process (quite chaotic all the same, given the context) in times of war. And besides, this process is only a small part of your management task. In times of war, there were a lot of things to take into account in order to treat the soldiers arriving in droves. In War Hospital, you have to manage the state of fatigue of the employees, the available care resources, the food rations still in stock, the next deliveries to come, the rehabilitation of the wounded, the morale of the troops, the corpses that send them back forces at home or in the trenches (and yes we have to hold the front close to the hospital so as not to all die)… This results in a particularly complete management game that is quite tedious to learn. Saving lives in times of war is far from easy.
Who should live or die?
If there is something that is particularly well transcribed in the game, it is this constant feeling of urgency and crisis. The tone is set from the start: “You won’t be able to save everyone”. Moreover, from the (long) tutorial, from the first patient, you find yourself facing a failure, facing a death. And it won’t be the last! War Hospital is a pretty tough game in which you will always feel like you are on a tightrope. The corpses pile up, the doctors become exhausted and the red lights quickly multiply. And even from the first hours, it is possible to find yourself in total stress in the face of a crisis situation which can quickly seem unmanageable. Especially since it works like a vicious circle. To heal the different soldiers, you have to recruit and/or make improvements, for that you need resources or advantages, to obtain them you have to please the HQ, to please the HQ you have to send treated soldiers to the right place and for that, well… you have to take care of soldiers. In addition, the resources are also linked to different types of patients, just to spice things up a little.
As a result, when something goes wrong, everything can go wrong very quickly. This is why you have to think carefully about your actions but also about your choices. A bit like Frostpunk or This War of Mine, War Hospital confronts you with difficult dilemmas. For the survival of the hospital, we sometimes have to choose to leave a few soldiers in agony on a makeshift stretcher until they die like rats or send back this poor guy who has just undergone a major operation on the front. while knowing that he will end up passing through and never see his wife and 3 children again. We say to ourselves first “it’s just once, a poor unfortunate person sacrificed, just one, to save 100 others”. Except it keeps getting worse… A sacrifice is not enough to alleviate the pressure, the horror, the anguish, far from it. It is still there, it sticks to the skin, a bit like it certainly stuck to those who knew and still know the war (at least that is the“interpretation” what the developers did with it). In terms of gameplay, it also allows you to face a truly challenging experience. It remains to be seen if it remains so and does not become indigestible or too frustrating in the long run.
Unfortunately, our short experience was a bit frustrating. Not because of the difficulty of the title, the rather crude interface of the game, the graphics not really up to date or the objectives and mechanics not always very clear, but rather because of the bugs still very present despite a patch day one already deployed. We lost many minutes restarting the game in a loop due to a disabling bug and that’s a real problem – although it was solved by the simple act of uninstalling and reinstalling the game and we don’t we didn’t have any other bugs afterwards. But Steam players have encountered quite a few. ‘This is partly for this reason that the opinions collected on the platform are generally average. And it’s a shame because otherwise the players salute an interesting management game, a gripping gameplay loop, quite advanced lore, a unique atmosphere (thanks to the dubbing and the AD in particular) and “a magnificent tribute” to the soldiers of the war that was supposed to end all wars… But it seems that, unlike the developers, the people of this world wish to celebrate death, and not life.
Fans of management games, this is a nice new experience, although it still has some shortcomings and unfortunately suffers from disturbing bugs. But apart from that, we still have an interesting dive into the crassest horror of war. A new approach that will surely delight some.