Valiant Hearts: The Great War (Xbox ONE)

Games with Gold on Xbox has caused my game collection to swell at an uncontrollable level now that they are offering four games a month across both platforms. It’s got to the stage where I’m actually glad to see a game I already have come up just so I know I won’t be adding to my collection. Who turns down free games?

Valiant Hearts: the Great War is a good one to come up though as it is a relatively quick and painless completion – gaming wise anyway.

Valiant Hearts is a fictional recreation of the lives of several different people during World War I. World War I wasn’t the most happy time period to live through and Valiant Hearts accurately captures this in a very emotive story driven game. I did have to spread it out over a few days though because it was far too depressing to plough through in one sitting. Not only the story has this effect but also, the music fully supports the theme as well. I’m not saying it’s bad. In fact, it is very good that the game is so emotive.

Gameplay wise, it’s another 2D sidescroller (which I seem to playing a lot of at the moment – really get the most of the power in my Xbox One!) mixed with puzzle solving. It’s generally non-combat which is great considering it’s a war time game, a real change from the norm. You do occasionally have to bonk people on the head though.

In terms of controls it is very nearly flawless. There was only part I got stuck on when I had to line up this gun thing with an explosive to destroy a door. For some reason I simply could not get the gun to line up with what I needed to destroy. It was the only time the controls were an issue for me though.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 20 Achievements

Playing through the main story will get you nine achievements. There are another four for collecting the surprisingly tricky to find collectibles scattered throughout the game world. That leaves seven achievements for doing a load of random stuff which is also secret for the most part.

There is one for petting the dog who will no doubt win the ‘gaming animal of the year’ award and this is probably one of the easiest achievements in gaming history. The dog is seriously the best part of the game. I developed a more emotive attachment to the dog than any of the main characters so it was nice to see an achievement surrounding him.

There are certain sections of the game where you have to escape from the Germans in a car. For these sections the game switches from side scrolling to downward scrolling as you race away from your enemies. There is an achievement for completing any one of these sections without taking any damage. I managed this on a single playthrough but if you don’t, there is no need to panic as the game offers loadable checkpoints at the beginning of each chapter.

Of the other five only one was problematic. One of the characters is a nurse and you have to complete quick-time events to bandage up people who have been hurt during the fighting. In my opinion, the hardest achievement in the game is for completing the hardest Quicktime event at the end of the game. It took me several attempts to get this right.

The last achievement I unlocked was for collecting all the historical items and as I said at the beginning, some of these were really well hidden. Thankfully the game offers chapter select to pick up the ones you missed.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I enjoyed Valiant Hearts despite its depressing nature. It was nice to play a war game where I wasn’t required to blow off the heads of enemies for ten hours. Hopefully Ubisoft will work on more games like this in the future.