There were lots of interesting decisions to make, it just didn't work that well in practice. You can make your rioters more aggressive with Molotov cocktails and more violent activists. With each level you compete, new gear, levels or characters are opened up, which does give you some sense of progression. In fact, that increased variety meant that we preferred playing as the long arm of the law. Moreover, the different units types offered a bit more scope in terms of tactics. There's was a bit of difference between the two sides, though, with the police moving in more organised groups. Again, it was still confusing as to what was going on as you selected groups of cops and marched them into harm's way. Before the fight, we got to choose from a range of different troops such as ballistic officers and some with riot shields. We never totally felt in control, which ripped a lot of the fun out of it for us. We found that moving our groups toward the objective was sluggish and often we'd just let the game do its thing. In the levels that followed, we were instructed to do things like hold a bridge, or blow up generators. Naturally, if you put it on the hardest setting, it's more of a struggle. Sure, we had it on the easiest difficulty setting in this playthrough, but even then we weren't exactly sure how we'd won.
#RIOT CIVIL UNREST GAME POLICE LOUDOUT SERIES#
It led us to the assessment that RIOT: Civil Unrest is probably best played with a mouse and a keyboard than it was a controller (we reviewed the game on PS4).ĭuring the battle, there were a series of tweets or texts that told us things like someone had been hurt, or that it was getting too frantic, but we had no idea where these things were happening. Then there was throwing things like firecrackers, which were quite difficult to aim. Moving the groups with the stick felt sluggish and almost out of your control. Upon pressing one of them, it did give you a little advice as to what it did, but even then, it wasn't overly clear. Up in the top left-hand corner, there were four icons that were assigned to each of the face buttons.
#RIOT CIVIL UNREST GAME POLICE LOUDOUT HOW TO#
We had four different mobs to take charge of, and we found ourselves learning how to do things by pressing things at random. The first level threw us in at the deep-end. Sure, a riot is supposed to out of control, but it was hard to see what was happening at times. The actual gameplay looked okay, but it was very hard to know what was going on. Speaking of graphics, the whole game is built in a pixelart style, and for anyone who is not a fan of this type of thing, walk away now. This element of strategic planning added a nice balancing element to our preparations.Īfter a stunning pixelated cutscene about anger against a new train being built, we were thrust into our first showdown, where we had to stand our ground and stop the police from crushing our tents. The more aggressive the prepared equipment, the lower the turnout of protesters. Before we went to stand up for our rights, we got to pick what equipment and armour we would use. We initially jumped into Story mode and played as the protestors. There are three different modes - Global, Story and Versus - along with three difficulty settings ranging from Too Easy to Lawless. Alternatively, you can even be the man to whom it gets stuck! The game affords you the chance to take control of a group of protesters as they make their feelings known and stick it to the man. You head into events based on world history such as the Arab Spring, and environmental issues in Greece and Italy. There is even a message from the developers telling you they tried to be unbiased, asking you to research and come to your own opinion about each event depicted in the game. On paper, it sounds great, if not a little controversial.
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Sadly, for all its potential, the delivery wasn't quite there.
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The whole thing is built around eye-catching pixelart graphics, and it comes with lots of novel ideas. It's an RTS where you can take control of rioters or police and recreate violent unrest based on famous altercations that take place around the world. RIOT: Civil Unrest had potential in spades.