Since then, there's been the famous (and excellent) Jeff Wayne composed rock-opera of the same name, a cheesy but fun 1950s feature length film, and most recently, the Steven Spielberg adaptation, which swapped London for America. Now, the latest in the long line of adaptations has arrived, in the form of an Xbox 360 Arcade game. But is it any good? Sadly, not quite.
The original screenshots and information in the build up to The War of the World's Xbox 360 release was promising, so I was honestly looking forward to the game. The HG Wells novel is one of my favourite books, and I've been enjoying the Jeff Wayne CD adaptation ever since I was a child. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I went into the game actually enjoying it. The stark black and white, reminiscent of the style Limbo successfully adopts really works in this destroyed 1950s London setting. Patrick Stewart's narration is compelling and well scripted, and the accompanying music is tense and rather grand sounding. As for the gameplay...well, that's where the problem lies.
Let's start with Arthur himself. For starters, Arthur is somewhat poorly rendered, and could have done with a bit more detail, especially as the scenery is brilliant. Secondly, I had a real problem with Arthur's running in the game. He runs like he is wading through treacle (either that, or he is really old), which really slows the pace down quite dramatically. Also, you cannot climb over ledges or traverse ledges unless you are standing at an exact straight line underneath the ledge. If not, Arthur awkwardly glances upright, and stands still until you try to re-align him once again. It's silly little errors like this that make the game incredibly frustrating. Also, it helps to add to your already high in-game death count.
Speaking of deaths, Arthur will die suddenly-a lot. This often happens from falling awkwardly from a ledge, the navigation messing up when you've just made it to a band of fire, or when Arthur refuses to move just as an enemy starts to attack him. If the controls aren't messing up, the deaths come from the games tricky difficulty. Whilst a challenge is not a bad thing, dying constantly starts to wear thin after a while. The checkpoints are also so spaced apart that there are often times when large chunks of levels have to be re-played. Unfortunately, this generally happened on the levels which required a bit more leniency with the checkpoints, such as the second levels escape from one of the walkers. Also, levels have to be completed in one sitting, as there are no save points until the level has been completed. So, you better be prepared to sit back and agonisingly watch your character die continuously on the harder levels until you finally manage to crack it.
It's a shame that The War of the Worlds did not meet up to my expectations. The game does succeed in creating an excellent style and atmosphere, and the narration, voiced by Patrick Stewart is brilliantly scripted and a joy to listen to. There are some great background animations, such as the walkers blowing up the London scenery, and the accompanying rumbles through your controller add to the tension. However, it is hard to praise the game for these points when the gameplay is so poor in comparison. The War of the Worlds suffers from repeated dying, some clunky controls, frustratingly boring puzzles, a plodding character, and poorly placed checkpoints.Whilst the game definitely gets the feel of the apocalyptic London setting that HG Wells presented in his brilliant novel, for the most part, fans of the book may not enjoy this, due to the negative points I've already stressed about. It's disappointing, but this really did not win me over.
