The effects of a tear gas canister being fired are truly terrifying as is the constant level of chaos and mass protesting. Little cutscenes are horrific, but really work well with the visual choice and the inclusion of the audio sees it all absolutely well designed dramatic and a real drama heightener. On the good side though, RIOT: Civil Unrest utilises a pixel art design that actually shouldn’t work on paper, but is totally perfect for this game. Maybe there is a lesson here, but overall it really does make the gameplay a bit of a nightmare to control. What if this is what the development team wanted to happen? These situations are chaotic, sometimes arbitrary and totally random events that can’t be controlled when the circumstances heat up. Who? How do I help? Civil Unrest doesn’t really offer you much in the way of a tutorial either so you’re just thrown in there, trying to work out the controls and plans of action as you go.Īs strange as this seems though, this whole experience got me thinking. What barricade? How have I lost it? “Seven casualties”. Very quickly you’ll be left with loads of people on screen at once, running, protesting, and milling around, with announcements appearing at the bottom of the screen. But what the game doesn’t prepare you for is the complete and utter mindless chaos. When you start each scenario you may well have many plans to mind, ready to action as soon as things get going. You also have access to a ballistic unit who will fire out plastic bullets and tear gas on command. Then you might have an attacking force who will rush at those who are out of control, truncheons out and aggressively moving them back step by step.
For example, you have the shield units on the front line, holding station and keeping the protesters in one place. When taking charge of the police force though, it all gets a bit more complicated as you have different units to control. With the latter, a number of icons appear above the action to give you a set of clear options – do you to throw rocks or petrol bombs at the police? Or would you prefer going for a more peaceful approach, opting to lay on the ground or utilising social media to showcase the police actions through the eyes of the world. With the protesters, you must corral the masses to keep them all together, before then trying to action the peaceful approach, or a more aggressive violent one.
You see, the whole scene is covered and you are able to zoom in and out of the action. Without beating around the bush, RIOT: Civil Unrest is a game that might well play out a whole load better with a mouse and keyboard, as the console controller interface just doesn’t feel very fluid with the action on screen.īut should you get to grips with what is going on, then it is defintiely much easier to play on the protesting side of the fence as opposed that of the law, something which I will readily admit got me completely lost with. But how do you do this, I can hear you ask? Well, this is the tricky part. The missions have goals like holding the ground for the protesters, or trying to push these guys back should you side with the police. The set up is that you choose to play either as the Police or the Protesters, taking part in a number of missions or reenactments through the campaign.
Thirdly we see some bits set in Italy covering the proposed demolition of properties for a high-speed railway and the last puts us up in Greece – there is a protest that gets out of hand with an environmental issue. The first is the Arab Spring and the revolution that happened in Egypt, while the second is that of the Catalan protests in Spain. In the story mode, you are presented with four options, with a variety of locations and political upheavals over the last few years all present.