What happens when politicians anthics go out of hand? What happens when the people get tired of corruption of their leaders? People tend to Riot! Depending on how people rioting act however, they can be seen as rebel, or heroes. Indeed, the same can be said about the police as they can become agents of order and peace, or can become agents of brutality and murder.
In RTS strategy game Riot Civil Unrest, we are able to experience a riot as close as we can and its a good learning experience. The developers tried to be as unbiased as possible and since its based on real events its up to you decide if what happened was right or wrong, depending on which side you chose.
When you start the game you are given several options: Global, Story, and Versus (Options as well). In Global mode, you play the game’s story in all main encounters: Italy, Greece, Spain, and Egypt. Playing in this mode gives a more in-depth explanation on why the riots are happening, such as the Tav High-Speed Rail Project on Italy.
When you start you can choose a side the Rebels or the Police and depending on which side you choose your objectives to vary. As Rebels you play on the people’s side and some of the missions have you protecting your camp for a set amount of time, occupy certain area, or hold your ground and stay in a specific area. All examples provided are done within a time limit that must be followed. However ,you can choose if you want to keep your protest pacific or violent. On the top part of the hud there is a gauge of sorts that can tell you the moods of the protesters and police, that is quite handy. If you are pacifist and not attacking the police both groups will stay passive, but if you attack or get attacked the mood can change from passive to violent. Depending on the side you are on, that can mean a victory or defeat.
One thing worth mentioning is that on Global mode the missions get harder as you progress through them and if you don’t have the public opinion. This is a really interesting mechanic because to gain public opinion what do you need? Its easy to make the other group seem like the bad guys for one. During my playthrough it happened that the police were being provocative, since I was a pacifist just moving my units and doing. When they started to attack my protesters, I just moved the groups and the police went as far as killing some of them, and needless to say, I won by a landslide and I had a good advantage on the next mission. This is something to have on your mind to get the best results.
Playing as the Police is somewhat different since your objectives are opposite to the rioters. If they need to protect, then you need to destroy the objectives; when they need to occupy, you need to keep them in their place and prevent them from occupying their objective. Also with police, you have different units like tactical, assault and ballistic each with different skills and behaviours depending on the situation.
In Story mode instead of going through each scenario, you can choose which one to tackle and like in Global, pick a different faction. This is good if you want to tackle a specific scenario instead of going through all of them one at a time. As you progress through each stage you unlock tools and units, and some can help keep the masses more united while some create havoc. It is good to experiment with each one to find a style that suits you the most.
There is also a versus mode in which you can play against other players locally in the same way of other modes. The game looks good, and I like that its based on real-life events( some I wasnt aware of). I like the pixel style given to the overall game, the sound effects are nice and I like the different situations you are thrown at. However, one thing that I didn’t like is that there is no option to move several groups at the same time, since sometimes it is easy to be overwhelmed by the other faction. It would’ve been nice to have an option to do so, and the difficulty level sometimes can rise a little high.
Bottom Line Riot Civil Unrest shows both sides of the coin. For one side you are the rebels trying to change a corrupted world, but sometimes their doings can end up in vandalism. The other side as police you are there to protect the order and at some points the rebels lives, but like the opposite faction, things can end up in police brutality. This game is an interesting approach to portray real world problems. I enjoyed my time with it as it is not a deep RTS but can be considered an entry game on the genre. If you are a fan of RTS you should not overlook it, if you never played one before this could be a good entry point.
A Review Code was provided for this review.