It Takes a War

I played "It Takes a War" before I played "It Takes a War". Please only read my review if you already played the game. [spoiler] A lot of years ago I was active in the darkest corner of counter strike. I was a cheater. The cheating scene is a very hostile place with people doxing each other, talking ♥♥♥♥ about each other and generally being very bad persons. I got into a fight with some other guy, we even made videos about each other just to hate. One day I decided to stop this, I thought its useless and stupid and talked to the other guy. We started talking, becoming more chill and even shared personal stuff about each other. He told me that he wants to study (I think it was medicine but im not sure) and that he has actually pretty smart plans for his future. Nothing you would expect if im honest, after all we were all a bit stupid for cheating, talking ♥♥♥♥ and being bad people. I got a climpse into his real life ... it was a little one but it was a climpse. This little talk gave each of us the humanity back. It wasnt hard to break out of this hate, it was acctually the easiest thing on the planet. We both apparently wanted it. We wrote some time after this but it was never super long or deep but we knew each other. Some months (or arround a year im not sure anymore) later I recived a phone call from another online friend who knew him as well. I still rember his words: "Skilletor is dead." I remeber asking if the had a car accident, it was the first thing coming to my mind, but he told me that he was shot. Apparently his sport-shooter step-dad had mental issues and problems with his mom and killed both him and his mother then commiting suicide. His two younger brothers were with his dad this day and survived because of this. I tell this story out of two reasons. The first one is especially related to this game: Everyone we interact with online has a real life, real problems and real dreams. They are not just entitys. When Skilletor and I stopped hating each other we especially confirmed this to both ourself and to our opposite. This game shows especially this barrier and between online life and real life in form of a door on the map in the game. The second is not specifically related to this game: You never know how long the life of someone you know will be. Tragic things happen. From the day I recived the message of his death arround 10 years ago I always remeber exactly this. I am very very happy that he didnt leave us with having a bad impression of myself. I am glad that we both found the courage to stop this. I will always remeber him well and even after arround those 10 years I still regulary need to think about him. A person I never saw in real life. A person existing only in some chatlogs and a voicechat, but a real human being with a dream he could never achive. This game hit me so hard when I started realising that its about online and real life and bad behaviour in video games. It even hit harder when the steam messages in the game started popping up and I recieved a message from him. I never removed him as a steam friend and never will. Seeing his steam profile afterwards in the gallery with the note "last online 6 months ago" was even harder, because it made me remeber that arround 10 years have passed. I am in slight tears writing this. Thank you for creating this game, this is a very important lesson ... even for me who played this kind of "game" bevore I even played it. In my frist playthrough I didnt even notice the bad behaviour of the other three folks regarding colch because its so "normal" in video games and the internet. This game showed me (again) to always be aware that were all real and not a profile. [/spoiler]

my teammates ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ suck omg go play something else

Beautiful game with a beautiful story. I recommend everyone that's been present in the age of skype/teamspeak/early discord play this. The gameplay is amazing too. Great shooter in general

when people say that games are art they're always on some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like the Last of Us Part II. This is what games as art actually should be.

I dont get the point of playing a very bad singleplayer shooter that wants to simulate a online experience when .. i could just play online? and have real interactions? Well, gameplay / gunplay is 2/10. Not fun, lags etc. Bots will always be edgelords in some way and talk absolute AI trash. The only thing i found funny was the speech recognition (voice to text) works quite well in english. (other languages wont work at all) but thats it. would not recommend

genuinely beautiful [spoiler] i love this game as the conflict between people, as someone who has been through very similar conflict and stuff, i espically like sophie/soph33, i see myself in her, and we both have OCD and take sitraline. beatiful game, it almost made me cry, and the cherry on top being the whole goldsrc/source style, as someone who mods for those engines, and has nostalgia, it made it feel a lot more, personal(?), amazing game. [/spoiler]

It takes a war to say farewell.

Beautiful game.

Short but sweet. It's got a very interesting concept and story. Definitely recommend this to people who like games with meta aspects and/or good messages in them.

The gunplay is really nice!!! Groundbraking stuff