Fate of the World

The Good
Review Version: v1.0
Review Date: May, 2011
Review Length: 4 page(s)
Game Version: v1.0.2.0
Tech Specs Used: Intel Core 2 6300 1.86 Ghz CPU, 3 GB Memory, 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT Video Card.
Finished: Can't even pass the second scenario sniff
Last time played: May, 2011.

Well, this has got to be a first for me. A environmental-themed political simulator funded by official convert environmentalists (eh?) with an obvious political agenda to save a something million year old world from a few billion tin cans and plastic bags.

Or so I thought.

When you come across games like these, gamers usually have this usually not far off prejudice that gameplay-wise, it'll be crappy as hell. These are one of those few moments where I am extremely delighted that I was wrong, big time.

Introduction – What is Fate of the World?
Note: This section may be skipped.

Fate of the World is a political simulator of sorts. Like most political simulators, the player is faced with seemingly hard decisions to overcome current and future issues. In this game, the issues are usually environment-related. Usually. Fortunately, gameplay isn't as shallow in concept as just making everyone an average tree hugger.

In this game, the premise is a world on the verge of Mother Nature going berserk. Though the planet is actually just fine and going through a planetary-scale cold of sorts, it's the annoying little lifeforms on it (read=humans) that are making a big deal out of it. Considering a possible tsunami every few weeks (among others), may well be a possibly good reason to be concerned.

The player takes on the role of a environment-based organization to deal with this problem. Over-riding multiple sovereign nations which wouldn't care less about the ozone layer, gas emissions, etc., and the possibility that we may have to live in underground caves just to survive the near future, the player makes these decisions for them. Hopefully, if all goes well, the planet will not end up as a possible movie for another Hollywood end-of-the-world script.

Decisions are represented by agents which the player may purchase per region (scenario depending), where each agent may carry out a single action, represented by cards. Each card has a price, a possible time for completion, and a possible outcome. Each decision the player makes will effect short term to extremely long term consequences. Each turn ends and a five-year period goes by to see how these decision may or may not have effected the world.

It should be noted that the player does not only deal with environment-based policies. Although one of the ultimate goals, environmental decisions can only work if everything else is also taken care of: political stability, fuel supply, etc. Many of these non-environmental issues also needs to be addressed to prevent man-made catastrophes such as world hunger, civil war, or a even a market meltdown.

Personally, I'm more interested in trying to save the orangutans and komodo dragons from my country from extinction.

Gah, they died again! Restart game.

Graphics
First of all I would like to mention the graphics of this game. Professionally made I might say. For one, I've never seen a more beautiful 3D animated globe of the Earth before in any game, which I hope should make all those sci-fi and 4x developers and artists look bad.

If that's how our blue ping-pong ball looks from outer space, I do hope public space travel will be a reality in my lifetime. You know, before a super tsunami or earthquake suddenly shows and wipes NASA from the face of the planet. Or the Klingons attack.

All of the graphics are extremely well done. The cards are admittedly mediocre oil painting, but everything else is noticeably top notch. The earth also comes in other forms of visual display, indicating real-time temperature, population growth, etc., which actually looks like something you'd expect to see from those secret high-level security clearance labs. Way cool.

Music
One word: Epic. Dang those liberals can write compositions. The opening music speaks for itself: A super tsunami is about to hit the fan and you're the bloke who has to deal with it. Thus far, I rarely have found game compositions capable of applying musical tunes in correlation with gameplay atmosphere in all aspects of the game. This is the first and hopefully not the last.

Music also becomes more diverse during gameplay though it may hit on you only later. Some compositions (still in a semi-epic vibe) indicate regional influences: some American, Asian, Indian (er, I think), Arabic, etc. All pleasant compositions which continues to provide the player with an appropriate mood trying to save the world.

Educational Value
Like may political simulators, the game provides a good amount of data, graphics, and non-related gameplay information regarding the environment and related topics. Educational-wise, I'd give it a good thumbs up. Even learned a few new concepts myself, which is always a delight.

Although I may slightly grumble that I would have expected more information, being Oxford-sponsored and all. Compared to some other political simulators (or any game with in-game encyclopedias), the game surprisingly little reading material in comparison. Something I hope will be fixed in later versions...and yes, I am expecting the dang Britannica encyclopedia on environmentalism if possible.

The Bad
Unclear Strategy and Decision Guidelines
I don't know if the developers are actually gamers themselves and have played games in this genre or are familiar with such games. If not, I would like to stress that when making in-game decisions on whatever policy, it would be nice to have more information on a decision. It would be nice to know before hand of possible many issues in this game.

There are too many to mention (I'll get to them soon), but most of the time, the player (me) feel totally bewildered on what the hell I should do next, where is the data for what, and more than often: how the hell did this happen?

Here are a few examples:

• If I research this technology, what will the outcome be? How long will it take or at least give me some kind of estimation and how many countries I should commit to researching the same field;
• Is there actually a statistical effect of adopting a certain policy? If China has xxx level of emissions, shouldn't there be more information of the sources of these emissions (don't know if that's possible though)? At least, I'd like to know my protecting the forest is having an effect, emission progression being slowed, a graph indicating [a] an adopted environment friendly policy [b] possible effect of that policy towards emission output;
• Where in the hell is the information regarding food distribution? India keeps getting famine;
• How in the hell did Japan get a civil war and unemployment? What unemployment? Where did these issues come from? Help;
• Shouldn't a world organization have more money than this? Dang, I'm always broke;
• Etc.

More or less, the game forces a lot of issues, problems, catastrophes, that seemingly come out of thin air. Making the player feel helpless without the knowledge that there is a chance for them to rectify the situation is something I always regard as poor design.

Which comes to my next point:

Making the player feel helpless
If it was the intention of the developer to point out the world as we know it is screwed, than dang, you did a hell of a good job. Screw you, too.

Seriously. Anyone who's played the second scenario and managed to not have a single species extinct and avoid the market collapse, I bow down to you. I've tried every possible (well, not every, but reasonable enough) approach to avoid these catastrophes. Furthest I got I think was year 2070 or something before all hell broke loose.

Even more irritating, I don't know how exactly all hell broke loose and how to fix or prevent the situation. There isn't enough information available. I don't know if investing in renewable sources helps the fuel crisis. I don't know if food supplies are getting better. I don't know what technologies do what and what they're for. I don't know where I should look for that information.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Screw this. You just can't save the world.

The Bottom Line
So, developer's, this is one possible result from the game and it isn't a very good reaction. The learning curve of the game is pretty ridiculous, since from the first and second scenario, it's like Mothergoose jumping to Impossible. You can't be a strategy game and political simulator worth mentioning if you don't have enough information to help the player base future decisions upon.

You really shouldn't force catastrophes without the ability do prevent them. Why? Because it's annoying when you want to save the world and someone in some game forum informs you, “oh, that's unavoidable, it's a plot-based event.” Having restarted the second game scenario too many times, I'm still not sure if it's avoidable and whether or not I can save those dang orangutans from extinction. Don't know how many packs of cigarettes I smoked, stressed, trying to figure this out.

I don't know.
I just really don't know.