We Happy Few

 PC
User Score
5.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 226 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 84 out of 226
  2. Mixed: 64 out of 226
  3. Negative: 78 out of 226

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  1. LordShade
    Aug 2, 2019
    2
    I anticipated much, much better from the creators of the magnificent Constrast. That game was cute, stylish, but besides this, had a great story and the world didn't irritate you. It had really great characters. And here we go, We Happy Few... The game was so hyped that I was ready to enjoy the title praised by so many. But after spending like 5 hours in the game, I simply don't get it. II anticipated much, much better from the creators of the magnificent Constrast. That game was cute, stylish, but besides this, had a great story and the world didn't irritate you. It had really great characters. And here we go, We Happy Few... The game was so hyped that I was ready to enjoy the title praised by so many. But after spending like 5 hours in the game, I simply don't get it. I wasn't completely immersed in this world in single moment, because there was something to irritate me at any moment. The story seems pointless, you have to escape the city... so? And it stards to abruptly, you don't have much time to explore this world before you get smashed. Characters seems sweet, of course, but they also feel as much dull. The story is artificially prolonged all the time.

    The logic in this game is non-existent. For example, the "happy" people are jumping all the way in while you walk the town, like a wild rabits, but when you try to do it, you get instantly smashed by the police! The con noted by practicly everyone: when you irritate someone, everybody in the bloody town get mad at you! Every fckin one! And of course I'm not talking about out best friends glitches and bugs. Well, glitches, mostly. NPC inhabiting the town walk into textures all the time, especially if you actually try to pay attention to what they do (something the developer probably hoped you won't do). All the cops are patrolling in the night and catch everyone on their way because walking in the night is prohibited, but if you simply sit down with a newspaper (for real?) they won't notice you! NPC are always noticing instantly when you try to stalk them, but they won't notice it if it's somebody else, not you. Amusing, really?

    The gameplay. Crafting if ok, all right. Stealth is not so bad, though the running time of your protagonist is extremely low. But, of my gosh, this fighting system! It's nightmarish, without any overestimation. You can't defent yourself properly in this game at all. Your Arthur-boy simply fights like a child! In a game, where fighting matters, yeah?

    Everything which I described is made to make you suffer more in this game. And suffer not in a good way. I understand the genre this game is made in, so I understant what you may say: it's dystopia, it's supposed to be that way! No, it really isn't.

    The visuals are more than decent, that is true. But how many games we have today which are readly to present to us their magnifique graphics, but lacks in story and gameplay departments? You're right: plenty of them!

    Overall, not very enjoyable game to play. Save your money. This developer really should focus on games more like their past one, Contrast.    … Expand
  2. Juniorsp
    Sep 8, 2020
    4
    É um título que me prendeu, mesmo com alguns problemas o universo é fantástico e lembra muito o que vimos em Bioshock. Espero que tenha uma sequência com um polimento na jogabilidade (batalhas) e que foquem mais na narrativa e menos na sobrevivência.
  3. ccarlosrubio
    Jun 17, 2021
    1
    Solo una palabra: ABURRIDO.
    Empieza "bien", parece interesante, pero a oos 5 minutos te encuentras con lo que parece un juego indie que funciona como el culo y está más vacío que una caja de aire. Extremadamente aburrido y tedioso, no sé con qué fuerzas alguien se ha pasado este juego
  4. bxrxsxtx
    Dec 15, 2021
    3
    This is a game that you want to like and it seems ok at first but it quickly becomes apparent that all the potential is squandered and the creators didn't know what they were doing.
    Many reviews mention a better version of the game back when it was early access and didn't have much story. I didn't play that version but it's further evidence of the imploding development that resulted in    This is a game that you want to like and it seems ok at first but it quickly becomes apparent that all the potential is squandered and the creators didn't know what they were doing.
    Many reviews mention a better version of the game back when it was early access and didn't have much story. I didn't play that version but it's further evidence of the imploding development that resulted in this train wreck.
    So let me cover what the game is like and what it does right. I think the basic gameplay is good, it's like Fallout in that you search around for odds and ends to do various tasks like pick locks. But unlike other games you don't get a super ray gun or cyber armor, you have to scrape by with whatever you can find, fend off police with a stick or a shovel, sneak through a comp of soldiers with grenades, you get the idea. All the systems like combat or drug effects are implemented poorly but in theory they'd make a great game.

    The premise is compelling, you're basically trying to escape a dystopia in which people take their happy pills or get beaten. So much as running in public will have every citizen out for your blood (once you are in certain towns). And the progress feels slower and slower and mechanics become a chore.

    Arthur and Ollie are well voice acted and have some character development and lines that are amusing. The pros end there though. The story is conveyed in a very poor fashion with uninteresting flashbacks that don't answer any questions. The backstory and worldview aren't clear enough to make the dramatic moments matter. The parts intended as funny make you wince and parts intended as serious seem like parody. It tries to reel you into an alternate history of world war 2 but all you'll be left with is a sob story about Arthur's personal pining for his brother.

    I wouldn't say the graphics or sound are good either. The graphical stylings are potentially interesting, combining 60s styling and psychedelic posters with supposedly meaningful WW2 references. Spy and mind control themes linger as well. Too bad it generally falls flat or looks like a bunch of things thrown together to make a mess. You can see that the game clearly had a big budget and a lot of people involved, it debuted at $60. I see no excuse for the all round weakness it has. Most reviews mention bugs a lot which is another downside.

    One thing that comes to mind when you see the painted faces of the happy pill people is the similar faction in the film "A Boy and His Dog". But supposedly that's a coincidence. You'll be reminded of various vintage fare like The Prisoner, but if playing this game is the other choice I'll stay blue pilled. Ciao gamers.    … Expand
  5. useless_gamer
    Aug 11, 2018
    2
    The game looks good. Characters are pretty cool. The world is new. But the main problem with this game is the main point of videogames; that is fun. Sure it looks great, but the gameplay is horrible. Fighting sequences are horrible, seems all you do is loot houses for items.
    Problem is Nothing about this game is fun. Put a little more effort into fighting, I don't really want to spend 2    The game looks good. Characters are pretty cool. The world is new. But the main problem with this game is the main point of videogames; that is fun. Sure it looks great, but the gameplay is horrible. Fighting sequences are horrible, seems all you do is loot houses for items.
    Problem is Nothing about this game is fun. Put a little more effort into fighting, I don't really want to spend 2 hours looking for garbage with a few minutes of horrible gameplay in between. Sure its kitch, and looks good, but how about some things that make the game fun. Missions? Upgrades? Whats the point?

    I was so looking forward to this game and so disappointed.    … Expand
  6. H0rizon
    Dec 12, 2018
    4
    Overall, the game had more cons than pros, like the struggle of having to drink water and eat food every 15 minutes. Another problem that I have with the game is that there are a LOT of bugs. A bug almost completely made it so that I could not get to the next scene, but I eventually got past it. Most of the game is just you running around the world to the next objective, which getsOverall, the game had more cons than pros, like the struggle of having to drink water and eat food every 15 minutes. Another problem that I have with the game is that there are a LOT of bugs. A bug almost completely made it so that I could not get to the next scene, but I eventually got past it. Most of the game is just you running around the world to the next objective, which gets repetitive real fast. One of the only good parts about the game is the setting and how well it was made, which earned the 4 from me. I would not recommend anybody to get this game until they fix the bugs.… Expand
  7. 111181
    Aug 15, 2018
    1
    The backlash is just desserts to greed, incompetence, mismanagement. Whether they stem from the publisher's influence, or from the developer is absolutely no concern of mine. It was a mess when it launched into Early Access 2 years ago, and it is a mess now. Somehow, it managed to become even more of a mess. Yet another testament to why one should avoid Early Access.
  8. ireviewbadgames
    Aug 12, 2018
    1
    The concept and world were interesting ideas to be sure, but the implementation was poor and the game-play is uninspired. Not only that, the pricing is a bit dodgy as well, at $60 for the base game and a $40 season pass for a game that should be priced at $29.99 flat. They try to point out that they told everyone they would spike up the price, but that doesn't justify bad actions. Also,The concept and world were interesting ideas to be sure, but the implementation was poor and the game-play is uninspired. Not only that, the pricing is a bit dodgy as well, at $60 for the base game and a $40 season pass for a game that should be priced at $29.99 flat. They try to point out that they told everyone they would spike up the price, but that doesn't justify bad actions. Also, keep in mind the developers have removed the Metacritic score from their Steam page after under-performing. Food for thought.

    It's up to you to fight the dark, sleazy future of gaming. Do not buy this game, not even to try it and then refund. Giving these developers money and then regretting it only works against you and all other gamers. If you really want to, pirate it or ask a friend to do so and get your own opinion. If you really like it despite it's flaws, then I encourage you to buy it legitimately.    … Expand
  9. nighter-3d
    Aug 12, 2018
    4
    This game is just boring. All the survival elements have been reduced to be of no consequence to the point i wonder why are still kept. The chances to get infected or plagued or bleeding so small one can go through the game without ever being afflicted and there is no reason to eat anything rotten anyway so why?

    This game is like a Fallout knockoff. Trying to keep you with stories and    This game is just boring. All the survival elements have been reduced to be of no consequence to the point i wonder why are still kept. The chances to get infected or plagued or bleeding so small one can go through the game without ever being afflicted and there is no reason to eat anything rotten anyway so why?

    This game is like a Fallout knockoff. Trying to keep you with stories and such, but lacks any of the exciting game-play instead having stealth against a rather stupid AI. The bobbies are hardly a threat, The nosy old ladies are just regular npc now. Only the doctors can be a bother, but you have to actually walk into them for them to start noticing and even then just walking away gets them off your back 9/10 times. Once you peeve somebody off it becomes night impossible to get rid in a busy area as EVERY npc you encounter goes berserk even if the one you peeved off is nowhere close.

    It doesn't take long before you just end up walking from one point to the other over and over to get tiny bits of story before being sent of on the 1000th "Fetch this item for me!". The randomness of the maps has no consequence either sometimes putting kilometers between 2 objectives and being generally uninteresting... again it is just downright boring.

    It feels like a waste of time to play this game.    … Expand
  10. lhmtgame
    Aug 12, 2018
    2
    I've disappointed in this game, WHF, since the BETA version.
    The official version still have movement glitches, aiming glitches...
    The story, quest, conversation are boring and 10 times worse than any other Well-known open world games. Weapons, crafting system in game are poor in every way.
  11. fireyose
    Aug 29, 2018
    4
    Did not have enough for me to go past 3 hours. The world is awesome, characters were interesting and the underlying message was the best the game had to offer. This won't be enough for me to keep moving forward. Combat is lacking, stealth is bugged and traversing through the world was not engaging. Loose game-play did not allow for me to keep focus on any task.
    I had more enjoyment    Did not have enough for me to go past 3 hours. The world is awesome, characters were interesting and the underlying message was the best the game had to offer. This won't be enough for me to keep moving forward. Combat is lacking, stealth is bugged and traversing through the world was not engaging. Loose game-play did not allow for me to keep focus on any task.
    I had more enjoyment reading the articles in this world rather than treading through it. As with many games recently, great potential with poor execution.

    Do not recommend.    … Expand
  12. Sjalka
    Aug 20, 2018
    4
    Hm, .. i love the setting, the art style and the idea. I do not like the execution of the game ... at all. My problem with the game is that it is not as much fun as it could/should be .. not remotely.

    It is a solid framework .. that ... with patches (quite major ones) "could" be a nice game indeed. I do realize however that it is very unlikely to become that.
  13. TheGameIsALie
    Feb 4, 2019
    3
    We Happy Few é sobretudo um jogo mal organizado e sem identidade. Se inspirou em grandes jogos, mas cai em um limbo de más execuções e ainda deixa evidente que não passa de uma cópia. O jogo tinha um potencial gigantesco para se tornar um clássico, mas desperdiça tudo facilmente.
  14. vova22379
    Dec 10, 2021
    4
    ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
  15. xeyiv69465
    May 6, 2021
    0
    Perhaps the only game ever made that was better in Early Access than full release. The finished We Happy Few is an incredibly dull, plodding on-rails experience. While in early access, it offered a freedom of gameplay that was incredibly rewarding. The finished game is a bad movie with bad performances and bad pacing, and you the player have no control to improve this poorly-executedPerhaps the only game ever made that was better in Early Access than full release. The finished We Happy Few is an incredibly dull, plodding on-rails experience. While in early access, it offered a freedom of gameplay that was incredibly rewarding. The finished game is a bad movie with bad performances and bad pacing, and you the player have no control to improve this poorly-executed narrative. It's barely even a game at its finished stage.… Expand
  16. Mad-Marty
    Jun 2, 2019
    4
    Just plain boring. Get to this Bridge, get to that Bridge, go there, ...

    The story wears out fast i mean this could have been a great setting, something like Bioshock.
    Instead it is a crafting game, not really driven by anything.

    Couldn't bear it anymore after 10 hours.
  17. ScienceAdvisor
    Aug 19, 2018
    3
    This is still EA, regardless of what Gearbox (publisher) has forced Compulsion (developer) to say. Many of the mechanics are there in spirit only, they serve no useful purpose. Others are clearly just copy and paste, where the unconscious are exactly the same as dead (you can loot their body parts).

    To make it even worse, Gearbox (most likely) has been covering up negative reviews,    This is still EA, regardless of what Gearbox (publisher) has forced Compulsion (developer) to say. Many of the mechanics are there in spirit only, they serve no useful purpose. Others are clearly just copy and paste, where the unconscious are exactly the same as dead (you can loot their body parts).

    To make it even worse, Gearbox (most likely) has been covering up negative reviews, not Compulsion as some have suggested. They pulled the score from Metacritic, and activated the Steam anti-review bombing system, which shows they knew what was coming. Of course this shows that Steam is using a tool, not a thinking person, as it wiped all the negative reviews without considering if they were actually trolling or logical, well written reviews with facts that can be refuted. Steam left the vapid, shill-like "great!", or "I really like the game. Only trolls do not." kinds of comments, and it will be interesting to see if they implement a shill removal tool as well.

    So after a sizable backlash against pulling this from Metacritic, Gearbox (again, probably) reinstated it. After all, Twitch was showing how glaringly mediocre, when not downright buggy, We Happy Few is. So I suggest waiting a year, possibly two, until this is actually done. Until then, this is a $20 purchase at best.    … Expand
  18. djvampyre
    Aug 25, 2018
    1
    Overall just a very bad game and of course WAY overpriced at 60$. I've played a lot of these in the past 3 years or so and the situation with gaming just keeps getting worse and worse. At first you think you might get an experience on par with something like the original Bioshock but then it just kind of unravels as it's slowly revealed to you how bad the story is, how uninteresting theOverall just a very bad game and of course WAY overpriced at 60$. I've played a lot of these in the past 3 years or so and the situation with gaming just keeps getting worse and worse. At first you think you might get an experience on par with something like the original Bioshock but then it just kind of unravels as it's slowly revealed to you how bad the story is, how uninteresting the characters are, and how pointless most of the the game mechanics (even combat) are in this game. Most situations can be dealt with by literally just running away from the thing. Who thought that would be a good idea? Is this a British thing where running away from something over and over again is "fun"? Should I stealth through this base and spend 30 minutes stealth choking people from the bushes? Why when I can just sprint through it in 1 minute with zero consequences and the exact same end result. AN I had the game set on "HARD" lol Then they have all these crafting elements in the game 98% of which I didn't even use because they were boring and the game was so braindead easy I didn't even have to use them. Why waste the time to even code that all in had to take years! What a waste of effort! Rotten food and food at all for example... Why waste that coding time? You clearly don't ever need to worry about food and water in this game at all even on hard mode where you specifically tell the game YES I want to worry about food and water lol. It's nonsensical things like that over and over again that turn me off this game immediately. I just don't even feel motivated to waste another 5 or 6 hours beating this game. The story is so dumb I have no problem whatsoever just leaving it unfinished. I honestly don't even feel like watching a youtube of someone finishing it that was so bad of a story.… Expand
  19. Darius_84
    Feb 19, 2020
    0
    Bad.
    Just. Plain. Bad.
    Not worth even on sale, heck, not even worth your time to play this garbage.
  20. zemaj
    Aug 21, 2018
    2
    I really wanted to like We Happy Few but it's... not great. Story is very interesting, but the finicky gameplay and unexciting procedurally generated sections are not fun. I'm giving up on it after a few attempts to get into it.

    I definitely would have much more patience for it, if it wasn't a full priced. After the first 20 mins it feels very budget.
  21. nickstuarsonlas
    Aug 10, 2018
    1
    how boring, frustrating and pretentious. . . i'm really disliking everything about it!
  22. roten
    Apr 30, 2022
    0
    this product is not available in your region
    "games out of politics" right?
  23. CoreGamer1408
    Mar 9, 2022
    4
    Fun art style, interesting concept/story, but weak gameplay and I am here to game.
  24. Jimson
    Feb 20, 2022
    4
    It... it was kinda ass, the game just never really picked up, it just always seemed to stumble along, most of the time

Awards & Rankings

47
#47 Most Discussed PC Game of 2018
11
#11 Most Shared PC Game of 2018

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
62

Mixed or average reviews - based on 60 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 60
  2. Mixed: 47 out of 60
  3. Negative: 5 out of 60
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Dec 31, 2018
    60
    The beautifully presented dystopian society has a huge hidden story potential, which is mostly handed down to the players. Playable passages will get boring after a while, but if you like a good alternative history, you won’t mind the average gameplay. [Issue#289]
  2. CD-Action
    Dec 4, 2018
    60
    Retrofuturistic, totalitarian world created by Compulsion Games is fascinating, as we see bits and pieces of Kafka (a clerk rebelling against the system), Clockwork Orange (extreme violence), Douglas Adams (humor) or Half-Life (architecture) floating around. What failed is the execution, which turned We Happy Few into an unintentional parody of stealth games. The enemy AI is so lame that I repeatedly had an impression of starring in a lost episode of The Benny Hill Show, especially since the combat system is crude and production values leave a lot to be desired. [10/2018, p.56]
  3. Riot Pixels
    Nov 5, 2018
    57
    The concept of We Happy Few has so much potential, but it feels like there were two teams with different level of talent working on this project. One team used this elaborate alternative world, stark visual style and and intriguing story, tried to lift it up. The other team was responsible for imbalanced, clumsy gameplay, pulled the game down. The result is 30 hours of very mixed feelings.
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