The Occupation

The Occupation's clever real-time investigations and immensely engrossing story are undone by its dedication to inducing tension by restricting saving, which is exasperated by uneven technical performance.

The Occupation just seems to work against itself in a finale where unfamiliarity with the surroundings, the necessary puzzle solving, and a constant threat of danger leads you to an ending that feels like something you fell into instead of worked towards.

Something special lies at the heart of The Occupation, but the gameplay and technical issues get in the way of its most interesting qualities. The storytelling happening beneath all the clunky stealth is great.

The Occupation tells a story about sociopolitics in the United Kingdom. As a research journalist, you try to change this, which is both exciting and worth your while as long as you do not let yourself get too bothered by the technical hiccups.

The main problem with The Occupation is that it hides all the good things (i.e. great concept, strong narrative) under a layer of wrong design decision, bugs, glitches and awkward controls. I had high hopes for this one, but in this state I would not recommend The Occupation to just anyone.

The Occupation is an inventive political thriller that does something new, but is let down by poor AI and some frustrating bugs.

The Occupation is a good game that tells an intriguing story. Unfortunately, that story is lost in jumbled-up storytelling, which ultimately causes the player to be confused and disconnected from the game.

The Occupation's design could take a few cues from its world when it comes to balancing the analogue and the digital. [Issue#331, p.112]

Despite a nice and complex scenario, and a quite original concept, The Occupation has many flaws, from many technical issues to an imperfect AI. Most players won’t see all the different endings because of this.

The Occupation is an adventure with some interesting ideas, however the general quality of the plot and the game structure itself aren’t convincing.

A staggeringly ambitious, gun-free immersive reality detective game set in an alternate 1980s Britain, whose admirable intentions are undermined by technical problems.

A superb, smart and taut detective thriller lay beneath the stack of technical and design issues that The Occupation has, it's just a shame that, in its current form at least, those shortcomings are at the forefront of the experience.

The Occupation is bold, ambitious, and a bit of a mess. Its bugs and occasionally obtuse storytelling severely detract from the overall experience, and yet it will live longer in the memory than the average game. There’s something fascinating here: a real-time thriller that puts genuine political power in the palm of your hands. But it’s strangled by its own ambition, and that’s as inevitable as it is unfortunate.

There’s a compelling narrative here, and some wonderful performances from the voice cast, but an experience that had the potential to put me on the edge of my seat more often than not made me want to start throwing chairs. Through post-release patching The Occupation may yet be resurrected as a very good stealth-investigation experience, but at launch this innovative game about making the most of time is itself an opportunity missed.

Perhaps, I guess, its creators were too enamored by their big picture ideas to notice that some of those smaller details weren’t quite up to par. Which is kind of a shame, since those big picture ideas would’ve made The Occupation pretty compelling if they’d managed to pull it off. Instead, we’re left with a game that all seems like a lot of unfulfilled promise.

The setting, the story and the concept is fantastic, but many technical issues and poor mechanics end up making the experience less enjoyable than it should be.

The Occupation’s fierce commitment to immersing the player in its credible world is also the game’s undoing.