The adage: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” and how it ties into the current media landscape has never been more poignant than it is now; we’ve never had mass media like this compared to any other point in history.
Headliner decides to tackle this premise more directly. You play as the titular Headliner for NoviNews, the primary major news outlet in the fictional nation ofThe adage: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” and how it ties into the current media landscape has never been more poignant than it is now; we’ve never had mass media like this compared to any other point in history.
Headliner decides to tackle this premise more directly. You play as the titular Headliner for NoviNews, the primary major news outlet in the fictional nation of Novistan: a dystopian world where most, if not all, of it’s citizens have been genetically modified before birth, government surveillance is on every street corner and a mysterious plague is sweeping through the nation. Your job is to fill news slots for that night’s broadcast on topics ranging from healthcare to government to law enforcemente etc. Choosing what stories you run has a major influence on the events that happen in Novistan; the citizens take what you publish as gospel. Do you stay objective even if the truth is uncomfortable? Do you keep a consistent message throughout even in the face of contradicting evidence? It’s up to you!
The core gameplay loop revolves around getting briefed in each day by your boss before being seated at your desk with a number of articles in front of you to either publish with a green “checkmark” or reject it with a red “X”. What makes the game kind of thought-provoking and even mildly challenging in my initial playthrough is that I wasn’t really sure which stories were true or not as you’re never given much context for Novistan’s backstory, so I was kind of just trusting my instincts when publishing or rejecting articles. On top of that, there are days where you have a certain quota that you have to hit (publish 1-2 articles, publish a maximum of 3 articles etc.) as well as being presented two articles that are stapled together; you can only approve one of them, the other is automatically rejected. The gameplay reminds me of a very rudimentary take on Lucas Pope’s “Papers Please”. While “Papers Please” had a number of different elements that factored into an acceptation or rejection state, Headliner: NoviNews is very binary in it’s decision making. You still get a sense of there being multiple branching paths and factors that impact your decisions for every playthrough, however, the game forces you to publish a number of articles that land on opposite sides of rather polarizing topics with virtually no room to nuance things.
Each day after you finish your shift, you make the short walk home to your apartment where you get to the see the results of your decisions play out around you. These segments of the game present strong, visual results that do a wonderful job of illustrating that every choice you make matters. Along with being able to see your decisions play out in the broader world, you also have a few NPCs that you can interact with over the course of the game: Evie, your co-worker and potential love interest who immigrated to Novistan. Justin, your aspiring comedian brother who is battling mental health issues and Rudy, the friendly owner of a family-owned local business. These NPCs offer up a more humanized and in-depth look at the consequences of the articles you publish throughout the game. I felt that all of the characters came across as likeable and even relatable in some instances and you’d be forgiven if you wanted to do right by them. Conversely, you can also royally **** them over and the game isn’t afraid to go to some dark, unpleasant places as a result. Factor in that you also need to keep your boss happy, secure your own income and avoid NoviNews losing corporate funding and you get a tough balancing act that illustrates that decisions are never made in a vacuum.
After completing the game, the end screen states that it’s meant to be played multiple times and given that different choices can lead to a number of different outcomes, that’s understandable. What I found to be a bit unexpected was that during my second and third playthroughs, there’s an interesting Groundhog Day-style meta narrative emerging. I breaks when you hit your fourth playthrough, but it still offered up some incentive to replay the game just to see where this narrative would go.
My biggest criticism with Headliner would be the heavy-handed and lacking-in-nuance way it presents it’s story and your decisions that influence it. The story takes place over the course of just 2 weeks, so it has to severely escalate things in order to reach certain plot milestones.
The game’s graphics are a bit of mixed bag. The 3D characters are these low-poly models that look ugly, it’s very clear they only made like a half dozen or so character models and just copied and pasted them throughout the world. The characters that appear in dialogue screens all have an anime art direction to them; it’s not bad by any means, it’s just not for me. However the art direction for the city background and overall night time atmosphere is well done.… Expand
Headliner: NoviNewsYour Score0 out of 10User Score
