The Occupation Review

The Occupation
Developer: White Paper Games
Publisher: Humble Bundle
Reviewed On: PlayStation 4
Available On: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

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The Occupation is a first-person stealth-puzzle game by White Paper Games and published by Humble Bundle. After a devastating explosion killing twenty-three people, an immigrant is blamed, and the U.K. government creates ‘the Union Act’, mainly targeting and restraining immigrants. As Harvey Miller, a whistle-blowing journalist with only the truth in your sights, you must sneak around government buildings. Your goal is to collect evidence to exonerate the French immigrant, Alex Dubois, who has been accused of perpetrating the attack, and discover the true motives and goals of the masterminds behind the Union Act.

One of the more unique qualities of The Occupation is that the game is played in real time. You have an hour of real-world time in most buildings to find what you need before your scheduled interview with each of your leads. As events happen throughout the game you will have to keep one eye on your watch to ensure you have enough time for snooping around. Additionally, getting caught in a restricted area will cause you to be escorted out and lose precious time.

Loading a previous checkpoint isn’t an option, so there are real knock-on consequences for playing too fast and loose while sneaking around. The data and information you gather in this time will allow you to ask more pertinent and grilling questions at your scheduled meeting and uncover more evidence for your report. This is an interesting system, and I struggle to think of another game that has done something similar with time management since Dead Rising.

Visually, the aesthetic of 1987 England is nailed. Characters are dressed appropriately and rooms are well decorated to fit the style. Music can often be heard in certain rooms and although it seems to alternate between the same 5 or 6 tracks it helps to create an atmosphere for an otherwise bland office setting. Like most stealth based games, audio cues are used to alert the player of imminent danger and these are serviceable.

Sadly, these are the few things that The Occupation has going for it. Heading into this game I was expecting a nail-biting story with twists, turns, and exciting moment-to-moment gameplay, all the while in a race against time. Unfortunately, what I got was a dull experience, plagued with frustrating glitches that sometimes even broke the game for me entirely.

Several times (more than I’d like to admit) I was caught in places I wasn’t supposed to be and given a chance to leave. However, each time this happened whoever had caught me was conveniently body blocking the door, offering no chance of escape. My chance to leave was promptly revoked, and I was escorted to the security office which left me hopelessly lost. Often, I struggled to get back to where I was previously, and above all, I was wasting precious time.

Another example of the game punishing me for no reason was after I had sneaked into my lead’s office to access her computer before our meeting. With ten minutes until our meeting and with my interviewee nowhere in sight, I thought I had plenty of time to copy some incriminating files onto a floppy disk in order to be used later.

I was wrong.

As I copied the files, the lead somehow warped into her office and sat me down in a scripted cut-scene of the meeting.

Throughout the meeting I could still hear the computer whirring in the background as it transferred the files, but as the scene ended and faded to black I couldn’t retrieve them. All my work to find her keycard, the password to her computer, her room code. About thirty minutes of effort and progress. All of it, wasted for no reason. I’ll never know why she suddenly decided to move our meeting ten minutes forward, but things like that happening throughout my playthrough seemed to undermine the game’s main idea that “every second counts”.

The overall pacing of the game took a big hit from these incidents and made it more frustrating later down the line when I was struggling to find a way forward. One of the many problems of the game’s office buildings is that they all look fantastically similar. Finding your way around them in such a short span of time is a real challenge. Couple this with a seemingly telepathic guard who seems to be able to see through walls and move faster than the speed of light and instead of being thrilled, for much of the game I was simply stressed. Backtracking was a persistent theme and the way to progress was frequently just stumbled upon by accident. As well as this, whole areas of the map seemed to serve little to no purpose other than to waste more of your time as you trek through them.

As this game was made by a comparatively small group of people working tirelessly to write, code and design I can forgive glitches and pacing issues. What I find harder to forgive is how redundant I found the plot. It wasn’t until the very end of the game that I felt any connection to any of the characters.

One thing I will say appreciated was the performance of the voice actors for most characters. They did a good job of making each character different enough from the previous one, which is even more impressive given the fact that many characters were voiced by the same actor. However, even this was overshadowed by the inconsistent recordings. Some lines were far too loud and grainy, while some were crisp and clear.

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Final Thoughts:

Despite all of this game’s shortcomings, after the hours of repetitive gameplay, the confusing story, the glitches and everything else, the ending left me with a strange feeling. Contrary to what I had expected I found myself wanting to replay it again. To see what I could do differently.

I can see The Occupation being a game I come back to months or even years from now on a rainy day to see what else it can offer. With that in mind, I wouldn’t say I could recommend this game to most. It’s an experience with many layers and something that bears revisiting, if you can put up with the less than satisfactory gameplay.

*review code for The Occupation was provided by White Paper Games*