Six Days in Fallujah's Gameplay Trailer is Not Promising
The tactical first-person shooter hellbent on depicting a real world conflict, Six Days in Fallujah, is still surprisingly going full-steam ahead. The game was initially canceled due to overwhelming backlash in 2009, but was recently revealed to still be in development. A new Six Days in Fallujah gameplay trailer only serves to reaffirm some notions that the game is entirely unnecessary.
The idea behind this ill-conceived game, which is based on one of the most controversial conflicts of the 21st century, is to deliver a documentary in video game form that includes both veteran and civilian stories relating to the Second Battle of Fallujah from 2004. The new gameplay trailer plays up this angle by injecting interview footage between clips of gameplay. Unfortunately for Six Days in Fallujah, those gameplay clips do little to convince potential customers that the game will be worth buying.
For a game that is attempting to capture the essence of real life close quarters combat, it looks anything but realistic. The meandering pace of the game, combined with lifeless AI enemies make Six Days in Fallujah look like a caricature of modern video games.
Six Days in Fallujah's deeply unsettling attempt at depicting the Second Battle in Fallujah will seemingly miss the mark entirely from a gameplay perspective, if what is currently being shown is any indication of the final product. A major component of the conflict was U.S. and Coalition forces systematically clearing buildings block by block throughout Fallujah. This terrifying prospect of repeatedly facing the unknown is the apparent impetus of Six Days in Fallujah's gameplay.
Breaching and clearing buildings in a tactical FPS seems like a compelling gameplay loop in and of itself, but the new Six Days in Fallujah trailer shows a baffling disconnect between the circumstances and the gameplay. The player character moves at an incredibly slow pace. Certainly this tracks when the player is methodically checking every room of a building, but even when the player walks outside, is faced with enemies firing automatic weapons, and is making a move to cover, there is no speed faster than a casual walk. There appears to be a sprint mechanic in Six Days in Fallujah, but even that is farcically stiff and inefficient.
Combining this glacial pace with what appears to be very rudimentary AI enemies immediately disqualifies any claims to realism Six Days in Fallujah had. At one point in the gameplay trailer, the player exits a building onto a balcony that overlooks a street. Looking over the balcony railing, there are two enemies standing straight up in the middle of the road in an active war zone . The entirely uninspired gameplay would be almost funny if Six Days in Fallujah weren't mistakenly combining procedural levels with one of the most controversial military campaigns in recent history.