Posted on: May 14, 2022
M3n747
Bestätigter BesitzerSpiele: 285 Rezensionen: 26
Second-hand memories
I expected Martial Law to hit close to home, since the game takes place in my country and not long before I was born. Alas, it didn't. The idea behind the game is sound - to show people, especially foreigners, what communist Poland was like. And having the game take place just before Christmas 1981 was a good choice, allowing to show the kindness of the common people in those difficult times. Unfortunately, Martial Law gives me a strong impression of being made by people too young to remember those days and whose knowledge of the era comes from contemporary films, stories heard from their elders and overall cultural osmosis. By far the worst offender is the language the game is written in - that's how people speak today ("mam kilka spraw do ogarnięcia"), not how they did in the '80s. Also, there are some rather stupid linguistic mistakes, such as using "także" instead of "tak że" (two very different things), or too many verbs taking the 3rd person singular form when they clearly should be in 1st person, or most sentences not ending with a full stop… you get the idea. It's like a 20-something kid wrote a game about how he imagines Poland in 1981 and just published it without asking anyone for a second opinion and with no proofreading. It's a shame, really, because Martial Law had a lot of potential stemming from an idea hardly ever used in video games. As far as the gameplay goes, it's quite basic. You just walk around, talk to people, do a few simple fetch quests, that's about it. You also have jump and punch buttons, but neither is needed to finish the game (there's one NPC you can fight, but it's entirely optional). Finally, the game is very short, lasting only about half an hour. So, overall, Martial Law is quite disappointing, but there's still a chance it might get a few people interested in the history of Poland and its post-war tribulations. If you're at all curious about the subject, I'd recommend doing some reading on it rather than playing the game.
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