Bunker, The (Video Game)
Ted Hentschke
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Developed by Splendy Games and Wales Interactive
Published by Green Man Gaming Publishing
Available on PC, Mac, PS4, and Xbox One
Suitable for ages 15+
Well now, here’s something you don’t see much of nowadays. For a while in the early to mid 90s full motion video (FMV) games were the new craze. It was at a time when a number of experimental disc consoles were hitting the market, and devs were scrambling to find ways to fill up all that extra space. Games once could only hold maybe a few minutes of video, but now they could hold a whole movie’s worth of information. In one of the industry’s more ill-fated decisions, they figured, “why not just make a whole game with video?” Looking at games like Night Trap and Phantasmagoria, it’s clear why the craze didn’t live past the mid 90s. Now here comes The Bunker, trying to bring the genre into the modern age.
There are a few hold outs. Last year’s Her Story is a prime example. Even Command and Conquer used FMV for its cutscenes up till Tiberian Twilight. These games are now the outlier, with enough novelty to forgive some poor design choices. The fundamental issue with these is still as relevant as ever, and isn’t solvable with the advancements in video game technology. Most FMV games suck because they are made by game developers, not filmmakers.
There’s a big difference between what it takes to make a good game and a good movie. Traditionally, FMV games have had problems attracting quality actors. As games become more of an accepted artistic medium, this becomes less and less the case. So let’s ignore the classic problem that the actors of games like Night Trap couldn’t convincingly portray something as simple as teens being frightened by stuff. Even with the best actors in the world, video game and film direction are very different. For example, dialogue exchanges in a video games are trigger based, prompted by something the player did. In a film, it’s based on the best timing and flow to make a scene come together. Trying to merge the two is almost impossible. Imagine if when Kyle Reese blasted Arnold Schwarzenegger with a shotgun and reached out to Sarah Connor, he scrolled through six various dialogue options for 30 seconds before landing on, “come with me if you want to live.” This is the kind of human interaction that isn’t well translated into a video game format.
Although I’d pay good money for a The Matrix game where I played Keanu Reeves and every dialogue option was, “woah.”
The visual language is also very different between games and film. With video games, there needs to be a visual continuity between actions. Walking into a room in Resident Evil, it’s up to me to inspect everything, figure out what is important, and do whatever action needs to be done. It’s what makes watching games so boring to someone who doesn’t play them; to an unfamiliar spectator, it’s just slow and dull. In a film, it’s not important to show every element of a room since it’s not up to the viewer to decide what’s important. The character walks into a room, camera focuses on a gun, character grabs the gun, character starts shooting, cut to bad guy falling over. Films are an inherently spectator medium, so applying this style to games would strip the explorative factor that makes them interesting to gamers.
Previous attempts to marry the two has generally resulted in a lot of visual clutter. I’m going to ignore Her Story, since it basically cheated by setting all of the FMV in one interview room. For most FMV games, there’s an over-explanation of action. Walk to a room, and there’s a video of the person walking there. Open a drawer, there’s a video of the guy walking to the drawer, opening it up, and looking intently at the contents. Turn to the left, and we’ll see the protagonist turn left and look around for a moment. Not a movement or action goes by that isn’t explained by some sort of cutscene. It’s not impossible to do well, but the line between showing action to immerse the player and making the game drag is razor thin.
The amount of time a character makes this exact face before something happens is the metric.
My overall point is that though games are often called “cinematic,” there’s a massive difference between what works for each. Game designers want to show the player the whole story as a game would, which is both boring and visually confusing. If you switch to the player’s face every time you turn, you disorient the player to their location in the room. It’s a version of the 180 degree rule taught in every film 101 class, but irrelevant in game design. With a better understanding of film, perhaps you could get more visual clarity with less mundane cutscenes.
This might be a new record for Ted, getting a whole page and a half into the review without talking about the game. I think it’s important to know exactly where I’m coming from when I talk about The Bunker. This is a game that can’t be judged by normal game stuff like level design or balance. I struggle even calling this a game. Interactive movie is a better term. Hell, in the credits they even list the director first.
So if my theory is that most FMV games are bad because they are developed by game designers, what happens if it’s designed by a filmmaker? As it turns out, it’s a mixed bag. I’ll start with the good. Right off the bat, The Bunker is a visually stunning title. Long gone are the days of pixelated compressed video files in FMV games, but this looks good even for a film. I’ve seen plenty of indie movies with far worse production values. The lighting was excellent, doing a good job of accentuating the important bits while still casting a decrepit pallor. It was filmed in a genuine old nuclear bunker in Essex, which contributes a lot to the authentic feel. Almost all of the game’s tension is due to this exceptional visual design.
Quality camerawork? IN MY FMV GAME? Preposterous!
Another key contributor is the soundtrack. It’s absolutely fantastic. It’s got a great 80s synth vibe, and contributed more than anything to my experience. This is the first soundtrack in a long time I’ve actually recommended buying. It perfectly accompanies the game’s dark and dingy feel, and ramps the tension in ways the gameplay just doesn’t.
As I said before, the gap between video game and screen actors is closing, and never has that been more apparent than in The Bunker. Each of the main characters does an excellent job, with Grahame Fox standing out as the Commissioner. Adam Brown was given a significant challenge in the role of John, but rose to the occasion admirably. Essentially a one-man show, all of his characterization had to be done through expression and internal monologue. It isn’t easy to portray such an array of nuanced emotion, but he got the job done. I was actually reeling when he was fixing his broken arm.
He effectively portrays a giant child constantly on the verge of tears. The way he calls for his mother is genuinely heartbreaking, far from the caricature he could have been.
The narrative in The Bunker is the point where my praise starts to turn. Overall, the story is decent if not a bit predictable. The fundamental premise is compelling, and easily my favorite part. Starting with the fictional events of an alternate 1986, nuclear war has wiped out life in Europe. 58 members of a select military team head down into a bunker, saving them from the initial blast. One of them is the main character’s mother. It’s on this fateful day that she gives birth to you, a boy named John. Raised in this environment for 30 years, you are now the only survivor. It’s 2016 and the bunker has begun to break down. It is up to you to get out alive.
John’s mother’s final words were, “stick to the schedule,” which he does every day without fail. Wake up, take his medicine, scan the radio frequencies, check for radiation, eat, and read a story to his mother. Being raised in a bunker, he does all of this without any real understanding of why. Long after his mother is dead, he still reads to her corpse every night. Though in his 30s, he’s essentially a child, playing with his handmade toys and still afraid of the dark.
And this is John’s life, going between three rooms and repeatedly completing these tasks. On day 11,111 of this, something goes wrong. The servers used to check the radiation are offline. For the first time since he was a boy, John will have to venture out of his cycle to try and fix the bunker. From here, things go south fast. I won’t spoil anything past this, but there are some decent revelations before the credits role. Nothing really surprised me, but it was satisfying and well explained. Nothing great, but serviceable.
This is one of those rare games where the supplementary documents are actually very insightful. All written over 20 years ago, they give you a glimpse into daily life in the bunker before the bad shit goes down.
My biggest issue with The Bunker comes from the length. From start to finish, the game is about two hours, most of which is watching John walk around. If you were to just glue together the important story bits, it could be done in just 30-40 minutes. It has enough time to set up the premise and pay it off, but not enough for me to really get invested in the nuance. Perhaps this was intentional, since when really analyzed the game doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Little questions like “where was everyone sleeping” or “why weren’t they affected by the toxins” aren’t ever answered. It’s already hard enough to accept that this guy would stay in the same three rooms his whole life, so maybe I should just let my nitpicks go.
The game also isn’t really a game. You’ll click on things to make John go places, click repeatedly for him to struggle, click and drag to get him to move a lever, or click quickly to stay hidden. It’s incredibly boring and uncreative. What’s more, none of it happens very often. I think you click and drag to pull a lever maybe six times. Older FMV games might have had shitty visual design, but at least they had gameplay. I guess when you focus entirely on the film aspect, game design suffers. Go figure.
This is a video game that asks you to click a button to play with toys, which is less interactive than actually playing with said toys.
While playing The Bunker, I was almost all praise. The key elements were well enough highlighted, and the visual clutter was kept to a minimum. I liked how they changed up the visuals with the security cameras in the hallways, giving the descent into depths a more ominous feel. The acting was solid, plot fun, and I wanted to see where it went. But all of a sudden, it was just over.
The Bunker is a well made interactive film with more promise than delivery. This is an incredibly talented cast and crew who really get how to make a good movie. Apply that to a game, and we get a short point-and-click “adventure game” without any of the adventure. Given more focus on the gameplay, this could have been a slam dunk. It’s too short without anything really interesting to do. At $20, I can’t really recommend it. If it goes down to $10 on a sale, it would be worth the price of a movie ticket.
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Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews
