izigame.me

Good evening, I’m CharlieLima79. Our review tonight:
Not for Broadcast is a hybrid of full-motion video choice-matter adventure game and visual novel. You play as Alex Winston, an unwitting vision mixer for Channel One’s National Nightly News. While it’s impressive that the game has over 40 hours of filmed footage depicting various minute and major narrative outcomes, what I found most memorable about NFB is its satirical writing.
The Story & Theme:
The way NFB satirizes politics, the media, journalism and celebrity culture is not subtle. This lack of subtlety may be uncouth to some, but I think it actually makes the game funnier. This humour also highlights just how ridiculous the subjects of satire can be, and is retrospectively much welcomed from the get-go since the story would get more serious in later chapters.
The game’s story advances with you deciding what the viewers see on their television at home. Your decisions in which camera to cut to, snippets to air, language to censor, and commercial to broadcast affect the audience’s opinion about politics, brands, celebrities, and so on. Your choices, and how well you perform your duties also affect your relationship with your family, boss and the station as whole, as well as your pay – all of which steer the direction of the game’s branching stories.
NFB is political, and the political direction in which the story goes depends on your decisions. Just when you thought the game is going too far left or right, it provides counterpoints to encourage you to reconsider a particular stance, but the ultimate outcome is still player-driven. To get the complete picture of what transpired in the story, you’ll need to explore the left- and right-leaning, as well as centrist options. There were at least a couple of narrative developments that caught me off guard.
Because of that, the game should be played multiple times. After my first playthrough, I dialled down the challenge so I could focus on exploring the many narrative branches that the game offers. With 14 endings and many more rushes to unlock, there is much to discover. Yet, because there is no option to resume playing from certain major decision-making junctions, unlocking all endings would require 14 playthroughs. I’ve honestly had my fill after the third run, so I used other means to see the different ways the game could conclude.
Gameplay:
Much of the gameplay has you operate the mixer panel. At the default difficulty setting, the game is challenging, especially when you have to deal with complications like signal interferences, panel glitches, power outages, and interlopers during a broadcast. Mixing a broadcast around the last one really makes you appreciate the complexity of delivering a seamless live broadcast in real life. The game offers a Challenge mode, in which the more stalwart players can replay specific broadcasts with the complications dialed up to 11, so to speak.
The other part of NFB is the visual novel, depicting your family life in between prominent shifts at the television station. It is in this section that you see how your relationships with various family members, as well as with your boss, are affected by the change in government, government policies, the decisions that you’ve made at work.
The visual novel is not bad, just not as dynamic, interesting and funny as the vision mixing portion. This shift in tone may be intentional, reminding players that while this game is a satire, the actions of government and media do have an impact on people’s lives in the “real” world. Yet, I found this reminder was more poignantly conveyed in one of the later chapters in the vision mixing portion. Besides, I never found myself caring about my in-game family or boss enough to worry about what they think.
The Acting:
UK gamers and/or those who are familiar with UK television may recognize a few faces among the cast. I was at first a bit skeptical about Paul Baverstock’s casting as a news anchor, but he immediately won me over as the disenchanted, surly Jeremy Donaldson after just one scene. Andrea Vall was charismatic as the ambitious Megan Wolfe; Roger Alborough was natural as the foul-mouthed Peter Clement; and Claire Rackyleft was brilliant as the smarmy Julia Salisbury. Yet, it was George Vere who chewed the scenery as the self-important, cowardly Patrick Bannon, as well as the similarly vain Graham Bannon. I found his performance to be fitting in the game’s mockery of inept journalism.
Final Thoughts:
The hybrid of vision mixing gameplay and FMV presentation makes NFB a unique game in the dystopian adventure genre. Its gameplay mechanics engage players in reflection on the power of media in shaping the political narratives we hear. While it’s neither pro-left nor pro-right, it does tell a cautionary tale of political extremism. Even if you disregard the commentary, NFB offers fun, challenging gameplay as well as blunt satire that make this game worth checking out.