When I Was Young is a 2D side-shooter by WallRus Group and Art Games Studio S.A. which has been in Early Access for some time. When I Was Young is a pixelated shooter which is based on the brutal Vietnam War which sent a lot of American soldiers to their death. We have seen very few games tackle this war and When I Was Young does it very accurately as well from the beautiful landscapes to the deadly ambushes to the hidden traps. This is our preview of When I Was Young in which we pick up our machete and try to find out brother by cutting through some thick vegetation.
When I Was Young features a beautiful Vietnam which features jungles, rivers, and open-plains right from a movie but presented in a pixelated form. It does not take long for this beautiful paradise to turn into a war-torn hell as bullets fly everywhere and soldier after soldier is dead around you. This brutal war is presented in a really decent narrative campaign that has nine chapters and sees you playing as a man who lost his brother in the Vietnam War. You join the army and arrive in the country to find your brother however you cannot escape the horrors of one of the deadliest conflicts of this world. The main story will take you around 9-11 hours to complete depending on your playstyle. If you are good, you can easily end the game in much less time.
When I Was Young starts slow but it quickly picks up the pace. You start the game in the safety of your home where you pack up your bags and take a cab to reach the nearest recruitment center. From there, you move on to the Boot Camp where you literally have to pass training before you can move to Vietnam. Normally, the training in shooters is just for getting used to the controls or they serve as an introduction to the game and are really easy. In When I Was Young, the training was probably the hardest section of the game for me.
You have to cross two different training courses in just 2 minutes. The first one is pretty easy however the second course introduces combat along with physical which makes it extremely tough because of the low time limit. It is not completely undoable however I managed to complete it after 5 or 6 tries. Each try serves as a practice run and you eventually get better at the game as you spend more time with it. I really liked how the game actually makes you feel that you are a real soldier who has left his home, trained for war and then heads into a brutal war-torn country in order to find his brother.
As you progress in the game, the scenes change and you get to experience more and more of war-torn Vietnam. You fight on boats, vehicles, and on foot. Combat is brutal and it will not take long for the enemy to overpower you. You have to remember your training pretty well to survive in the game. The training seems to be a good teacher once you reach the actual battle scenarios of the game. You need to manage your ammo and inventory of items well because they are not available in surplus during the game. The enemies are deadly and you will come face to face with a diverse variety of enemies.
Each of these enemies will require a different strategy and if you are not careful, you will be dead in no time. You have plenty of weapons at your disposal along with your trusty Bayonet that comes with a satisfying charge attack. This is another representation of the real Vietnam war where bayonets were used because the thick vegetation was a prime location of ambushes and these bayonets made short work of the ambushing forces. Using different vehicles in the game also gives you a different experience. You also have a machete that will help you get past all that thick vegetation.
The locations are extremely varied in the game. You will fight the Vietnamese soldiers in jungles, on the rivers, in towns, villages, underground camps, and in military installations. Each location will be rigged with traps set by the local militia and you will need to tread extremely carefully through these locations. If you manage to find the trap, you can also disable them however I usually found them after I died in them so that is one way of finding the traps in the game. Apart from these traps, you die a lot because of the enemies as well. The enemy forces are relentless and they do not really care for your well-being. Dodging bullets is not easy due to the clunky controls at this time.
This could be a little harder because of the inconsistent hit zones the game currently has. Sometimes I would be a little far away from the hanging bags during the training but still I would get tagged and sometimes the hanging bags would come really close to me and I would still manage to slip by them. This is also evident in later stages when bullets start flying at you and sometimes you get bullets that do not actually touch you. Since the game is still in Early Access, we can hope that these bugs are removed in the final version of the game. Topping my list of the things that need fixing are these inconsistent hit points of the game because it makes the game really frustrating in certain situations.
Control remapping is yet another thing that might make the controls more appealing to most players. I do not really have to remap the controls of different games as I get comfortable really easily with the controls of games however some players always go for custom mappings and since this is a PC game, control remapping is an easy feature to add in the game since you have the whole keyboard at your disposal. Having to play with familiar controls makes a game atomically much more appealing and accessible. It will also make the game easier for most players who are currently finding it a little hard to play.
Even with all these little bugs here and there, When I Was Young is a great game and I really liked it. The visuals, the game’s setting, and its design are executed really well. Vietnam War is a war that is seldom spoken upon yet this game portrays it extremely well. We can even see anti-war protests at the start of the game that were a petty common sight when the war was happening in real time. The game portrays the Vietnam War as beautiful yet brutal heaven just as explained by many of the war veterans that returned alive from the war.
The developer has not announced a release date for the full game at this point however in its current form, When I Was Young is pretty much a complete title however it requires a few bug fixes and optimization at this point. Loading times could be improved even more while some gameplay bugs need to be gone in the game before the final version releases. You can give When I Was Young a try with a free demo as well and if the game is up to your liking, you can go for the full game as well. As for us, we really liked the game and will certainly look forward to its full release.
