In some ways, it's kind of boring - being a peaceful protester largely just consists of running down the clock, making sure you don't get shoved to the kerb by police forces. So, I guess Riot: Civil Unrest's biggest crime is that it all feels a bit too real. But in the confines of this digital landscape, it was a sudden upset to how I was approaching each parcel of action. I appreciate that in reality, sometimes drastic measures need to be taken. I was trying to lead a peaceful protest for what I believed in, but the game forced me to start destroying property to complete the level.
![riot civil unrest shoot everyone riot civil unrest shoot everyone](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/HWMAAOSwIihcWtlj/s-l640.jpg)
Sometimes the rioters have to, well, riot. Riot: Civil Unrest doesn't always let you do that, though.
![riot civil unrest shoot everyone riot civil unrest shoot everyone](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/60d6972015a4f3f05a89cdfa/4:3/w_1839,h_1379,c_limit/210705_r38606.jpg)
I wanted to find a peaceful way to deal with the situation, but the quickest course was to simply obliterate people until they ran away.Īs the protesters, I was more than happy to camp out in certain spots, sitting everyone down to blockade the advancing police forces, and praying they wouldn't start charging into my people. I'm a little disgusted with myself for how quickly I resorted to violence when playing as the police. You'll go in with good intentions, but you'll succumb to the evils of power before you realise it.Īnd that's what makes me uncomfortable. You can take control of the police and use brutality or sheer overwhelming numbers to force protesters out of certain areas and destroy their equipment, or you can play as the protesters who have similar objectives but are worse equipped for the task.īoth routes do allow for a peaceful path - protesters in particular are given plenty of options for simply blocking key points and creating human shields, and so long as the police AI doesn't start getting violent, it's usually pretty effective.īut playing as the police, it's so easy to simply abandon all humanity and start firing smoke grenades and rubber bullets into crowds to make them disperse. Riot: Civil Unrest lets you play out various scenarios from real-world acts of protest around the world, including events in Italy and during the Arab Spring rebellion not so long ago.
![riot civil unrest shoot everyone riot civil unrest shoot everyone](https://styles.redditmedia.com/t5_2ucbc/styles/communityIcon_1zr30vi29zh01.png)
The screams you hear may have been recorded for the game, but they aren't entirely fake. You can mask that behind as much pixel art as you like, but there's no avoiding the fact that those dots on the screen are stand-ins for actual civilians and policemen. These are real people, who really did get beaten and shot at for doing something they believed in. Instead, it's something more to do with the fact that all the events you're playing in the game really happened. It's not the controls - though the lack of tutorial and general cumbersome nature of moving units in this real-time strategy-style game certainly doesn't help matters. There's something about playing Riot: Civil Unrest that makes me deeply uncomfortable.