Food For Thoughts

Alright, I played through all six missions of this so called game, and some of the games I even tried it a number of times to see if I can acheive a high score. Overall this game is pretty low on entertainment value but beyond the gameplay lies some informational value which I realise the game is trying to enforce. Let me go through the missions to see what the game is really all about.

Mission One
When presented in lecture, this game is wayyyyyyyy boring! I was like circling the mouse around while the helicopter moves. It provides no challenge at all. The game tries to keep up with the serious atmosphere by having nifty cut scenes and good background music. But the gameplay simply don't cut it. Way crap gameplay! But yet after the game I was given a video of an actual scenario of a real life WFP copter in action. So the reward for completing the boring mission is a video... ok... fair enough, and the video did taught me somethiing about heliborne actions.

Mission Two
Alright, I took quite some time figuring out the right combi for this. This game is fairly fun but absolutely no replay value. But it did taught me abit on balancing economics! Again I was enticed to see the next video, and it got abit frustrating trying to balance out the rice, oil and whatnots. Overall this mission contains abit more gameplay than the brain dead mission one.

Mission Three
This mission is more 'arcade' in nature, requiring some reflexes to get the food drop at the exact area. Overall this mission contains the highest replayability and the score do give some meaning to the game. But yet the interest diminishes quickly after playing for a few times, as the mission will not change dynamically.

Mission Four
I thought it would be a good economics lesson, but the execution of food supply is poorly done. Overall I find myself randomly picking out the countries that are providing aid and hope that it will fall into a nice pattern. I tried to play it more strategically, but the countries appear all too randomly and even if I use careful planning, I would get the same cut scene, same results. Moving on...

Mission Five
This food truck game looks promising at first, but after what was seen to be having some choices to make. It all boils down to some simple click to get past mission. At one point of time there's this changing of wheels game... a total waste of time! Click and hold on to the mouse button to screw and unscrew the nuts in the wheels.

Mission Six
Again a mission that looks promising but failed to deliver. But it was the most informative mission as I find myself listening to what the in-game character has to say about each area. Though what I did was simply dumping food bags into all areas without thinking, at least the information got me interested to know about food planning and helping the country produce food on her own. The final video did capture my attention.

Alright so it would be best that I use conventional game review criteria to assess this as a game:

Graphics: 7/10
Not too bad as a free game. The videos are perhaps the redeeming features of this game as it provided a certain incentive for players to continue playing. The characters were rendered pretty well.

Sound: 8/10
Sound effects in game were pretty good. In-game conversations were clear and characters had distince audible accent.

Music: 9/10
Captures lot of attention and make it feel like a action packed game

Gameplay: 3/10
Yet... the game failed to deliver in its all too simplistic stale gameplay. Most of the missions started with a captivating introduction, but the gameplay mechanics are simply boring. One can just randomly click and not feel any sense of achievement in it, resulting in meaningless play.

Replayability: 3/10
Except for perhaps mission 3, all the games have absolutely no redeeming features to make players come for more.

Overall: 3.5/10
Poor execution of gameplay really plagued this game, as though all efforts have been put into creating content and visual/audio effects.

Yet... as an educational game, I find myself learning something about the operations carried out in WFP. But then again, I can learn it solely through the videos. Most of the time I find myself just clicking my way thru just to get to the next video. So the gameplay elements isn't really substantial.

However, if you listen carefully to what the characters said while playing the game, you find that they do teach you some real life facts on what you are actually doing while playing the game. The missions can somehow co-relate to actual operations. Yet the oversimplified boring gameplay distracted the learning process. And I believe if it was just an interactive flash it would have done the job too.

Overall this game examplifies how not to make a game. Too much focus is on the content, and it is apparent that the producers emphasise on basing the content as real life as possible. But the gaming element is weak and execution is poor. So the game feels 'neither here nor there'. Perhaps with an open mind, and a higher inclination to learn more about WFP, I would appreciate the in-game mechanics and how the missions are blended to represent an actual food operation. Then again, the website would have provided me with all the info I need, without spending time on meaningless play.