Global Conflicts: Palestine

As everyone is probably aware, Israel and Palestine do not really get along together, which means that violence usually breaks out between the two nations. Newspapers and various other media sources try to cover the subject, but they might not do a very good job at explaining exactly why these things happen, because they assume people already know.

Global Conflicts: Palestine is a top-down adventure game in which you play the role of a freelance journalist, tasked with bringing a few good stories from Jerusalem. The game feels a bit like an adventure game, but the weird perspective and the free roam environments do not really go with the genre. Regardless of what you may call it, the game truly is innovative and interesting, to say the least.

In the beginning, you get the chance to choose between two characters, either a male, or a female. There’s no difference when it comes to missions regardless of what you choose, but the two characters have different background stories. The main goal in every mission is to publish news pieces about certain events, which affect your relationship with both countries. Given the fact that you take your information from regular people out on the streets, it might get difficult if you do not have a very good reputation in one of the countries.

To give your story credibility, you must use quotes from different persons, usually informers that live in the country. They are not very quick to talk to you, however, unless you help them with certain errands first, which can be annoying. Basically, you just have to run between two characters and talk to them, which gets repetitive and annoying quite quickly.

Visually, the game is not exactly bad, but it doesn’t shine either. The top-down camera comes with the option to zoom in as much as you want, but things don’t get better at street level either. Fortunately, the level design is good and you can really get into the atmosphere, especially since there aren’t many other games portraying this specific setting.

All things considered, Global Conflicts: Palestine is a breath of fresh air in the industry, because it tackles some interesting issues and it features some nice locations. More work could have gone into the missions and the annoying side missions, but you you still enjoying either way.