All Quiet

Assigned a book report on Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Matt Bell asked, and was granted, special permission to instead adapt the book into a videogame. As it happens, the game fails to capture much beyond a basic WWI setting. The player starts off in a trench as it begins to fill with mustard gas, and is forced to go “over the top”; as he works his way across the battlefield, the player will encounter barbed wire, mortars, more gas, and machine gun fire that seems to follow the player around like angry bees. The player’s only defense is a single-shot rifle, and it’s not really enough to get far. If the game does express one thing, it’s a certain futility.