The Occupation Reviews
The Occupation brilliantly blends elaborate levels, breadcrumb-chasing, gotcha journalism, and a politically-charged drama to become one of 2019's most interesting games.
Would I recommend The Occupation? Yes. If you like real stealth and a kind of nostalgia and have a good gaming session you can dedicate to the game. It will reward you well. If you are a gamer with not much time, I am not too sure. But I certainly wouldn’t let that put you off giving it a go.
The Occupation is a smart, story-driven stealth adventure, the sort of game that gets under your skin in ways you didn't even realize.
On the whole though, a very well done game with an outstandingly impressive attention to detail.
The Occupation is a great experience that will have you breaking a sweat as you attempt to use every last second you have to discover the truth about the Turing Incident.
There's a lot to love with The Occupation. It's got humanity, tension, and plenty of little touches that make finding that extra bit of information exciting without the usual violence you've come to expect from stealth games. However, its focus on no manual saving and real-time gameplay will be a dealbreaker. It's not for everyone, but anyone craving consequence and narrative in their stealth game will find a challenge worth facing.
The Occupation is a charismatic mystery game, full of interesting game mechanics and writing that thrusts players into the midst of political turmoil.
The Occupation is a taut investigative simulation and stealth thriller. It's infused with a realistic and multidimensional approach to mechanics, systems, and level design. This is a must-play for fans of Deus Ex and Dishonored.
Although imperfect in many ways, I still consider The Occupation to be a totally worthwhile experience and a great display of ambitious game design. The investigative components and political thriller narrative are highly engaging in spite of its clunky packaging.
The best bit of The Occupation is creeping around and scrabbling through paperwork, and that bit is bloody brilliant.
Playing The Occupation is like puzzling over a dense little knot of tangled priorities, information, and pressures. It’s tense to play through, and even more fun to go back and try the process again, armed with information from previous runs.
The Occupation is an excellent concept for a game, and something I hope to see done more in the future, but it failed in several regards this time around. The story is perfectly functional, but the implied intrigue is nothing more than an implication, and any curiosity I had to learn more was purely in disbelief that it could be as simple as it seemed. The mechanics and systems, particularly those built around stealth, are far from refined, and further still from “fun.” Even fundamental interface components are tremendously flawed, as well as a bunch of other technical issues throughout. I love the premise of The Occupation so much, and I genuinely hope to see more in its ilk, but I simply can’t recommend this game.
A remarkable political thriller with real-time elements that differentiate it from other games in the same genre. The fairly common and serious technical problems are a deal breaker, sadly.
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The Occupation is so many things I have wanted to see in a game, but I can't give it the love and adoration I want to.
A tense, imaginative thriller that buckles under the weight of its own ambition.