LifeisXbox’s Not For Broadcast review | Have you ever dreamt of broadcasting a TV show or a news channel on television? Well, now’s your chance! In Not For Broadcast, you’ll be able to fulfil that dream. In this point & click simulator developed by NotGames, and published by tinyBuild, you’ll find yourself in the shoes of Alex Winston whose job is to change the camera feeds, choose headlines, and censor nasty words, all while this is being played on TV for a live audience. Since you have the power to broadcast anything you want, you have the ability to change how this story will end.
Most Memorable Moment
Personally, I got the most fun out of watching the video footage of the game. Not For Broadcast really captures how an 80s news channel looked really well. Everything was cleverly written, nicely acted, and the sets looked quite good as well! It’s even possible to rewatch scenes from a certain broadcast over again without playing the actual game, which I found to be a pretty fun addition!
ℹ️ Reviewed on PC | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we Liked!
- The footage | The videos used for this game are really well made, and it also had some great comedy involved in them! Not For Broadcast has so much footage to the point where they even won a Guinness World Record for being the game with the most full-motion video footage, and it’s honestly quite an amazing achievement for them! The content ranges from news broadcasts & TV shows, to full-out songs that they themselves wrote. The stories told in these broadcasts even affect the game’s story, and it’s up to you to alter it by broadcasting it in your own way.
Mixed Feelings
- Storytelling | The game is actually split into 2 categories; broadcasting sections, where you’ll be broadcasting things on TV, and story sections, where you’ll make decisions on how this story will end. You take on the role of Alex Winston, who works at a broadcast station called Channel1, specifically for National Nightly News. While I found altering the story in the broadcasts sections themselves to be quite hilarious, I did find the story sections to be a little… boring. In these story sections, you’ll mainly be reading stuff, and selecting from multiple options.
- Graphics | In the game, you’re mainly stuck in your broadcasting room, so the graphics here look mostly the same throughout the entire game. They look quite decent in here, but when you look through the window on your left, it looks… okay; that could’ve been done a little better.
The story sections do, however, have more unique graphics. While you decide on what option you wanna pick during the story, you’ll be able to take a look at how your surroundings of where the story takes place in looks. But again, the inside of the buildings look decent, but it’s the outside that still looks a little on the weaker side.
- Challenge Mode | If you found the story mode to be too easy, there’s also a challenge mode which adds 5 different challenges that make the gameplay feel a little more unique. Challenges range from buttons that might kill you via shocks when you press them, to your equipment that’s slowly overheating, requiring you to cool it down. I personally found these challenges to be waaay too difficult, and was only able to beat 1 out of the 5. If you’ve been able to beat all 5 of the challenges at least one time, you’ll have the option to enable them all at once, basically making an easy game, nearly impossible.
What we Disliked
- Very repetitive | Besides the occasional story segments and a few twists in the broadcasting room, there really isn’t much more this game has to offer. I found myself changing the feeds, playing adds & sound effects, and censoring words for hours on end, with almost nothing new. As mentioned before, there’s a challenge mode, and even that makes the game feel mostly the same. At the end of the story mode, the only thing that kept me motivated to actually complete the game was the story involved and the video’s themselves, the gameplay felt really boring at that point, which kinda disappointed me.
How long to beat the story | About 10 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | About 25 hours
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