Review: We Happy Few’s last DLC brings a bright, stumbling conclusion

We Happy Few had an interesting development cycle, starting off as something closer to a survival game while in Game Preview, before Compulsion Games focused on fleshing out the narrative focus and storytelling elements that so attracted players from the initial reveal. That strong sense of narrative has carried over into the different DLC packs, the latest and last of which is We Happy Few: We All Fall Down. In this ultimate finale, players take up the whip of Victoria Bing, director of the Department of Archives.

With her head clearing from the effects of Joy, Victoria realized desperate action needs to be taken to get the rest of Wellington Wells off the psychadelic, suppressive stuff as well before everyone starves to death. Along the way, Victoria suffers with returning memories of her childhood and mother. This DLC ultimately provides a solid conclusion to the cacophonous events of the base game, though not without some issues like a lack of variety in gameplay.

If you’re familiar with We Happy Few and its prior DLC packs, you’re familiar with the setup here. With that said, there are some new tools that greatly aid exploration and combat. The first of these is the whip, which you can use to nonlethally fight off different foes like the Bobbies, as well as use it to scale different buildings and swing between rafters. The result is a much-needed, massive improvement combat and momentum within the game. I really can’t emphasize that part enough. Combat is completely transformed and with some proper timing, even massive groups of enemies that would’ve been insurmountable before are now easily taken down.

I appreciated the change in gameplay that the whip provided.

The whip is also fantastic for grappling onto different marked points, allowing you to get a vantage point high above the streets and even swing your way through unstable platforms. Compared to sneaking around all the time, it’s a refreshingly quick change of pace that requires some accurate timing, especially at one lengthy section near the end. I appreciated the change in gameplay that the whip provided.

Still, the whip isn’t the only new tool, as this DLC also introduces the dart gun, a small handheld gun that shoots electric darts. These darts can be used to disable TVs and other electronic devices, or for shocking some of your pursuers. While nowhere near as revolutionary as the whip, this tool is similarly helpful and provides another nifty shakeup for the formula.

We Happy Few: We All Fall Down also falls low

Unfortunately, these changes in toolset don’t really come with changes in level design, at least as far as combat is concerned. While zipping across rooftops feels fantastic, combat now basically boils down to whipping everything in sight repeatedly, throwing in some uses of the dart gun once you pick it up later in the DLC. It’s fine but it feels like more could have been done to provide unique challenges. Most of the time, different objectives were linear. All but a tiny handful of times, there was only way to get to a particular objective or past a certain problem, which is a shame as the new gameplay options provided a fair bit of opportunity.

Should you buy We Happy Few: We All Fall Down?

Anyone who has played and enjoyed the base game will appreciate seeing this story through. It’s $8 USD for an extended epilogue that’ll probably take you around 4 hours to finish. Players who appreciate the twisted, colorful world of Wellington Wells will want to see it through, even if that means everything burns to the ground.

3.5 out of 5

Obviously, if you haven’t invested in We Happy Few before this, grabbing this DLC (which is included in the Season Pass) won’t really make sense and I don’t think it marks an argument for playing the game on its own.

Compulsion’s storytelling has evolved over the life of this game and now in these DLC packs, the immersive sim elements and gameplay design have seen similar improvements. While there’s room to grow, as the sun sets on Wellington Wells for the last time, I’m looking forward to whatever is next for Compulsion as a part of Xbox Game Studios.

We reviewed We Happy Few: We All Fall Down on an Xbox One X, with a code provided by the publisher.