➤ 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, the PS4 review 🎮

Very often the cultural significance of the video game is completely ignored, despite the fact that in recent years the situation has been slowly improving. Fortunately, from time to time to rebalance things, brave productions such as 1979 Revolution: Black Friday; games ready to remember that the videogame medium can say a lot, in many different ways, and with excellent educational opportunities. For example, it can contribute to disseminating, or presenting in a different light, important events from the collective past, even the very recent one. How many of you, before casually glancing at the title of iNK stories and N-Fusion Interactive, knew at least in general the events of the most relevant revolution of Iran in contemporary history? 1979 Revolution: Black Friday tells what happened, and it does so through a fast-paced, enjoyable and rather ambitious narrative adventure. Now it is also available on console, ready to delight amateur historians, but not only.

The Iranian revolution marries interactive drama

Say that 1979 Revolution: Black Friday is an interactive adventure with a historical background does not do justice to the work of the developers: the brave indie published by Digerati is not a video game built around an event of the recent past to propose a particular gameplay or game idea, but the attempt to tell a precise story with the most suitable means. And what better way to tell a story than to adopt interactive drama? Important exponents such as the works of David Cage and those of Telltale Games have shown that the events and characters are the real protagonists of the game, while the player has the (limited) task of deciding which words they should pronounce, which important choices to make, and above all what fate they must meet.

1979 Revolution: Black Friday, the PS4 review

1979 Revolution: Black Friday tells what happened between 1978 and 1979 in Iran, focusing on this last year in particular, but with frequent flashbacks that make the whole story understandable even to those who have leafed through the latest history book. school. Among other things, the events of contemporary history are also treated superficially in secondary schools, so titles of this kind are always useful also to enrich one's personal baggage of knowledge. There revolution of 1979 was a fundamental event for the birth of modern Shiite Iran: after a long period of nationalist social and military reforms and the worsening of the living conditions of most of the city classes, the revolutionaries deposed the last Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty ; when the oppressive regime fell, the Islamic Republic of Iran was born. The event attracted the attention of the main world powers (especially America) and the tensions continued for a long time even after the proclamation of the Republic, without it being possible to exclude that today they are at the basis of the continuing conflicts in the Middle East.

The player is called to interpret (and check) Reza Shirazi, a photojournalist who returned to Iran in the summer of '79 after a long stay in Europe: a very different country awaits him from the one he left when he left, where living conditions have worsened and the authoritarian drift of the Shah has now reached the point of no return. During the twenty chapters in which the main plot unfolds, Reza will experience the main events of the revolution, clashes with the armed forces, non-violent actions, will see with his own eyes what Iran has become, and in the end (depending on the choices of the player) will act in a certain way within the revolutionary movement. Both he and his companions can die, suffer or win, with the good dose of replayability that usually also offer titles such as Detroit: Become Human and the Telltale Games games, obviously always remembering in this case it is an indie with elevating potential, but also with very limited resources.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

1979 Revolution: Black Friday lands on PlayStation 4 bringing with it a large number of Trophies, including the coveted Platinum Trophy. Getting them all will not be particularly difficult, nor an excessively long operation considering the short duration of the main adventure. It will be necessary to complete the story at least once, get all the collectibles related to all the historical insights of the title, and then again cooperate and save the various supporting actors.

Revolution on PS4: a very good conversion

Speaking of its indie nature, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday was released two years ago on PC, and after a long period of conversion it is now also on consoles. The writer has had the opportunity to deal with the PlayStation 4 version, which apart from a few small graphic glitches turns out to be very solid. The minimum actions related to the gameplay have been entrusted to the analogs of the DualShock 4, exactly as happens for titles such as The Walking Dead and Tales from the Borderlands by Telltale Games: during the exploration phases the left analog is predisposed to the movement of the character, during QTE sessions must be tilted in the precise direction indicated on the screen to prevent the protagonist from crashing into a car or ending up in the clutches of the Iranian police. Most of the situations proposed in 1979 are resolved, in fact, in the rapid execution of precise commands, and during the dialogues in the selection of one of the four possible answers shows on the screen.

Here the problems are basically two, but they become only one: first of all, the title has been subtitled in several languages, including European ones, but unfortunately not in Spanish. In itself, nothing new under the sun, except that the response time is very short, and that most of the time you live with the anxiety of not being able to read, understand and select the correct answer in time. of the four present. A defect that is not too intrusive but annoying, also because 1979 Revolution: Black Friday is a valid title, which among other things tells the revolution in an objective and historically accurate way, giving the possibility to deepen more than one aspect about situations, events and characters. of those years full of tension. Provided, yes, to be able to coexist with a technical and visual sector reminiscent of PlayStation 2 games.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Nintendo eShop Price 4,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

8.3

Readers (4)

6.3

Your vote

1979 Revolution: Black Friday is an extremely interesting and courageous indie: it tells a historical event that is not only recent, but also decidedly complex, the results of which are reflected in the world we live in and in the current power games between Western and Eastern powers. Despite a very below average technical sector and an artistic direction that, except for effects and soundtrack, fails to convince, the interactive drama proposed by iNK stories and N-Fusion Interactive proves to be very enjoyable. The narrative rhythm constitutes one of the best aspects of production: it keeps the attention awake until the conclusion of the (short) events of the protagonists, despite the apparent "heaviness" of the proposed themes. Some gameplay ideas are also valid, such as the photo mini-game and collectibles as sources of historical insight.