Not For Broadcast PC review

Have you ever been watching TV and have had the thought that you could run your own television station and do a better job? Well, we have a game that is right up your street. Not for Broadcast is a simulation game where you get to run your very own TV station and gives you complete control as to what the public see and don’t see. Will you abandon your morals or be a station that plays nice and keeps the peace?

Developer: NotGames
Publisher: TinyBuild
Release Date: 25 January 2022

CPU: Intel Core i5 2.4 Ghz / AMD Equivalent
GPU: Geforce GTX 960, AMD Radeon HD 7970
RAM: 8 GB
HDD: 39 GB

Review code was provided.

Not For Broadcast is set in an alternative Britain in the 1980’s. The country is being run by a political party who was voted in with the policies that everyone wanted. Your view for the game is sat in the broadcasting centre with various screens and controls to produce your channel’s content. You got the ability to censor swear words if you feel the need too while having access to 4 different feeds which are live and to select the ads that you want to put out there during the breaks.

You basically are a person with a lot of power as the news is always important and as they say, “give the people what they want”. You can bring down famous people by making them look bad which starts a chain of reaction of there career going down the toilet. Each episode you create is about 20 minutes and you get to see live action video of your creation, which took me back to the old Full Motion Video days of the Mega CD and early PC games, but of course without the graininess.

With events happening in real time and having to keep a close eye on all the feeds gives a Night Trap feel without the voyeuristic aspect. There are some guidelines you got to cut to wide-angled shots and keep the camera trained on the person that is talking, but don’t hold too long and make sure no unwanted guests get on the camera to ruin the shot. You also get some funny incidents you must deal with, like naked protesters storming the studio and you must edit the footage to make it safe for Television by editing out the bits that should be covered. Also, language needs to be bleeped out which takes the form of fast fingers and reactions to keep on top of it.

The game is broken up into a few chapters and by the time I got towards the end of the last chapter I formed a bond with the characters. Even though the game has over 40 hours of FMV, the gameplay and choices you make give you sense that you achieved that. There is some replayability as you can change the ending slightly by selecting different choices, but this could become boring after two times. There are some issues like trying to be listen to multiple broadcasts at once, which tends to become jumbled and you may miss some things.

Final Thoughts

Not For Broadcast is a fun television and political simulator. There is plenty of entertainment value with the FMV clips and editing the content to make your audience happy and you a popular station. At times there is a lot of funny events happening and how you deal with them will reveal the person that you are. If you were fans of the old FMV games of the late nineties, early 2000’s then is the game for you.