Not For Broadcast

We sit down and review Not For Broadcast: Bits Of Your Life. The next DLC to further expand the story of the world. Here is our review of this Not For Broadcast DLC

The DLC and further shows for Not For Broadcast are still flowing out there and this time with the next big show called Bits Of Your Life. The next part of the Season that NotGames and tinyBuild have been working toward to keep us not only in the mix of the game but further explore the story while offering up some new gameplay. The bigger question is, does it add enough to keep us coming back or does it all fall flat? Well, we took to playing it and are ready to review it all for you so you know better. Here we go with Not For Broadcast: Bits Of Your Life… or as the game says… Here Are The Bits Of Your Life!

Story

Those who have played the core of Not For Broadcast should be familiar with Peter Clement in the story. A former TV personality who is working toward being Prime Minister in a world quite like ours. If you are not overly familiar, though, Bits Of Your Life is here to give us a different broadcast that takes us all down memory lane for Peter. All in a "lifetime achievement" kind of way that we get to help edit along the way. Sometimes it will be highlighting his career and why we need him in office. Other times it is to make him drink and swear as much as possible. These are the Bits of his life.

Hated

I will start with the bigger elephant for me and my play through of Bits Of Your Life here which did not seem to happen during my other runs of Not For Broadcast. This DLC seems to have issues loading the next portions of the video and can lead to a lot of crashing of the game. In fact, I tried playing through starting off with various other guests we need to call, which starts off different storylines, but only had one of them that allowed me to play through in one sitting without a crash. Thankfully, it was able to recover and start back up but it is odd to have this happen in this DLC when does not happen in Not For Broadcast nor any of the other DLC content we have out there. I was hoping to see it patched before now, but it seems playing the eight-minute segments and then reloading will be the only way to experience this story.

I mentioned calling guests to the show above and that is part of the core gameplay change in Not For Broadcast: Bits Of Your Life. After going through the game's tutorial and playing out how it was all planned with the game automating the guests, we are then given the chance to call in any order we want. A fairly solid idea given the premise and how it shakes things up. It would just be nice if there was a better way to know who we are calling without needing to play through the story multiple times before then. There is a small camera in each of the "green rooms" but the UI for Not For Broadcast does not allow us to better zoom in to see who is in each one. Given that a few characters have similar builds and shapes, it can get confusing when looking at a smaller screen and not memorizing the character's initials before. It just seems odd to not allow us to zoom in and see before. Especially since these character's moods and situations change along the way which helps to indicate the orders to call them.

Loved

I am always a sucker for good humor and comedy when it comes to my video games and, in general, Not For Broadcast is not a title that does that all the time. Sure, there are general comedic instances in all of the game elements, but Bits Of Your Life is where all of the good ones seem to have been saved and placed. On top of the fact that the game gets very "meta" with the humor making fun of parts of the core gameplay of Not For Broadcast while giving us the options we wished we had to play with. Even when the game leans toward giving us a very serious moment in the mix, the comedy and humor can still be found and are placed in just at the correct moments. All of this is to say that the writing and acting in this DLC shows that the team is only getting better at their craft as it carries forward and it makes me excited to see how it all moves forward.

The other aspect of Not For Broadcast: Bits Of Your Life that I am glad to see here is the inclusion of a notepad and the ability for us to try to figure things out in a more natural way than trial and error. This, as you can see in the gameplay below, is a new feature that allows us to see the various things our actions have placed in the game and then carry them forward so we can try other things. All so we do not keep making the same choices or can better figure out the order we need to go with for the other stories in the game. Even the DLC makes fun of the team for not having this in Not For Broadcast before now and would have players needing to do it all by hand at home. Not to mention, it also highlights some of the things that are actually clues in the game and not just cheeky dialog or numbers in the script as filler. Something I wish all video games would try to offer players so we do not need to memorize codes or numbers in-game when our characters have access to hold the information for us.

Overview

If you have enjoyed Not For Broadcast and the various other expansions that have been out there for the game, Bits Of Your Life adds in more of that fun and a few new options to play with. It does get a little repetitive to have to replay the same scenes over and over while editing the video, so be ready for that. Especially if you are going with the game before the crashing issue has been fixed. All in all, though, I had a whole lot of fun with Not For Broadcast: Bits Of Your Life and it offers not only some fun stories in the mix, but highlights how good writing can elevate a game with basic mechanics all higher than a triple-A title that has the blandest story that could ever be told. Give this one a go and all of the others in the line of this IP is the short version of all of that.

I give Not For Broadcast: Bits Of Your Life 4 Drinks on the Drink scale.

Not For Broadcast: Bits Of Your Life was developed by NotGames and published by tinyBuild for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on November 14^th, 2023. A PlayStation copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.