Beyond: Two Souls

The title says it all, this is one of the most tonally inconsistant, completely random, batshit insane games I have ever played and I loved every second of it. I played the game in the Original order first time around (I 100% intent to play this game again later) and I highly recommend it, the seemingky random order of events honestly leaves you questioning whether or not your even playing the same game and honestly I found that so entertaining. In terms of performances, its a mixed bag, Elliot Page gives a mixed performance, sometimes it really works and other times it feels like he is sleepwalking throughout. Willem Dafoe on the overhand was phenominal, he gave it his all 100% of the time and you can really hear the hurt in his voice. Graphically it is also very pleasing although there are some Artifacts i noticed while playing, with plenty of Z-fighting especially near the endgame. The game plays well on a 21:9 display as well, I personally had no problems. Overall play this game if you like batshit insane stories.

The game is still good, but with the years, flaws are much more visible. The gameplay is rigid, the fighting system messy and controls clunky. However, the core of the experience remains intact. A quantic dream classic with QTE and choices that will impact how things are going to be (and end). Even if the story can be sometimes predictable (or not coherent) there are genuinely touching moment thanks to a voice acting on point and a really good music. The great strength of the game is in the writing the main characters and their evolution through the story, not the ageing gameplay and controls For that, i enjoyed it. And for that i understand some will not like it. Give it a try !

Beyond: Two Souls isn't the worst thing Quantic Dream has ever put out, but that's only because of how phenominally bad of a developer they have shown themselves to be. For most other studios, this would be far and away the most embarassing effort they ever had the gall to release. The story is typical David Cage fare, with half the scenes written like first drafts from before the writer knew what the story was ultimately going to be about, and the other half feeling entirely superfluous, only added in to extend the run time of a game that already feels like it's dragging it's feet in getting to any kind of point. The decision to tell the story out of order doesn't help, especially since it's such a pointless and baffling narritive device. The game's story and how the player experiences it would change not in the slightest if it had been told linearly, so it feels like no more than a last ditch effort to give a boring game any kind of personality. Normally, a Quantic Dream game can at least be recommended on a purely ironic level, due to how hilarously incompetent the writing is, especially when it comes to dialouge, and while Beyond: Two Souls certainly has an abundance of so-bad-it's-good moments, the sheer amount of time David Cage devotes to creeping on Elliot Page by constantly shoehorning in weird sexual situations severely undercuts any humor one would typically find in one of these games. That is to say, even if you're used to the bizarre amounts of scenes of sexual assault that take place in Cage's games, this one may be too much for you. Gameplay in Quantic Dream games is almost beneath mentioning. It's walking around occasionally broken up by QTEs. You'd think this would be hard to screw up, but Two Souls reaches innovative new levels of trash by having you guess what direction you need to press on the thumb stick based on one of Quantic Dreams' famously poorly directed cutscenes. No worries though, you can't die in this game, so there's no tension. Awful

I'd give this one a 10, but alas, only 5 are possible. Pros: The game is diverse, with many gameplays and styles involved (and exploited), the story is rich, the actors are, well, world-renowned ones. The graphics may look a little rough at first, but then one remembers that it's a 2013 game. Nevertheless, you get used to it soon enough. The ending is satisfactory, and leaves you longing to replay it again, to see the other outcomes. Cons: Quite a few continuity mishaps: one frame (The Party intro) the driveway is empty, next cut - people are taking photos of the sun. The Dinner - you order pizza, they take two slices, then only two slices are left in the box. A few more, but only those two come to my mind at this hour. Nevertheless, this game gets a 5-star from me, with the clear intention to start it over tomorrow evening. Thank you, Quantic Dream, and thank you, Sony, for this experience!

The story was fantastic with a good amount of choices. That being said I found some to be vague. Without going into spoilers some options were far more extreme than I expected them to be or just go in a direction I had wholly gauged wrong. It didn't happen often so it wasn't a huge deal. I played through the game in it's original mix which means it jumped around from year to year a lot and everything was out of chronological order. I actually liked it like this and still found everything easy to grasp and understand. It's nice that the game gave the option to play it in chronological order if i wanted to. The controls were a bit of an issue. I found dodging during combat to be a bit of a pain. The game gives an indication as to which way to push the stick but for whatever reason I seemed to misinterpret this quite a bit. For instance sometimes the game wanted me to swing away from something or towards something but for whatever reason I seemed to do the opposite a lot. Another controls related problem I had was the camera. I found it very difficult to adjust it so see what I wanted often enough for it to be annoying. It did pick up my F310 and change the prompts for it which was good. The graphics were fairly well done with keeping it in context of a game released in 2013. Everything from the hair, clothing, environments, objects, etc were all either average or above average. The music was pretty well done, especially one scene which had Ellen Page singing a song on an acoustic guitar. The voice acting was great throughout. One thing I will say is that using Aiden's abilities was very inconsistent. Sometimes you could use him and others you couldn't with very little logical reason as to why. There were a good variety of things you could do with him but you were railroaded into which ability you could use at that moment. Why could I strange some guards but not others, possess some but not others, etc. Overall the great story trumped the poor controls for me. 8/10