Beyond: Two Souls

If you like stories that zig-zag randomly between the past and future, Beyond Two Souls might ruin the idea. In addition to simply being hard to fallow, it's an effort to hide blatant contradictions like Jodie being 2 wildly different types of teenagers in the span of a year. Willam drops her off at a non-friend's birthday party because she's shy and "should make friends". They underage drink and use trashy witch-trial thinking to lock her in a closet; Aiden, the ghost tethered to her since birth, can unload an unhealthy dose of violent catharsis including a kitchen fire and knife into Alistair/Wheatley's shoulder. Later, Jodie is somehow now a rebellious punk who loudly despises Willam and lies to sneak out of the high-security facility to meet her "friends" at a bar. They aren't there, but Aiden has another violent spree with attempted rapists at the bar getting dead (Make the bartender take a shotgun to the mouth!) while Jodie cries in fetal position on the pool table. I later learn that I could have left the bar, but it only becomes available after I failed to get caught and gave up on trying to leave. These "friends" aren't confirmed as the partiers, but I see no other reason for this sudden change in personality than their influence and that itself seems impossible with that closet garbage. Even worse is Jodie being conscripted by a sleazy government stooge and her reasonable objection is dismissed as "teenage angst"; later, she's at odds with Aiden because he ideally tries to ruin her date with the stooge. She gave into Stockholm, I guess; but the main takeaway is that David Cage had all these ideas of the kinds of trouble that a girl with powers would face but he's too pretentious to understand that some personality traits contradict each other.

There may be a good game here, I wasn't able to tell. The PC controls with keyboard and mouse are infuriatingly terrible. I tried to get past them and eventually gave up and uninstalled.

So where do I start? I see review after review stating the story is disjointed. Well guess what? It was designed that way. If you want to play it chronologically, you can play it that way through the options in the options menu. You know, the thing you should check out whenever you're playing an interactive movie? Cool. Alright, moving on. People claim the game is cliche and the story is poorly written, blah blah blah, David Cage is inferred to be a monster by others with certain views that taint their gaming experiences, more blah blah blah. Bottom line is if you enjoy interactive movies, chances are you will like this game. And as far as the main character, played by Ellen Paige, crying all the time, she doesn't, depending on your playthrough. See, that's the thing about Quantic Dreams games, each scenario can play out multiple ways. Unlike others, I won't spoil key elements of the story in my review, but I know of one scene that went completely differently in each of the three times I played it, and that's JUST one scene. In terms of acting, it's solid, more or less. I didn't feel like they did a poor job of it. In terms of controls, it takes some getting used to, but be prepared to randomly forget how to do certain things in the game unless you teach yourself to memorize the controls. That reason is why I'm docking it a star. I wouldn't pay $20 for it, but at $10? It's a steal. It's worth the $20, I just personally don't feel it should be going for that much for how old it is. GL HF, don't take gaming so seriously. It's a hobby, not a POV.

That's litterally what it is, an interactive 3D animation movie. You can see it as an oversimplified point & click. Is it a bad thing that the game has barely any gameplay ? No, yes, maybe... It's litterally a point & click with QTE, what do you expect from it ? Elden Ring boss fights ? If you don't like QTE, play something else, simple as that. Or don't just stop at the simple but completely fine gameplay and value the other qualities of the game. Is the story bad ? Maybe the supernatural part went too far, maybe the non-linear narrative haven't pleased people (i recommend you to choose this nonetheless because IMO the narrative has a better pacing that way), maybe some reveals or character development are underwhelming... I appreciated it tho. Even with the confusion of some events or lore bits, there is nothing really out of place or character and it has good vibes. Yes it's David Cage and Quantic Dream writing, don't expect huge twists, "the best story ever" or ground breaking choices. On the technical side, there may be some disparity in the quality of models or textures, but once you remember it's a PS3 game with motion capture, you just accept it and appreciate when the art hits right. Music was nice but won't remember it (Zimmer probably forgot about it too). To finish, I'd join my voice to the one complaining about the controls with mouse and keyboard, tho i didn't have bugs, it just feels really odd. Controller is the way.

feels like an interactive movie with exciting story, great graphics, and amazing voice acting (especially Page and Dafoe); don't expect an open world experience: there are guardrails that will lead you to where you are meant to head (in part implemented with the camera resisting looking in the wrong direction), but there are a lot of choices and possible endings also. The only issue I encountered were the controls: I usually prefer mouse and keyboard, but not on this title since the controls are OK with a controller but are horrible with a mouse. Luckily this PC version also supports controllers.