Topic: Beyond: Two Souls

[MysterD]

[place-holder, for now]

[MysterD]

Beyond: Two Souls
REVIEWS:

METACRITIC -> PS3 Version

Scored out of 10:
PlayStation Universe -> 9.5
NZGamer -> 9.4
GameSpot -> 9.0
God Is A Geek -> 9
Machinima -> 8
GamesTM -> 8
Polygon -> 8
PushSquare -> 8
GameInformer -> 7.75
NowGamer -> 7.5
EGMNow -> 7.5
GameTrailers -> 7.2
Eurogamer -> 6
IGN -> 6.
Shacknews -> 5
Destructoid -> 5
Edge Online -> 5
Metro UK -> 4

Scored out of 100:
VentureBeat - GamesBeat -> 88
Play UK -> 70
GamingTrend -> 65

Grading System (F < D < C < B < A):
GamingAge -> B.

Scored out of 5:
Rev3 Games -> 5 stars.
DigitalSpy -> 5 stars
Cheat Code Central -> 4.6
HardCore Gamer -> 4.5
GameRevolution -> 4
Joystiq -> 2 1/2 stars.

No score:
Kotaku.

[Xessive]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the game is not bad! haha

I've been playing it over the past couple of days. Incredible performances from both Willem Dafoe (Dawkins) and Ellen Page (Jodie). It's an interactive story more-so than a game. Much like Heavy Rain, the controls are wonky to say the least but they won't be a major obstacle to enjoying the experience as a whole.

Visually, it's pretty damn impressive on the PS3. The animations are just stellar. The facial gestures are amazingly detailed too.

I did find its pacing a bit awkward though. It jumps back and forth in the timeline all over Jodie's life. So you're playing as Jodie as an adult, then as a child, then an awkward teen, then a child again, then an adult again. It's very erratic. Despite that, it's a pretty engrossing story. I'm getting attached to certain characters and I want to see it through to the end.

EDIT:
Oh and if you're not a fan of QTEs, skip this one or just watch someone play it. Sure, there are segments where you control the character but the vast majority of the experience is QTEs.

[MysterD]

@Xessive

What's interesting here for me to notice - and this seems to be happening with each Quantic Dream/David Cage game - is the reviews are more and more all over the place w/ each release of theirs. The reviews are just wildly "all over the place" here - even more so than Heavy Rain.

Granted, I don't own a PS3 - my last Quantic Dream/David Cage game was Indigo Prophecy (AKA Fahrenheit). And I really liked Indigo, other than the game's last 1/3rd of ridiculousness in more ways than I feel like typing about here. I really wish Cage would get Sony to allow for PC ports of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls - but, I'm certainly dreaming here.

About the jumping around in Beyond's narrative - is that to evoke certain emotional points or something? I am curious b/c it's told out of chronological order - will scenes when Jodie's older than something when she's younger be much different? I'd guess if the story was told in order, that might be easier to pull off w/ the choice and consequence thing. Are there numerous game-variations and different endings here?

[Quemaqua]

I wasn't even aware this existed. I wanted to be interested in Heavy Rain and sort of was, but it didn't hold me to the end. Indigo started so strong that I saw it through to the finish, but that last third was a fucking disaster unlike almost anything I'd ever seen. I played the Euro version, which had some nudity and sex-related stuff that I'd hoped might make it feel more emotionally complete, and all of it was terrible. US edition likely better off without it.

Did anyone finish Heavy Rain? I've wanted to go back to it for some time but after Indigo never made the effort because I was too afraid that a decent start would end up in the same dismal pit the first one did.

[Xessive]

Ouch, Ars Technica hated it.

Summary:

The Good

Beautiful environmental design and character animation
Ellen Page proves she can salvage bad material

The Bad

Disjointed story that barely holds together through time-jumping structure
No sense of agency or ability to meaningfully change the story
A parade of overwrought, clichéd plot points straight out of high school creative writing class
An utter lack of tension or anything resembling real drama
Characters that can't hold together coherent motivations
Insultingly easy quick time events
Gameplay mostly boils down to "find the dot to continue the story"

The Ugly

The fact that, somehow, David Cage took the lessons of Heavy Rain and created this
Verdict: Stay far, far away.

While I found the Ars Technica review particularly harsh I do agree with most of its points.

As I mentioned, my experience with Beyond is that it's an interactive movie. Knowing David Cage's style (after Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain) I already took gameplay out of the equation. The story so far is not quite as bland as this review makes it seem but it does feel disjointed.

[iPPi]

I liked Heavy Rain a lot, but I'll wait for this to hit the discount bin before picking it up.

[MysterD]

Took almost 11 hours in total, but Beyond: Two Souls (PC version / Epic Store version) is finished.

And I really liked it.

And that is even despite feeling uneven, at times in its gameplay here and there; with certain scenes feeling too long; and  the writing not always being that great either.

There is really...just something about this game.

There is just a lot of interesting things in here, in this story and its characters. With its concept of dealing w/ life, death, paranormal, military, the homeless, identity, and other things - it's just always intriguing. I won't go into spoiler turf here, but this game seems to go everywhere and in all kinds of directions; and it's always interesting. There's some interesting twists & turns here and decisions to make, as you play the game.

Even with selecting to play the story out of order (in its Original Format), I was always intrigued to see where the story goes, what happens to these characters, what blanks I can fill in from what is being shown, what dots I connect here, and see where a game's chapter actually fits in the story's chronology.

This felt like it was part old-school adventure game (i.e. solve a puzzle of some kind, even though most aren't difficult); part "walking simulator"; part QTE-fest (which is par for the course w/ Cage's games since Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy); part cinematic/interactive movie; decision-making games with branching narratives/sections/numerous endings (RPG's often use these); and then some (i.e. the Aiden mechanics, where you control a floating entity that you can control which can control others, move things w/ telekinesis, and then some).

Also, the graphics in this remaster here on the PC looked really good and ran really well here. No real performance issues on my SC15 laptop, maintaining 1080p60fps on High here: i7 7700HQ; 16 GB RAM; 6GB GTX 1060; W10 x64.

With the way Cage directs a game and all, he's pretty much been on a roll since Heavy Rain. I really enjoyed Heavy Rain and now also can say the same for Beyond: Two Souls. If Fahrenheit was the flawed gem of an introduction to us with Cage's style of cinematic adventure games, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls feels like they are getting much closer to the near perfection of his style of cinematic games.

And now, I can pretty much say this: I'm even more so now really looking forward to Detroit: Become Human, whenever I get around to buying that one.

[MysterD]

I wasn't even aware this existed. I wanted to be interested in Heavy Rain and sort of was, but it didn't hold me to the end. Indigo started so strong that I saw it through to the finish, but that last third was a fucking disaster unlike almost anything I'd ever seen. I played the Euro version, which had some nudity and sex-related stuff that I'd hoped might make it feel more emotionally complete, and all of it was terrible. US edition likely better off without it.

Did anyone finish Heavy Rain? I've wanted to go back to it for some time but after Indigo never made the effort because I was too afraid that a decent start would end up in the same dismal pit the first one did.

I've heard wildly different stuff on Heavy Rain, at the end. Namely b/c...your decisions really do matter and the game can turn out some wildly different ways.

And luckily, I found way into what what I thought was a really good ending...and also very fitting too.

If you ask me, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls are much better than Fahrenheit.