Beyond: Two Souls | Gameguide
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French developer Quantic Dream is responsible for the amazing Fahrenheit on the original XBox and PS2, and more recently, the PS3 exclusive Heavy Rain. Both of these games showed a progression in Quantic Dream’s technical and story-telling abilities. Fahrenheit totally blew me away, and Heavy Rain, whilst occasionally annoying, drew me in with it’s story-line and multiple characters.
So it was with high anticipation that I slid Beyond: Two Souls into my Playstation’s BluRay slot. This was the game that was going to make me forget about GTAV and my XBox 360. It was the game that was going to consume my life for the next week.
Or so I had imagined.
The problem with Beyond: Two Souls is that it’s a technical achievement, but that’s about it. The story-line is dull and doesn’t seem to even attempt to draw you in, and the game-play is not really there. Some scenes will see you controlling the games main character, Jodie, walking from point A to point B with nothing to do in between. Another scene will see you – and I’m not kidding – playing with Barbies.
And what’s worse, is that for some scenes, the interactive button combinations don’t really matter, roll the wrong way and you’ll get punched or kicked, but you still get to point B. Stumbling around not knowing what you should be doing is also common, but again, failing is seldom an option.
The story-line sees you as a troubled young girl who has a demonic companion, called Aiden, who you can control from time to time, to help you achieve certain things. This, despite being central to the convoluted story-line, adds nothing to the game-play what so ever. If anything, it’s a distraction.
One thing that does stand out in Beyond: Two Souls, is the performance of Ellen Page who did all the performance capture for Jodie’s character. This and Quantic Dream’s heavy investment in technology pushes the boundaries of the PS3, delivering some truly amazing visuals.
The problem is that Beyond: Two Souls comes off as looking more like a tech demo, aimed at selling Quantic Dream’s abilities, than it does as a video game.
I’m just hoping that what ever they are working on next, Quantic Dream remember that video games are normally about having fun and escaping from reality.
If you want to experience the most visually stunning , interactive experience on the PS3, then by all means get Beyond: Two Souls. It will amaze you. If you want something fun and engaging, grab GTAV, or even Heavy Rain if you missed it on release.
Rating: R16 Contains violence, horror, drug use & offensive language.
GAMEGUIDE rating:
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