Beyond Two Souls gets a 6.0

I know many people on here don't listen to reviews, neither do I but I found this to be pretty shocking.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/08/beyond-two-souls-review

 

I'm not sure whether to be surprised or not. On one hand it was made by the same people who made Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, on the other a lot of journalists have been known lately to score major mainstream games rather high whether or not the quality actually matches while sometime better games get the short end of the stick and are given terrible ratings.

 

I really, really hate the 10 point scoring system, but the review seems to have justified reasons for scoring it as a mediocre title. It's a shame to see that this game might not be as great as it was built up to be, but it certainly was a daring attempt.

 

Can' t say I' m surprised. I watched someone playing the demo, he spent most of it hanging the controler in the air to demonstrate that, most of the time, the game doesn' t even care and moves on anyway. Success and failure (if you can still call it failure) land you at the exact same place.

I liked Heavy Rain for the experiment that it was but to me it was just that, an experiment, a "once is enough" kind of game. It would have been awesome to focus on the best aspects of Heavy Rain and inplement them in an actual game, but David Cage chose the polar opposite road, focusing instead on its worst aspect (cheating the player into thinking what he does matters) and moving further away from what fundamentally makes a game a game.


I' ll "play" B2S on youtube.

 

"Game overs are failure for the game designer." -David Cage

 

Boy, it's not like reviewers don't suck at reviewing and gate a game from getting above a 7/10 if they didn't get some free swag.

Wonderful 101 got dragged through the mud and it demolished its sales numbers. Hoping that **** gets a sequel still to make up for things.

That said, I wasn't going to get this anyway because I know David Cage doesn't make good games.

 

Wow, lot of hate for the interactive drama genre here.

I loved Heavy Rain personally, not many games of that genre have such an uncompromising punishment to you and your actions, all of it a unique detective experience.
But I do find Quantic Dreams to be a team who makes tech demos more than games most of their development time. The thing about interactive dramas is that you need to interact and affect the characters, plot or situation, Beyond looks to just be linear, without punishment and just fulfilling a predetermined, orchestrated objective. Walk to this side the room, open this door, without any variety or choice or consequence.
Heavy Rain made you think about what you do at least.

 

http://www.gamespot.com/beyond-two-souls/reviews/beyond-two-souls-review-6415416/

This game seems kind of polarizing because it's very focused on storytelling and not so much on a deep gameplay experience. I don't think there's anything wrong with that necessarily, just that it's not for everyone, in the same way games on the other end of the spectrum might not be lol. A little more balance would have done it well, I think :v. But I kind of get the impression that the creator(s) were less concerned with review scores than building a unique or memorable experience (whether or not it ends up being such is of course entirely subjective).

 

I don't hate the genre, for example I love the Walking Dead game by Telltale.

 

People probably finally realized the serious bullshit Heavy Rain pulled and aren't going to let QD off so easily this time.

 

It's the fact it's essentially a movie you trudge along with and not one you affect, making the interaction you actually do less meaningful. It could've been made into a film, because ultimately, your decisions don't affect gameplay in a way that creates satisfaction or consequence more than what the developers have made you.
This isn't so bad on a game that plays more traditional linear games, because you'll have the shooting, or the slashing to fall back on to make the experience fun, but for interactive dramas where your actions aren't free or varied (or even just appear to be), it really affects enjoyment of the experience..

 

Oh sorry, I didn't mean about the interaction being meaningful, I meant the experience overall. I agree it could have been a film, but the creator decided otherwise, perhaps precisely because he wanted that limited interaction element.

As for it affecting one's enjoyment, I'd have to once again argue that's subjective. The fun in the experience is intended to be the story here, not slashing or shooting. It hand-holds you to an extreme and I'm not a huge fan of that myself, but some people might be okay with that considering everything else. The reviews seem to indicate that so far; they're all over the map.

 

Is anyone actually planning on trying this? I just pre-ordered. Let's see how this goes.

 

I think it would be fine, like you say, if the story it focused on was good. From spoilers I've read, it's massively clichéd, predictable and just not well told to make you invest into the plot or the characters, though there are of course stand out moments when it's not ****, but it's not constant which can't recover the poor quality of it.
The game follows Ellen Page from child to 20-something, but not in a chronological order, it picks up during different scenes, her at different stages of her life, which to me is an almost massive mistake the way they've done it, because ahead of time you know what's going to happen.
One minute your her when she's 7 and scientist are experimenting on her to learn more about her special abilities, then you jump forward to when she's 23 going on an undercover job as an FBI agent at a swanky party, then you jump to her as a teen getting invited to her first sleepover with her crush, then next she's 20-something running away from government agents trying to take her in.
I think that was basically the demo given out, and apparently that way of storytelling continues throughout, which would be good if in an overarching narrative it formed a 'bigger picture' sort of reveal, but from the spoilers it just doesn't really.

And the creator, David Cage, is one of those well known developer's whose creativity outweighs is practicality. Artistic people of a certain degree lack focus a lot of the time, and it's hard for them to direct themselves. I feel like his creativity and experimentation kind of jeopardised the quality of the end result, being less cohesive and not developing crucial ways to invest gamers, which is a massive shame considering games like this are rarely made these days.

I'll buy it and play it at some point, but the price needs to really drop for me.

 

Well having experienced zero spoilers whatsoever I can't comment on that at all; I was just saying what I interpreted as the intention. I absolutely feel that experimentation jeopardized the quality of the end result; that's natural when you're trying something new (not even necessarily in a 'never done before' sense so much as a 'I've personally never done it before so I don't know how to do it correctly' one). All my initial post meant to say was that whether or not that end result paid off seems to vary a lot from person to person, and that I felt if story and gameplay were more balanced it might not be so love-it-or-hate-it. Some people are going to enjoy it and some won't; if you look at critic aggregates that holds true, right?

 

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Well.
I'm just going to say that I enjoyed Heavy Rain (kind of) I thought it had good characters and a decent story, the only problem I had with it is that sometimes (not all the time) I felt like my choices didn't matter (sometimes) and I can honestly understand why someone would hate interactive drama's, they're video games, they're supposed to have challenge to them not a long ass movie, if you're going to make a drama type game try The Walking Dead, I think that's honestly a perfect example of a interactive drama done right, great characters, good story and choices that actually matter.
I've seen a demo of BTS and like so many people have said, it looked like none of your choices mattered in the game, it's just a 10 hour movie.

 

I'm actually a lil bit glad it's not getting universal acclaim because it will make me feel better about waiting until the price has fallen to pick it up. I haven't played Heavy Rain or really any interactive dramas, but I want to try something new, even if it doesn't quite accomplish everything it sets out to do (like completely immerse the player). I love that the story jumps around, obviously I can't speak for how well it works because I've not played, but Eternal Sunshine is one of my favorite films. I think there's something to be said for knowing the ending (or at least, knowing where things are headed) because you can still appreciate how you get there.

Not to mention that I'm interested to see a game that follows the protagonist from childhood to adulthood... let alone a female protag.