Beyond Two Souls- Review

Beyond Two Souls is the fourth in quanticdream's gaming library and like its predecessor Heavy Rain  is a venture out of the ordinary game realm, both literally and metaphorically speaking. The story puts you in the shoes of Jodie a strange girl who has weird circumstances surrounding her. She's not quite like your normal girls and there's nothing natural about who she is. We follow her through her recollection of life or at least what seems to be the most important parts of it. This is for the player to gauge whether its true or not.

I do not own this image and am merely borrowing it for demonstration purposes

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Setting that preview aside lets get into the meat of this review.

Graphics: Lets start with this since this is perhaps the most impressive. The godly motion capture done by quantic is put to good use in this game emotions come alive and characters having an endless life to them because of this stunning and well put together process. Faces move much like they would in real life instead of mechanically. Cinematic quality graphical work as well as camera angles help add to the feel that you're not in a game but rather an interactive movie. This is both good and bad and I'll highlight that later on. The only gripe I have with the graphics is their crying it looked completely unnatural next to their character's movements. The tear droplets don't form naturally and don't fall naturally so I was really taken aback as it seemed it was plastered on last second. Environments as well as character models are well designed and thought out. Although one may argue that using the faces of Ellen Page and William DaFoe isn't exactly creativity at its finest. I argue that it fits the type of game they're making. Cinema should beget cinema. 8/10 on the graphics

Gameplay: This is where in my opinion Quantic dreams falls tragically short both in their previous title Heavy Rain and in this title Beyond Two Souls. The same sort of layout with quick time event button presses and interactive scenes returns but now they've added this clunky combat and movement system. This is something I really didn't like as compared to Heavy Rain, they took out all of the complexity that made Heavy Rain fun and replaced it with a far too simplistic system that is both difficult to use and displeasing to handle. Events happen at a nice pace however, there is no directional cue which leads to lots of events where you kinda wing it without any idea if you're hitting the correct buttons or not. I whiffed by a lot of events with barely any understanding of what I was doing, as well as not actually failing any events. I don't think I failed a single combat scenario even though in that brief combat scene I failed several quick time events. I'm not sure if there is a system in place that prevents failure but that takes away any challenge that was present in the game. Seriously disappointing as it makes the game seem like an interactive storybook which is fine if you're into that sort of game. Gameplay gets a 5.5/10. The challenge is not completing the events but guessing within a short 1 second time window what input you're supposed to use.

 

This is a nice demonstration and comparison between Heavy Rain and BTS. I do not own this clip and all rights go to the owner who made it. MrVG247

Sound: Music and voices are well done and I feel all the emotions I would in a movie. Everything from the rain that dripped on the roofs to the crying and panic in a characters voice. It was all deeply moving voice and sound. I did however, have a complaint regarding Jodie's crying which sounded synthetic at certain times. Like it was forced and that may have been due to how the actor decided to artistically take that approach. I didn't like it, you may. I give the sound a solid 8/10.

Story: This is perhaps on of the best areas of the game and probably needs the least explanation. Like with Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls takes you on the emotional roller coaster of a real life movie. Only you're much more involved as you're making the choices for your character. Each decision you make takes you down a different path to an ending that is different on many different levels. Small decisions impact specific details in the endings and the well written script draws you in like any A class movie would. I don't have any particular faulting of the story except that its jumps around a lot and it doesn't make sense why its jumping around a lot until the end of the game. This leave you rather confused at first, but each individual scenario/scene generates its own sort of story attachment as well as feeling. Story gets a 8.5/10

Overall I give the game a 7.5/10. It's a solid entry in the gaming market but the combat dragged the game down a lot. The lack of any real challenge also detracts from what makes a game fun in my opinion. However, the story and other individual categories really make up for what is lacking. If you haven't already purchased the game I definitely recommend at least one playthrough a used copy from Amazon or a rental copy from gamefly perhaps.