Right. Lets start with the beginning. I love Quantic Dream games. Heavy Rain was brilliant, Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) was a masterpiece. So of course I was going to get in on the Beyond 2 Souls action!
I pre-ordered the collectors edition and have been trying to be sparing with my playing of this new slice of gaming goodness. Otherwise I’m sure it would be over too soon.
So I’m a couple of hours in and damn this is a good game.
The atmosphere created by the team is amazing, it feels tense and (while I know I’m a wuss) it feels genuinely spooky in places. The world feels fully realised, the characters feel like they are plausible – a big part of which goes to some excellent voice acting by Mr Defoe and Miss Page – and the game play…well, it’s a Quantic Dream game. The game play is par for the course with these guys. Yes, it’s quick-time heavy, but it works. In a similar style to heavy rain, they do work with what is going on on-screen. My only concern is that there is a lack of continuity if you fail.
As part of the ‘making games accessible’ school of thought, failure is not an option, which sometimes means the animations can be jarring as it moves from a failed event to succeeding overall. A minor quibble though considering the quality of the game overall.
And quality there is. This thing has been polished, and then polished, and then, just in case, it has been polished some more. This game looks good. And I mean GOOD. If you have the time this game is like the Scarlet Johansen of games. You can look at others, but deep down you’ll know it’s just not as well put together 😉
I have seen no clipping, not a single rogue texture, and the animation is something to behold. I read somewhere that David Cage said he’d learnt a lot in the development of the game from playing around with the dev kit for the up-coming PS4. Boy does it show. I think this is quite possibly, not the best looking game on the PS3, but the best looking game I have seen. Ever.
As part of the collectors edition, I have a making of documentary (which I’ll watch after finishing the game), a few extra missions and a soundtrack. I’ve not seen anything that looks like extra missions, and the soundtrack is a rather disappointing 5 tracks (about 5 minutes a pop) but I’m not going to complain (I managed to get the collectors edition for the same price as the standard edition thanks to Tesco) and the game is so engrossing…in fact, I’m off to play some more…
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