Video Game Review Beyond Two Souls

LOVED IT Tremendous production values and graphical prowess quality acting gripping story with masterful pacing good replay

HATED IT How much do you have to do with any of it And occasional glitches

GRAB IT IF You enjoyed Telltale s Walking Dead video game and Heavy Rain

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It features Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe and they deliver their lines with all the emotion and feeling you d expect from a Hollywood flick. Their faces are authentically captured in nearly every frame of this game lending to the gravitas and realism of it all.

And that helps make Beyond Two Souls less a video game and more an interactive movie a gutsy experiment of a way to close out the life of the PlayStation 3. The last great exclusive on the indie loving PS3 fittingly dares to deviate from the mainstream with developer Quantic Dream once again trying to connect with gamers in a more intimate more immersive way. And while it s not The Last of Us it is one heckuva ride on your PS3.

There s always been something distinctly backwards about the style of game director David Cage and it continues here. In an era when most games have moved away from separate cutscenes when the push has been toward greater player agency and stronger gamer freedom Cage continues to prefer the restriction and limitation that defined Quantic s last game Heavy Rain.

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But he s also learned his lessons and his style evolves into a sublime interactive experience that feels tremendously personal in Beyond. The gamer (if we could still call you that) feels an ever so slight sense of control in Beyond and while it seems quite illusory in the end it still invests you more deeply in the tale as you go on. Even with all Quantic s atypical gameplay you wind up so deeply invested that when a ghost appears in front of Jodie you can t help but be purely startled at your very core.

The story revolves around a young girl named Jodie Holmes (Page) and the supernatural spirit baggage she can never seem to escape Aiden. You ll control both in a story that jumps between times as you experience various phases and moments of Jodie s itinerant life.

It s a melancholy sometimes disjointed tale about a troubled girl who leads a strange life. Here she s training for the C.I.A. there she s fighting spirits with Navajo there she s living under a bridge. You may wait for this tale to collapse into the predictability of a typical gaming story and while Jodie s early interplay with Aiden seems pretty obvious the tale as a whole never is and it holds your attention throughout.

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Even better you ll forge a deep connection with Jodie and grow to understand her challenges. Aiden is both her lone burden and her lone true friend and Beyond teaches you this in classic Quantic fashion. Few other games let you go through the mental debate that Beyond does. As teenaged Jodie you can flirt with a guy or ignore him you can let him touch your butt during a dance or brush him off. And when some teenage friends turn on Jodie you get to decide between youthful vengeance or mature avoidance.

They start as such small decisions but they instantly feel much larger to the gamer thanks to camera angles and well placed audio cues. And while so much of this game feels restrictive these small decisions breed an almost dangerous freedom. You can knock a few chairs over for revenge on those teens but will you do some more If the option pops up will you be drunk on power Or know to walk away

Such moments in different magnitudes and different times in Jodie's life repeat over and over and you're constantly forced to weigh the fun of thrashing with Aiden against the restraint Jodie tends to show.

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It s interesting that Beyond is able to exact all this emotion from the gamer despite being an almost entirely guided tour experience. As beautiful as the game is it s far less interactive than it immediately seems and little inconsistencies routinely remind you that this is a video game.

A young Jodie can decide to play with dolls but she can t touch much of anything else in her room. She can watch TV but if you hit the wrong button and want to turn the TV back on after you ve turned it off it can t happen. She can wander through a ballroom but really she can only go to one location.

But where such limitations really hurt Heavy Rain they manage to be a strength in Beyond. The limits placed on Jodie s actions at least are emblematic of her own personal limitations and they stand in direct contrast to the freedom you get when you take control of Aiden. No he can t quite do whatever he may want either but he can roam far more freely and often he can wreak environmental havoc.

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Still even Aiden has his limits because inevitably Beyond wants to tell its story not have you write your own. Occasionally it goes too far in that quest too and it removes you the gamer from the equation. You may feel completely in control and a critical piece of Jodie s fate as she s on the run from the cops on a motorcycle but she ll make it down the winding road whether you re steering or not a painful realization that makes you wonder about your importance in this entire game.

Thing is Beyond Two Souls was never ever supposed to be a game. It s an interactive experience on your PlayStation 3 and that experience despite its many flaws shines as an overall product. All those issues don t take away from the fact that two Oscar worthy performers (Page and Dafoe) not only headline the game but also pour forth plenty of effort into bringing their likenesses to life and the graphics engine pushes the limits of the aging PS3.

It s an interactive experience worth playing even if there are plenty of moments when you never feel like you re truly playing at all.

Reviewed on Sony PlayStation 3

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