Category: Video Games

Hey kids! Do you know what time it is?

That’s right! It’s time for Ryan to complain about a game that he played for free!

May’s big (“big”) free game with PS+ was Beyond: Two Souls, by developer Quantic Dream. Perhaps you know them from the more well-known Heavy Rain. I don’t. I didn’t ever play that one. I just looked up the parts with nudity on YouTube. In retrospect, it’s weird the things one will sometimes do in the pursuit of seeing boobs.

Beyond: Two Souls is very much a story-centric kind of game. In fact, it’s really more like an interactive movie. Not unlike in that one episode of Futurama where the audience gets to choose how the next scene plays out. Also there are cubic buttloads of QTEs. Because obviously there are. And I think that these choices are really what bring B:TS down in the long run. The other thing that works against it is that it’s incredibly long for a game like this. Or at least it felt that way. I couldn’t find an in-game timer to verify how long I played it.

The plot of the game is as such: Jodie is a girl with some kind of spooky ghost named Aiden tethered to her. Throughout her youth, she lives in a research lab with Willem Dafoe, and as a grown-up she goes on a number of wacky adventures. Over time, she learns all about life, love, and the land of ghosts and monsters called the Infraworld. Gameplay usually allows you to shift between Jodie and Aiden at will, as they use their different abilities to move the story forward or maybe on occasion just to mess with people.

The game is divided into a billion chapters, which are played out of chronological sequence. However, there is an option to play a “remixed” mode where you do actually play the whole thing chronologically. I think this is probably the best way to go, as the nonlinear path doesn’t add anything material to the experience, aside from making it more artsy-fartsy. There are very few big reveals, and most of them you can typically infer pretty easily from what you’re shown in earlier chapters. Also, man, the length of the chapters is so very inconsistent. Some are like five minutes long, and others drag on forever. Not that they all need to be the same, but there are clear break points in the longer ones where they could have been split in two. It’s not like it would have ruined the pacing of the story, because thanks to its interactive nature, there isn’t any pacing. It’s all over the place. Sometimes you barely have anything to do and it forges on at full speed. Sometimes you’ll be trying to find the thing you need to interact with next, only to click on something else and Jodie sits down and watches TV for a minute.

As far as gameplay, there are basically three types. The least interesting is the “adventure” portions, where you’re wandering around and interacting with points of interest. But usually not the most interesting points of interest. The next one is “chase” where you are being pushed ahead at high speed while constantly needing to respond to waves of QTE commands. I don’t know how much screwing these up will alter the story, if at all. I never did so bad that it seemed to have any negative impact.

In much the same vein as the chase sequences -but much more fun- are combat scenes that have Jodie fighting any number of aggressors. Basically they’re just cooler, and the QTEs are different. Instead of mashing buttons according to screen prompts, you need to push the stick in the direction that Jodie (or her fist) is moving. These are pretty fun and thrilling, but oftentimes I felt like it’s not totally clear which direction you’re supposed to be pushing, and ended up getting unfairly dunked a few times. Not to the point where I ever got Jodie killed, but enough that she ended up with a few more broken ribs than was strictly necessary.

Lastly, there are the stealth sequences. Any other game would be built like 90% on these, but Beyond: Two Souls maybe has like three chapters where you do the stealth thing. They aren’t overly complicated, either. How it rolls out is you hold X to have Jodie run up the the closest cover, and then either knock out a guy on the other side or use Aiden to choke someone out. And then you repeat this about seventeen times until the chapter is over. It’s not quite as fun as the combat sequences, but at least you feel like you’re actually doing something. Personally, I wish that the stealth gameplay had been a little more complex, but hey, it’s easy enough to just close B:TS and start playing Metal Gear Solid V instead, should the itch become too much to bear.

I don’t think that the story of Beyond: Two Souls is bad, but it’s really wasn’t as engaging for me as David Cage wanted it to be. Some of the chapters that had separate sub-plots, like “Homeless” and “Navajo,” were actually really cool and kept me entertained throughout. Probably because they each had a cast of great sub-characters and told stories that were actually interesting. But I really couldn’t be bothered to care about Jodie’s internal conflicts or any of the whole CIA plot (which is roughly half the game). Jodie as a main character was kind of meh, waffling between likable rouge and whiny brat, though Ellen Page’s acting was always on point. Aiden didn’t have any dialogue or personality outside of anything expressed through Jodie, which reduced him to a gameplay feature and took away most of his significance to the story. I think the real standout characters were Willem Dafoe and his lab assistant Cole. They were both very likable, sympathetic characters, although there are massive stretches of the game where you don’t see a lick of them.

And… I’ve already gone way longer than I expected to, so let’s wrap this up. Beyond: Two Souls isn’t a bad game, but it wasn’t terribly engaging, and I didn’t feel like my choices made many meaningful differences. Maybe they did, and I’d need to do a second playthrough to really see them, but there’s no way I’m doing that. This is an interactive movie that runs at least 10 hours (according to HLTB), and that’s just way too much of a time commitment for the sake of seeing how things could have played out. I was also upset that while I kept trying to get Jodie laid, it never happened. One time she almost got raped, but that was… yuck. Anyway, it’s another experience under my belt, but not one that I was particularly fond of. But maybe I am being a little bit too critical, considering that I didn’t pay a cent to play it.

Something I’m learning about the Nintendo Switch is that it’s a really great machine for indie adventure games. They’re the kind of games that are good for little sessions here and there, or burning through the whole thing on a Saturday afternoon. So it makes sense to be playing them on a machine that facilitates both on-the-go gaming and living room big-screen play.

While some adventure games I’ve played on Switch have had more modern qualities, my latest conquest is closer to the classic point-and-click style: Agatha Knife. This is a story about a young girl who works in her mother’s butcher shop. But she isn’t manning the sales counter or out front in a hamburger costume trying to drum up business à la Gene Belcher. No, Agatha is the one that actually slaughters the animals and carves them up into tasty chunks.

And you might think this is a horrible vocation for a child. You might not be wrong, as many characters in-game voice the same concern. But Agatha loves her job. She loves playing with the live animals, and she loves chopping them up just as much. She’s just not a fan of how terrified they are of her once she pulls out her carving knives. So she does the obvious thing: she goes on a quest to create a religion to make the animals more willing to give their lives to become food.

This is the premise of the game: collecting sacred artifacts and whatnot to establish the religion of Carnivorism. This beefy quest takes you to a number of locations around town, and has you meeting all sorts of weird and wonderful characters. You’d better enjoy your interactions with those characters, too, because that’s the meat of the game. There aren’t any real puzzles or dialogue trees to satiate your hunger for deeper gameplay. Sure, you have to find objects and use them in the right places here and there, but that’s all just gravy to the story that’s being told. The rest of the gameplay is somewhat gristly, consisting mostly of running back and forth across town between conversations.

*Ahem.* I’ll stop with the puns now.

What Agatha Knife (the game) lacks in gameplay, it more than makes up for in charm and wit. Agatha Knife (the character) is the kind of kid I’d be proud to have as a daughter: she’s smart, independent, doesn’t take crap from anyone, and is a connoisseur of quality meats. The way she’s willing to speak her mind so plainly is very endearing, and the way it bristles other characters is usually pretty funny. A lot of those other characters are pretty wacky in their own ways, each one generally having some sort of unique character quirk. The writing isn’t award-winning or anything, but it’s pleasant throughout, and I did catch myself chuckling more than a few times. I especially liked when at one point, Agatha turns to the camera and asks the player a question in disbelief. It was cute, and fun that she sort of brings the player into the world.

I think I’d say that Agatha Knife is just about the right length for this kind of game. The Switch’s play log has recorded my playtime at a somewhat vague “over four hours”, which puts it at roughly twice the length of The Count Lucanor. I’ve noted that I did miss a couple achievements, some hinting at missed scenes/puzzles to solve, and some suggesting that there are multiple endings. It wasn’t clear to me at any point how to make the ending branch off in another direction, but at least there’s incentive for a replay down the line.

It’s easy to say that I really did like Agatha Knife. It told a story that kept me interested, and while I wouldn’t have minded a little more in terms of puzzles, at least I didn’t constantly find myself stumped by something like I was with Thimbleweed Park. The game was charming and had a very strong opinion on religion (read: not positive), and had a lot of black humour sprinkled throughout. My only strong complaint with it is that I had to spend so darn much time running back and forth across the game world. It would have been nice to have a quick travel option. Regardless, I thought it was a strong game and would definitely recommend anyone drop a tenner on it if they’re looking for a clever, satirical adventure for a rainy day.

PS: After writing this review, I discovered that developer Mango Protocol had previously released another game that is based in the same world, MechaNika. It’s not on Switch, but I tweeted Mango Protocol about it, and they say they want it to happen. Guess I’ll just hang tight!

After several months of picking away at it in tiny bits, I resolved over the last couple weeks to finally finish up with Horizon: Zero Dawn. And to clarify the term “finish,” I mean that I got to the end of the story and did all the more meaningful extra activities. I got almost all of the trophies, but I couldn’t be bothered to perfect (or even try) all the hunting ground challenges, and I have no intentions of playing New Game+ or buying the DLC campaign. In fact I deleted the game as soon as the post-credits scene ended (because I needed the hard drive space).

Having played Horizon for almost exactly 70 hours (!!!), I think it’s safe to say that I liked it. Or, I guess I should say that I enjoyed the first fifty-five hours, which were devoted to wandering around the world and finding as many baubles and pretty vistas as I could. Once I began completing the story missions, it all kind of fell apart.

Let’s note right now that the story “dungeons” aren’t very fun. They’re basically exposition tubes that throw in a combat scenario every third room. It’s so cookie-cutter AAA that it hurts. Sometimes there is a locked door, and the key is always a “puzzle” that requires you to line up four dials in the configuration shown on a screen right next to them. What really bugged me is that these places are crammed to the gills with audio logs and journal entries that you’re expected to stop and listen to/read. It really slams on the brakes in regards to the game’s pacing, and I started ignoring them after I noticed that I was losing a ton of time to having to stop and listen to sixteen 2-minute long audio logs every other room.

I’d like to say for the record that if all of these audio logs and journals were spaced out more evenly, I would have had less of a problem with them. Or probably even no problem at all. But they aren’t, and they couldn’t be, because they’re all adding supplemental information to story bits that need to be told at specific times. Horizon’s backstory is the most compelling mystery in the game, so dropping these logs in too soon would really kill all the big reveals. And so, they all have to be jam-packed into the correct dungeons, placed before and after all the corresponding forced story sequences. I would have loved it if there wasn’t so much blatant exposition, and you just had to piece it all together for yourself by finding these logs throughout your travels.

But that could never happen in a AAA game, because Joe Average is much too stupid to comprehend non-linear storytelling and needs it all spoon-fed to him as plainly as possible.

On top of that, there are a ton of other datalogs that you can find strewn about the world, but they’re all… completely boring. The ones I’ve found have had nothing to do with anything and are just information about the world that used to be. They have no impact whatsoever, and that’s even somewhat confirmed in-game by the fact that they’re the only things that don’t get marked on your map for easy finding. They’re also tiny little things and are ridiculously easy to miss, so they’d actually be the most important to mark on the map for people who actually want to collect them. So it goes.

Other things that you can find around the world are metal flowers, coffee mugs, and little wooden horsies. When you collect complete sets of these, you can trade them in for… garbage. You will be granted a prize box full of other prize boxes, all of which contain a weapon or outfit modification piece. And all of them were terrible. Most of the ones I got were green, which is the weakest variation. Fortunately, I’m more of an “it’s about the journey, not the destination” kind of guy, so the crappy prizes didn’t diminish the enjoyment I got from hunting them all down.

The one collectible that I thought was the most important were the Vantage points. These are twelve spots hidden around the world, where not only do you get a nice view of the landscape and/or a ruined landmark, but you also get to see a holographic display of what the area looked like pre-apocalypse, which is cool. Each one also has a piece of a very personal little story about the man who placed them all. These still just barely relate to the main plot, but I did like how they told a complete tale, which ended up being the most interesting side-plot in the game, despite the fact that you’re not a part of it at all.

Anyway, enough about collectibles. This isn’t a Rare game, after all. The other thing I want to complain about is the final boss. It’s a big robot. The same type of big robot that you’ve fought as the last three bosses in the story missions. The same big robot that you just exploded at least half a dozen of in the penultimate mission. So after defeating so many of these robots already, how do they make the last one feel special? By making it nearly impervious to all damage until it (very rarely) exposes a weak spot. And also it spawns in a bunch of lesser robots at certain intervals. It’s such a lazy finale in every regard. Oh well.

But I guess it mostly matches up with everything that’s happened in the story. It’s not like a single unique robot would show up at the very end for no reason. It could have happened, but it didn’t. I guess that’s what the DLC campaign was for.

At the end of the day, I think Horizon: Zero Dawn is a good game. It didn’t draw me in quite the way I was hoping, and honestly I just want someone to make a prequel movie about Elizabet Sobeck and Ted Faro and the end of the world. I’m not actually sure how interested I would be in playing a sequel, considering how I don’t plan on buying or playing The Frozen Wilds. But it was a mostly fun ride, and I don’t regret having spent all those hours on it. Plus all the extra time I spent reading all the Wikia entries on the various robots and other, more spoilery things. So yeah, I’d say that it was worth the $25 I got it on sale for, and would definitely recommend it at that price. I think I’d be a bit more put out if I’d spent the full $90 or whatever they charge for new PS4 games. But then again, it kept me busy for almost three full days, which is nothing to sneeze at!