Beyond: Two Souls (PS3): My Sad Haunted Life Simulator 2013

It's easy to get taken in by some shiny graphics. I mean ultimately, that's really what the game industry has been pushing for the past twenty years or so. And no game truly tried to sell the point that you only need graphics to sell a game as much as Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain did. While the game was severely lacking in actual gameplay elements and just gave us quick time events, the story was still pretty good (although heart wrenchingly depressing). But now Quantic Dream has upped their game by making their graphics even shinier, and brought in actual actors to play their parts in....

BEYOND: TWO SOULS(PS3)

The tale of Beyond: Two Souls follows tale of lonely girl Jodie Holmes (Ellen Page), as we go through her life. Since the moment she was born, Jodie has been linked to some form of supernatural entity who she refers to as Aiden. We jump around in the story from various points of Jodie's life from her troubled upbringing, her troubled childhood, her troubled teen years, and her troubled young adulthood.

The jist, without spoiling too much, is that her adoptive foster family leaves her at a military research facility under the care of Nathan Dawkins (Willem Dafoe) and Cole Freeman (Kadeem Hardison) who make her live in a bit of a sheltered off life as they monitor Jodie and her connection with Aiden, and attempt to teach her how to control him. As she adapts to this lifestyle, she is eventually drafted into the CIA.

After being abandoned by her foster parents, Jodie is actually has a pretty
affectionate upbringing, its just incredibly sheltered.

Its hard to explain the story any further because they way the story is present and you jump around the timeline, different points of the plot are given away at different times. And since this game's whole bread and butter is based around the story, giving you a detailed synopsis would really defeat the entire purpose.

Now I should probably stress right off the bat, that if you are picking this game up you should probably alter your expectations for the game. If you have never played Heavy Rain or even Indigo Prophecy then you are in for a real change of pace. During the course of this review I will probably refer to this as a game, but that's probably not wholly accurate. Quanitc Dream's big focus has always been to produce "interactive storytelling experiences."

Willem Dafoe: For when monster design isn't quite scary enough.

Unfortunately, therein lies the inherent problem because that's an awfully flowery term to use instead of game, which by definition is an interactive storytelling experience. The original Mario has like zero correlating text and no cutscenes, and that still weaves a tale you control the narrative. Now, in Quantic Dream's defense they do paint a hell of a picture. Heavy Rain through all its depressive scenes was still a very gripping story, and their technical demo for KARA had more compelling story in just 7 minutes than some movies do.

The problem is the Playstation 3 is a GAME console and when I use a game console, I use it to PLAY GAMES. And on this front this is pretty much where Beyond: Two Souls falters and falters hard. Heavy Rain was a game that suffered from some of the worst movement controls I've played in a game, and all of the actions that take place happen with quick time events or extended button presses or controller waggles. The bar was set incredible low for their sequel.

The game cleverly fools you into thinking this might have some stealth opps involved. 

But when you set the bar incredibly low, you don't have to jump all that high to get over it. The most recent E3 trailer teased that there would be some war situations and some stealthing involved in the game to bring up the pace and tone somewhat. And while this does in fact happen in the game? The overall control scheme doesn't really change that much. There have been some minor improvements but ultimately they just put quicktime events in a fancy new dress.

Movement controls have been simplified the the normal 3rd person movement we've all come to know. Why this wasn't used in Heavy Rain was fuckin' beyond me. When we get into the action sequences in Beyond:Two Souls we don't have the "Press X to Jason" prompts. Rather, when a combat sequence is taking place, the animation will drop to a super slow motion scene where you have to see which way Jodie is moving, and you need to press the analog stick in the corresponding direction. If you are successful she will land her punch or dodge a blow, if you miss she takes a bit of a beating.

My first playthrough, Jodie took a bit of a beating till I understood the controls.

This is generally how a majority of the action takes place and like previously stated, there are quick time events and controller waggles mixed in. For the most part, it works, but there are always a handful of awkward animations taking place where you have to really stop and guess if its meant to be one way or another. There were a number of times I kept getting it wrong, but it never really impeded my progress.

The other big control aspect in this game is one of the buttons allows you to switch to and control the entity following Jodie, Aiden. When cruising as Aiden you will usually find little indicators that allow you move objects or destroy things. When enemies are afoot you can use Aiden to strangle them or possess them to infiltrate areas. The problem with these sequences is the controls to fly Aiden around are kind of wonky, and your freedom to attack is somewhat limited. Anytime there are enemies around your options are pretty linear and when playing as Aiden, Jodie will often coach you along. 

As Aiden, you usually will just knock shit over. But there are segments where you can
possess and ghost strangle people. You just don't often get to chose which you do.

There is also a "multiplayer" mode that I use as loosely as I use the term "game" in this sense. Basically, it allows a 2nd controller to control Aiden, but since you can only use one character at a time, there really is no reason for it. You can easily switch to Aiden and then hand off the controller for the exact same effect. There is no point to it being there, and really it just takes away the fun half of the game and leaves one player being a very sad Ellen Page for like 10 hours. Nope.

And as far as game play goes, that really is pretty much all there is to it. There are a handful of sequences that will require you to do a bit of stealthing and sneaking while using Aiden to dispatch enemies, but it doesn't happen nearly enough for it to feel enough like an actual narrative based action game.

No, we are here because we want to watch a really, really, really long movie. So the question I suppose is: Did I like it? Well, its hard to say. Graphically, It might be one of the most impressive games I've seen. Like If I considered something like Uncharted or The Last of Us to have some pretty top notch motion capture, then Beyond: Two Souls is definitely a step above that. All of the notable actors in this game are nearly picture perfect digital images of themselves, and because the majority of them are legitimate actors I feel the delivery of the lines were a cut above. Definitely better performed than Heavy Rain was.

I love watching Mo-cap footage side by side with the finished product.

But what I'm not sure I care for is the way the story jumps around the timeline. To use a literary example, Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley delivers the story in what feels like two different story lines, where the big twist/climax appears where the stories timelines begin to intersect at a central point and fill in the gaps of each other's story.

This is kind of like how the Beyond story plays out. You find yourself constantly shifting between child Jodie and young adult Jodie. The constant jumps in timeline will often leave you thinking: "wait, what the fuck happened now?" and sometimes it can be exhausting to keep up with.

But nothing in this game is more exhausting than the relentlessly depressive tone. Literally NOTHING good happens to this chick. Any brief bit of happiness is overclouded by some kind of tragic event, or some haunting of her past, or some current haunting. Now granted, The game delivers a number of options for you on how you want to play things, but unlike Heavy Rain I don't think they appear to deviate how the story shakes out for the most part.

Ellen Page: Mall Goth Teen Angst edition.

There is an fairly early scene where Jodie goes to a birthday party and it turns into this uncomfortably heart wrenching disaster, and you are basically prompted with two solutions: Leave humiliated or commit unbridled vengeance. After (painfully) playing this scene two different ways, the game pretty much proceeded in the same fashion afterwards. Granted, one of the options was a billion times more satisfying to play out.

Through out all the scenes you have multiple ways to play out the conversations, so I guess there is a bit of replay value, and you basically get to choose your ending in the final scenes so I suppose there is reason to play more than once. Then again, you can easily jump to that scene and just pick the other options too.

Full Disclosure: I actually missed this option the first time because I was too busy
oggling digital Ellen Page in her shimmery red dress. DON'T JUDGE ME.

I find myself in the same position I was in for Heavy Rain. Did I enjoy my experience? I think I did. Do I think you should play it? Yeah, I'd say its worth your time. Is it worth 60 dollars? Ehhhhhrrrrnnnggg.... No.. it really isn't.

See Quantic Dream, here's where you have it backwards: You have some of the impressive graphics and some pretty good story writers, but the reviews to your game are mixed. You know who's game isn't getting reviews like that? Naughty Dog, because they take the good story writing and impressive motion capture, and slap that into a GAME. Into a game that is great and possibly game of the year, no less.

You however, after filming several hours of cinematic realized the player actually has to do something for it to count as a game. So the token effort is appreciated, but it really falls short. Beyond: Two Souls weaves a very interesting and engaging tale, and I will say there are marked improvements over the previous games. But it's too long to keep rewatching like a favorite movie, and there's too little interaction to keep the replay value high.

It is absolutely worth a sit through, but I couldn't blame you if passed on buying it.

A digital crying Willem Dafoe might be the most terrifying monster in a video game, ever.

Grand Theft Auto V: Raising the Bar (and then beating a hooker with it)

So yeah. I'm really late to the party on this one. Why? Because I can't stop fucking playing it. The Grand Theft Auto series wasn't something I really started to follow until late into the PS2 era, and it was probably the first introduction I had to the sandbox genre. I really enjoyed Grand Theft Auto 4 and the subsequent DLCs that came out to follow it, but its been almost five years. So hot off the heels of GTA's main competitor, I've spent the following weeks playing the newest installment of this iconic franchise...

GRAND THEFT AUTO: V

Our tale starts off with a heist in the frigid north of Canada. A small bank with a reasonably easy score four bandits come in and sweep the money with ease. Yet after they start to make their getaway, it quickly escalates to a massive firefight with what appears to be the entirety of the police force. One is shot down, one killed in a getaway crash, one is wounded, and one escapes. This brief moment ends with the loan survivor viewing the funeral from afar. 

We flash 9 years later where one of the survivors Micheal De Santa, is living in a tumultuous situation with his family in the glitzy shallow city of Los Santos. He seems to be well off financially, but is unhappy in his life. Things are rough with his wife Amanda, he doesn't relate to his children, he's in therapy to control his anger and is pretty much drifting in retirement.

Franklin Clinton is a repo-man from the hoods of Los Santos, trying to find a way to make something better of himself then just being some stagnant gang banger. Repoing cars for a shady salesman engaging in credit fraud, Franklin mistakenly tries to steal Micheal's son's new ride. An endeavor that results in Micheal smashing the ride through the dealership window. While not the best first impression, Franklin and Micheal befriend each other.

Things spiral out of control though as Micheal catches his wife cheating on him. He chases the adulterer to an cliff side house with Franklin, and rips the supports to the house down in vengeance. The problem is, it was the wrong house and now the two find themselves in debt to Mexican drug lord Martin Madrazio, who expects to be compensated. So with a 2.5 million dollar tab, Micheal sets out to make money the only way he knows how... The problem is the other survivor of 9 years ago, Trevor Philips, is still out there and if he sees Micheal is alive.... Well...

Micheal                               Franklin                               Trevor 

So here is what I like about this story right off the bat. For once, its not really the traditional GTA tired story line of some low level asshat coming to {insert city} and gets himself wrapped up with {insert gang} until he fights his way up the ladder until he becomes a venerable Scarface.  While its fun to play, its something that has become something of an old tread.

Here we are constantly jumping between three characters. Franklin somewhat represents the "traditional" GTA character as he starts off as the lowly street thug who is trying to get himself up the crime ladder and make some money while he does it. Micheal is more of a throwback to GTA: Vice City's Tommy Vercetti, someone who's been in the crime racket before, but has been out too long. Trevor however, he's basically the character to represent the GTA player. The raving psychopath who's first instincts are the kill someone, steal the car, and use the car to run down pedestrians. Shoot first, ask later, shoot again.

I really like a how this plays out because each character have their own individual stories to follow so I found it very difficult to find myself bored with how the path of any of them went. For example, I found myself using Franklin quite a bit on my first play through, but while Franklin is pretty likable his whole supporting cast is infuriating. His ex girlfriend, his best friend Lamar, his crazy aunt, every single one of the people in his life constantly shit talk him for not wanting to stay poor in the hood, like he has no respect because he wants to better himself.

So you cut from him to say Trevor, and it flashes to him stomping a corpse into the a toilet and screaming obscenities. Suddenly, I'm vested all over again because the 3 characters all seem to bring a completely different change of pace when you switch to them, and they are all equally fun to play. Yet at the same time, when the 3 of them get together they all work well as a foils to each other and have a great dynamic and dialog between the three them.

But not only that, the game itself functions as its own character. I know everyone's first inclination is to jump into the fastest car and just start speeding down the streets and mow down pedestrians. But really? If there is any one game where it is fun to just walk down the street and follow people and listen in on conversations, this really is it. One of my favorite time kills is to follow someone down the street and listen to them slowly freak out about being followed, their walk turning to a brisk power walk, then a near jog, then a full bore sprint as they yank out their phone to call of help.

Aside from the main story missions, they bring out series of "stranger" missions where one of the characters runs across some of the random Los Santos lunatics to give you obscure side missions to do outside of the main story, such as the psychotic fitness buff Mary-Ann or the TMZ spoofing invasive photographer Beverly.

The sad thing is the "heroes" aren't even the craziest people you'll meet.

So I guess I should probably discuss the actual game at some point huh. They made a couple of significant changes to the standard GTA convention this time around. First and most notable we are in the sunny beaches of a fictional Los Angeles, so no more are we stuck with a shitty palettes of dark and light grey, with a liberal helping of brown, tan and black. Now we have vivid sunshine, and lots of brightly colored cars, clothing, and scenery. I would say this is somewhat comparable to the color palette you would have seen in something like Saint's Row 2, for example. 

Which isn't the only thing it borrows somewhat from that franchise. The driving in the game has been scaled back a little bit in terms of realism. Now, we aren't at the Burnout: Revenge style of arcade racing where you can take a 2 mile drive around a bend doing 117 mph, but they realized that the uber-realistic driving of Grand Theft Auto IV may have seemed like a cool idea, but it does take away from the fun somewhat. The cars handle a bit more tightly and less realistic, and all the vehicles can take a lot more punishment than in the previous installments. Some people see this as a weakness, I honestly found it to be much, much better.

The voice acting in this game is incredible. The characters look like their respective voice actors and all three of them completely knock it out of the park. I can't think of a single line of dialog that was delivered in a way that gave me douche chills or even caused me to grimace. The graphics in this game are just as good with the major characters looking about as realistic as the full mo-cap animations can make it look these days. Even the generic NPCs look fantastic as well. Comparing it to Grand Theft Auto 4 the visuals are literally night and day.

I remember the trailers often clamoring about how improved the and revamped the gun controls have gotten in this installment of the game. Someone at Rockstar Games really needs a better understanding of the word "revamped". If you have played any of the previous Grand Theft Auto games, the shooting controls aren't going to throw you a curve ball. If anything, they ape that familiar 3rd person generic control system you have seen in so many other games to date.

There are a few changes though. For on thing, it feels incredibly more polished this time around. If you leave the settings untouched from the start of the game, raising your gun will auto lock on to the nearest possible target. When in firefights, usually a simple flick left or right will immediately jump from one target to another with relative easy. You don't even need to make the slight push upwards for a head shot, if you have an automatic weapon of any kind? The recoil with naturally move you up and bring down your target.

Which isn't to say the shooting mechanics make the game easy. Your players defenses aren't as strong as they used to be in GTA games.  There is a large number of missions where you just get onslaughted with sheer numbers which make firefights pretty hectic. Even with a full set of bullet proof armor if you take a solid round of shots, your ass is gonna be down in seconds.

This is where the the switching mechanic is very helpful. Aside from switching to points in the story, you can jump from character to character mid mission. In the video I've provided you can see that in this mission, I used Franklin as my front line grunt to deal with the majority for the enemies that come after me, switching to Micheal when his higher vantage point allowed me a better shot, and then to Trevor if I needed to hit someone long range or take down a chopper. It's all pretty seamless and really does help to keep the pace of the action up.

All of these polished up features lead Grand Theft Auto V's big selling point. The name of this game is heists. Sporadically through the game you have a series of set up missions leading one big heist where you knock off a store, bank, cargo ship, and so forth. You will organize a team which factors on mission success and the cut you receive. Depending on who it is you choose for jobs, you can walk in and clean sweep a place or you might have the cops on you in a matter of seconds. They are always tense, and probably one favorite aspect of the game.

There are usually a few planning missions before actually undertaking a heist.

The online mode is pretty awesome too, for the most part. Its biggest jarring flaw is that I have to share it with other people. And as we have already established, the Internet is full of asstards who I'd rather see get a prostate exam with a ice cream scoop than share an online game with, but I digress. If you hadn't heard, it has probably one of the worst possible online launches a game could have, but a few week after the release, they seem to have it sorted out.

There is a minor bit of story to the game, where you create your character (which, btw as the worst character creator I've ever used) and arrive in Los Santos where you are greeted by your lifeinvader friend , Lamar. He gives you an introduction to the city and helps you get started with a couple of small missions and races to get your feet wet. You can randomly join almost any game and be invited them as such. But as you level up, you will get calls from the myriad of side characters in the game who will unlock mission options as you progress unlocking more and more content.

Online mode you have access to the whole map from the start. It is friggen HUGE.

The majority of them seem to be fairly standard online fanfare: Races, Death Matches, GTA style missions (get drugs, get away before cops or other players kill you). Things like that, although around level 15, you get a call from Ron and if you go to Trevor's house. Trevor will yell at you about what you are doing and unlock the survival missions. These are basically GTA's take on horde mode. Up to four players and its a fuck'n blast. It was hands down my favorite thing to do in the game so far and probably one of the most profitable. My character has had a significant level increase since I started playing that mode.

There are a handful of downsides to the game though, since no game is perfect in my eyes. First off, what the fuck is the problem with the games industry and their musical tastes?! I was pissing some serious vinegar at Saints Row 4 because they did away with the metal music. I understand there are plenty of different tastes of music, but if you take away a distinct genre to put in 3 different types of the horrible menstruation of the techno genre, then you are taking away variety to cram a music YOU like down the players throat. Thanks asshole.

But GTA V takes it a step even further by not alone getting rid of the metal music, but also getting rid of the hard rock. Their rock station is basically classic rock, and with the exception of "What a Fool Believes" I was displeased with nearly all the music on it. There's an alternative station which is ok, but I find myself gravitating to the pop music since its basically the only stuff I found tolerable. Well that isn't fair, a handful of the rap on West Coast Classics was ok as well.

Although, this usually shouldn't be an issue for me. When I play Grand Theft Auto in almost any incarnation, I head straight for the talk radio to hear Lazlow make a complete ass of himself. He actually appears in the game as a character for once so I was pretty happy to see that, but the talk radio this time around just seemed to be lacking. Nothing really exceptionally hilarious. Much of the TV shows had the same weak effect. The commercials in this game are amazing (I love Pisswasser), but the television and talk radio left a lot to be desired for me.

After almost 15 incarnations of this game, we finally get to see Lazlow.

Considering this is supposed to be larger than any GTA game to come before it, I was actually supervised at all the features of the game that didn't appear in the game. There is no dating mechanic anymore, A lot of the mini games have been removed like shooting pool or playing arcade games. You can still call friends to go hang out, but the options of things you can do leave a bit to be desired. Granted, it does throw in a whole golf and tennis game in there, which is pretty good. So I suppose its a trade off.

The character customization is pretty weak too. There are lots of clothing options available but for each character only a few beard and hair types. Nothing you do affects the body. So you can alter their looks slightly but for the most part they still look they normally do.

Co-op heists are expected with the next DLC update. 

The biggest mistake in my book is probably their biggest selling point. This game is about heists really, and there are only so many of them. Your heist characters get experience as you use them, but there really aren't enough of them to make it relevant. There should be way more heists, if not in the story mode then included in post game. Granted, the game contains a replay feature so you can go back and replay any mission over again to try the other options for your heist, which is still fun. But they could have added like maybe 3 or 4 post game heists you could do after the story and that would have been fine. Here's hoping the addition of heists in online mode appeases this flaw.

I suppose my last complaint, and use that word loosely, is about the story itself. By rolling the dice and giving us 3 characters with 3 different stories to follow along with, it sort of leaves the entire game with no over-arching story that carries us the whole way. For example, that aforementioned character Martin Madrazio sets up what could be a huge arc dealing with Mike and Frank vs the Mexican cartel, but it ends up being sorted out after the first heist. It opens the door to transition to the Trevor story, but that's really how the game moves as a whole, loose plot threat to loose plot thread. Its still fun, but it feels disjointed.

A little bit of various parts of the universe tie into GTA V

But you know what? These are pointless nags on what has proven to be a fantastic experience for me. A few months back I was pretty much ready to lock down The Last of Us as my game of the year. I seriously thought nothing would be as good as that was. I was very, very wrong. I now have legitimate reason for pause because not only did I hammer through Grand Theft Auto V,  I have restarted the story and have been actually playing the online content. That's fuckin' unprecedented for me.  The timeliness of this should speak volumes of my opinion. I'm over a month late on a review because I'm still playing it.

 Even if you aren't a fan of Grand Theft Auto, or you don't care for what it represents, or whatever reason you are concocting not to play it. Rent it, borrow it, buy it, redbox it. Do what you have to do to play this game. We are on the verge of a new console generation a scant few weeks away and Rockstar Games gave this current generation a hell of a parting shot.

Play it. Play it, Play it, Play it. Games like this only come once every few years.

Oh yeah, and you get a psychological evaluation when you finish the game.
Fuck you too, Dr. Friedlander.