As my travels took me beyond the bounds of the Internet when I’d normally be writing the week’s WWP, this week you’ve got a bit of blurb from me that I noted down before hitting a local Wi-Fi-less bar followed by effectively cut’n’pastes (with the odd spelling correction) of the emails I got from the team while I was incommunicado.
I’ve been waiting all year (okay, since I stopped playing ME3 online around February anyway) for something to come along on my PS3 that would really sink its pixelated claws into my chest and refuse to release me for more than 30 minutes. It’s taken until mid-October for that to happen.
Beyond: Two Souls is frikkin’ amazing! It’s been on pre-order for a good while and I’ve not really thought about it much, though I’ve tried to avoid any trailers, especially after seeing the first one that showed Jodie on a CIA mission in some dusty land. That one almost got my pre-order cancelled.
Damned glad it didn’t though. I sat down on Saturday morning while I had an hour to spare in amongst getting ready for gallivanting around Europe this week, thinking I’d give it that hour to convince me it was worth playing when I got back from my travels.
I actually ‘played’ the thing (played seems like the wrong word and I don’t want to call it a game either) for seven hours straight, completely forgetting about lunch in the process. And you can bet I’ll be doing something similar when I get home again.
Okay, I guess you could be critical and say that it’s little more than a fairly linear story with limited interaction at times and that it tries to disguise its linearity by jumping forwards and backwards along its timeline. Meanwhile it sometimes attempts to pretend it’s a game by making you complete a minor challenge before letting you ‘turn a page’ or finish a chapter.
But I feel that would be completely missing the point. I for one am finding that it is spinning a thoroughly engaging yarn centred upon a character that at times I have felt real empathy for. All the while using the interactivity of the ‘game’ experience to pull me deeper into the story and help me experience it along with the central character in a fuller sense than if I were just passively watching the scenes play out on the screen.
It’s not a game. There, I’ve said it. It’s an exploration of storytelling. Almost little more than an experiment in how modern technology can enable storytellers to use ‘player agency’ to enhance and sharpen the focus of the person experiencing their tale.
Is it flawless? No. Do the flaws detract from my overall experience so far? Only momentarily. I could talk for ages about the few little things I’ve disliked or been annoyed by, the parts of the story I’ve enjoyed or not and which of Jodie’s experiences have either resonated with or touched me, sometimes eliciting a surprisingly strong emotional response.
But to do so would reveal parts of the story and I really want to avoid doing that at all costs. This is the kind of experience that you want to go into with as little fore knowledge as possible.
There is every chance that you may not enjoy the Beyond: Two Souls experience as much as I have so far but if you get even half as much out of it as I have it’ll more than repay your investment in time and money.
You can easily plot the evolution of the Beyond experience through Quantic Dream’s previous titles Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain. For my money David Cage and his team have taken another big step forward in what they keep striving to achieve.
Yes, at the same time they have taken another half-step away from producing something we might think of as a game but they’re very deliberately headed elsewhere. I’m eager to see what they can come up with next but in the meantime I’ve got more Beyond: Two Souls to look forward to when I get back home and that is a Very, Very Good Thing!
Stefan
I’ve been dabbling with a bit of Papers Please, doing a day each day it seems like. No idea why I’m doing it that way, but I am!
Then, to release the stress and boredom or pushing papers all day, I’ve gone on a murdering spree in Miami, having picked up Hotline Miami for the ridiculous £2.50 or so that it is right now.
DanToo
I’ve played quite a bit this week. Most of my time has been spent playing Crash Team Racing and LittleBigPlanet Karting (and a bit of Uno) with my house mates, both great games and it’s become really competitive. Also on the PS3 I’ve been gradually working my way through Beyond: Two Souls. It’s a strange one. Story is all over the place so far, but it’s an interesting idea.
On the Vita I’m starting to play Limbo, which is quite difficult and actually really creepy, more so than I was expecting.
I’ve also gone and bought a 2DS along with Pokémon X. It’s a nice handheld, and I’m looking forward to playing a bit more Pokémon this week.
Tuffcub
Girl Fight (See review).
Killzone.. Mercenary! Aha! Fooled you! Finished the campaign, truly a work of art, it looks stunning on the Vita.
GTA V: Hurrah! My main problem from every other Rockstar game – the dodgy controls – has been fixed ! Huzzah! But… every other single melon-farming word is a fudging curse. It’s relentless and really quite annoying, so GTA V has gone back in the box never to be played again.
Captain Morgane & The Golden Turtle – Crap, but enjoyably so.
Killzone 3: Obviously.
Beyond Two Souls: Sorry but Blair got this one wrong. Yes, the African mission is a misstep but overall it is one the best experiences you can get on console. Note I did not call it game. Some of it is a game, a lot of it is now. Whatever it is, it’s fantastic, I laughed, I cried, I punched the air (“Resignation”) and I squirmed about in my chair not wanting to… well do something (“Zoe”). A much better story than The Last Of Us. Truly a fantastic piece of work, the last twenty minutes or so when… well… things happen are brilliant. It’s hard to say why it’s fab without spoilers so let’s just say it’s fab. Yes.
Newsy McNews Desk Of News: A new simulation in which you spend all day writing up news for a games website.
Dishonored: Trying to finish it. Not really enjoying it.
Dom
I’ve been playing Sonic: Lost World on my 3DS for my review – and I gave it… and it was…
I’ve also been playing the marvellous Pokémon Y [time for a Dan vs Dom Pokéfight?] and capturing lots of those loveable critters. I’ve been annoying my wife (who also likes Pokémon) by showing her every new Pokémon that appears before she’s had a chance to play it – oops!
Peter
I’ve been playing a couple of iPhone games this week. Type:Rider is a really excellent side-scrolling game that kind of walks you through the history of typography while you play it. It has a kind of silhouetted appearance like LIMBO or Badland and the controls are pretty well implemented – you hold the right side of the screen to guide your two little dots (like a wobbly colon – :) to the right and you hold the left side to guide them left. Tapping the other side of the screen makes you jump.
The other iOS game is called Lilt Line, it’s a kind of endless runner but with a simple line that moves along a 2D space – you tilt to keep it within range and tap the screen when it is passing through a white vertical bar, in rhythm with the music that’s playing. If you hit the edges or mistime a screen tap, you’ll lose some of your score and if that gets to zero then you fail the level. It’s really cool, quite simple and makes the most of the hardware it’s on – perfect for iOS.
And that’s it for my ‘phoned-in-while-I-should-be-paying-attention-in-a-meeting’ WWP this week. All that’s left is for you to let us and everyone else know what you’ve been playing in the comments below.
Greg Turner
I’ve had a fairly quiet week games-wise.
Fired up GTA V for some single player action and made a start on Rain as well.
Other than that it’s been Persona 4 Golden and Atomic Ninjas (for review) on my Vita.
Oh and a quick game of FIFA 14 against a friend. It’s quite a lot slower than the last few but still fun against a mate.
f4rgo
Most of the week spent grinding the 5Mill challenge for the plat on Diablo 3 but thankfully finished, that aside game is great. Interspersed with D3 was Rain, a pleasant enough time waster but over all to quickly.
Eldave0
This week my Wife and I borrowed a friend’s PS3 and rented a copy of Beyond Two Souls. Absolutely loved it from start to finish. Excellent acting, interesting storyline and the ability to play the whole thing co-op was a welcome addition.
I may not be Sony’s biggest fan these days, but they really are onto a winner with Quantic Dream under their belt.
hornet1990
Finished Battlefield 3 SP which was better I thought than most reviews made out; not great but enjoyable, a believable story and not a ridiculous assault on the senses (looking at you Blops2 SP!)
Otherwise a bit of Blops2 MP but now I’ve bought Hotline Miami I need to play that, and get back to GTAV! Really can’t put my finger on why it’s not drawing me back…
hazelam
mostly GTA this weeks for me.
i know, i play the most obscure titles right? ^_^
and that bloody Cookie Clicker.
too bloody addictive, not a game you can sit and play on it’s own, but something you just have to leave in the background and check on from time to time.
those cursors, they start cheap, but they get real expensive, the 151st will cost over 19 billion, assuming a billion is a thousand times a million, i forget if we use the million times or thousand times a million for a billion these days.
i’ve got 75 cookie mines and another will cost a paltry, by comparison, 350 odd million.
but worryingly, i think i may have started the nanageddon.
the grandmatriarch’s status is now “awoken”
the news at the top also seems to now exclusively be about scary old women that smell faintly of cookies.
overall i’ve made over 2 and a half million million cookies, and i’m making 126 million per second.
the most expensive upgrade i’ve seen so far costs, 99,999,999,999,999.
but i bet there are much more expensive ones later on.
i’ve bought 72 upgrades so far, but that’s only 57% of them.
i’m going to drown the game’s universe in cookies.
god damn, i don’t think i’ve ever wrote the word cookie that many times during my whole life before i played this infuriatingly addictive game.
tactical20
Wait until you get to 90+ Antimatter Condensers. Was taking a couple of days saving to just buy 1! I gave up in the end. 100 of them was the only achievement I have left to get. Had bought all the upgrades.Was turning over 22,000,000,000 cookies a second! Took about 2 weeks to get to that stage though. Cheers TSA, lol!
R1MJAW
Finished off the remaining single player stuff in GTA V so now have 100%, just need to go back at some point and work on the 70 gold medals for my last single player trophy … I’ve not really spent much time online and to be honest I don’t think I ever will.
I also went back and finished off the challenges I had remaining in Skydive:Proximity Flight then spent an infuriating few hours trying to get 3 stars on all the challenges which has been accomplished and adds another shiny platinum to my collection (number 94 and also another TSA fastest platinum).
I decided to delve into my backlog yesterday and have been playing/watching my way through Asura’s Wrath.
tactical20
Is there anyway to find the UFO parts/letter scraps without using a guide on the Internet? I’ve done the submarine parts and whatever the other underwater based collectable was, but had the phone to act as a GPS tracker thingy. Are you honestly supposed to just stumble across them? I know you can find bridges/jumps on one of the ingame webpages.
R1MJAW
I just used an online guide as I doubt I’d have found them otherwise (and it’s still a pain in the arse and a massive time sink).
As far as I’m aware you can use Chop to find stuff if you have trained him using the iFruit app but I don’t know how useful he actually is as they still haven’t released an android version yet.
ron_mcphatty
Great to hear positive stuff about Beyond, Im not sure if ill play it yet but it’s gone on the list. After reading WeView I’m now tearing through The Last of Us and I’m loving it, not a fan of zombie games so I’m really pleased its got more in common with Metal Gear and Splinter Cell than it has with Resident Evil. Thinking about the gameplay I reckon it probably could’ve been made years ago, maybe even for the PS2, which made me realise that it’s actually a really simple game with an astounding level of polish on the storytelling, gameplay and graphics. Definitely not my game of the generation, but commendable for being a wonderfully high quality experience :)
Steelhead
On holiday this week and spent most of it playing Dragon’s Crown. Really good game provided you don’t mind a fair bit of repetition. Also played Journey a couple of times, only one more shiny thing to go til i earn the transendance trophy and can claim my white robes.
Germanos
I spent the last week playing Transformers: War for Cybertron and my god is the game good. The single player campaign i very well done, with lots of great moments and an very well done voice-acting. Seriously, the actors did a great job. But, the thing that really got me into is the multiplayer experience. Yes, there are glitches and some players simply use them to cheat, but when playing on a decent server the fun is enormous. Overall – excellent game. I’m off watching the Transformers Movie from 1986 ^^
tactical20
Still Dirt 3. It really is quite the epic! Not bad for a manky/soggy fiver. The end is in sight though, and I think I’ll have it done by the end of the weekend. I’m about 3% better at Gymkhana events than I was when I first started, so that makes me about 3.5% good now. Luckily, a smelly bronze has been enough to unlock all the events.