I'm....not really sure what to say. I'm not sure what I want to say, as I never even so much as posted that I had started playing it, meaning I've gone from start to finish without saying a single thing about it. And of course, given the type of game that this is, there's the looming problem of what should I say about it? I don't want to spoil anything and talking about most any facet of the game is almost guaranteed to spoil -something-, which makes it difficult, especially when I don't want to go through the effort of spoiler tagging the post and/or inserting a jump break. Perhaps if I were to speak a little more in-depth about the game (which I may still do) then I'll worry about it then, but for now I'm not so fussed.
I liked Beyond: Two Souls. On the list of things I can and should say, that is pretty much at the top of it. I liked the game and I definitely think it's something that everyone should give a shot. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and it'll get a lot of hate (it already did, really), but it's a wholly different experience than most games on the market, and it's something worth played if just for that. For all the complaints about stagnation and "booo, I'm tired of waist-high wall, shootymans games", when you're presented with something that is legitimately not that, you should fucking play it or shut up a little. While, yes, there are shootyman bits as we saw from at least a couple trailers, they're certainly not handled like any other game of that particular genre, so I wouldn't even worry about it. Saying this as someone who...you know, played it and whatnot.
In the same vein of "It's different, so you should play it", I do think I liked Heavy Rain more than Beyond. I'll have to replay it sometime (especially since I can leave my PS3 on long enough for the Move patch and I also have Move peripherals) but Heavy Rain just seemed a little more...'crafted', I think is the word I want. Beyond feels like it defers more to Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe than it directs them, potentially because of their fantastic acting abilities, so you get moments in the game where it's awesome because it's Ellen Page or Willem Dafoe and not simply because that part of the game is particularly good for them to simply enhance that. With less-storied actors, it wouldn't be nearly as memorable, I think, which is an issue in itself, because a great story makes actors; actors don't make great stories.
Still, as stated, Beyond was a great experience and one that I can't help but recommend if only for the departure from the norm. Someone described Quantic Dream games as "Western Visual Novels" and I can't help but agree with that assessment, even if they're a bit more interactive than that. Whatever it is, it's a breed all to itself which is a bit unfortunate for now. I don't know what I'd do for a modern remake of Snatcher in the vein of Heavy Rain. Probably not good things. Probably bad things. Very bad things. If Kojima wasn't stuck making Metal Gear Solid games over and over again, maybe we could have hoped for that, but oh well. As long as someone else runs with the style and turns it into a genre all its own, I'll be more than happy.
really though, Willem Dafoe was pretty damn great in every scene he was in
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