And they don’t come anywhere close.īeyond’s problems are essentially the opposite of Heavy Rain: instead of a good idea bogged down by a weak script and mediocre voice-acting Beyond is a thoroughly silly and poorly reasoned concept supported by actors and technology it does not at all deserve.
But if it’s not an action game, if its plot and dialogue are the driving force, then they’ve got to be good enough to justify the experience. We really don’t want to imply we’re being snobbish about the game just because it isn’t a straight action title. If you just sit and watch a boxed set of 24 while randomly wobbling a controlling in your lap you’d get much the same experience. There is a simplistic stealth element in some of the levels but you never aim your gun, just press a shoulder button to instantly kill someone when the game tells you you’re in range. Pushing the right analogue stick in a particular direction is the most common activity, with the combat introducing a slow motion element where you have to move the stick in the direction of an attack to land a blow.
Your characters are a little less clumsy when moving around but other than that all your interactions with the game world are through pre-determined quick time event sequences. The Enhanced Experiments DLC, involving additional tests during CIA training, is also thrown in for free.Īs far as the gameplay and controls go very little has changed. Other changes for the next gen version, which is currently only available digitally, are limited to the ability to play the story in chronological order from the start and Telltale Games style chapter endings where you get to see what other players chose to do. Although the higher resolution can exacerbate the uncanny valley effect, where it sometimes feels like you’re watching the Madame Tussauds versions of the actors rather than the real thing. The result is impressive even by the standards of games made for the PlayStation 4 from the ground up. The PlayStation 4 version increases the native resolution to 1080p, and improves the lighting and other effects. Page is helped by the equally phenomenal graphics, which were amongst the best of the last generation – both in terms of the facial animation and the varied backdrops. It really is an astonishing example of performance capture and elevates the material well beyond its worth. There are four main time periods: Jodie as an eight-year-old girl being looked after by foster parents and a government scientist played by William Dafoe, Jodie’s teenage years at the same facility, her inexplicably bizarre recruitment by the CIA to work as an astral-projecting assassin, and her time on the run from her former employees.Īctually, there may be far more than that but you’ll probably never notice thanks to the impressively committed performance from Ellen Page as Jodie. The game’s story is told in flashback, but not in chronological order as Jodie tries to piece back her memories after the main events of the game. You play both roles though, controlling Aiden from a first person view where he can effortlessly float through walls and interact with highlighted objects – but only within a short distance of Jodie. Jodie doesn’t know who or what ‘Aiden’ is and, it’s implied, neither does Aiden. She has a mysterious poltergeist-like companion who’s been with her since birth and is fiercely, and jealously, protective of her. Now available for the PlayStation 4, with even better graphics, the basic premise of the story involves a troubled young woman named Jodie.