Reviews For November/December

In this time of reflection and end of year lists, I’m going to take a moment to reflect instead on the games I wrote reviews for in the past two months. I’m doing it early because PopMatters is on hiatus until the new year and the rest of the reviews I have lined up will go up then. What is there left to say about the PSN downloadable title Rain? No, seriously what is there left to say. I was struggling to fill out the word count on this one. On a purely aesthetics level, the game is a wonder to look at. | more

Beyond the Point-and-Click Adventure

We finally get around to talking about David Cages latest piece, Beyond: Two Souls, on the Moving Pixels podcast. I’m going to admit right off the bat that I perhaps harp on the problems brought up by the anachronic storytelling of Beyond a bit too much in our discussion, but there are just so many issues that keep popping up because of it. I liked Beyond, but I wanted to like it even more than I did. The pieces where there for a great whole, but they were arranged poorly and execution matters more than the ideas at play. | more

The Anachronic Mixup of ‘Beyond: Two Souls”

It’s a day late, but my post discussing Beyond: Two Souls is up on PopMatters. I wanted to expand upon a point I made in my review of the game, which was the anachronic nature of the game’s presentation. David Cage decided that it would be a good idea to present the story of this woman’s life out of order for some reason. At the end, an in-game fictional excuse is given for why the game is presented as it is, but it doesn’t matter as it doesn’t work in the real world with me as an audience member experiencing it. | more