Beyond: Two Souls

Early on playing this game I had resolved to give it a "No" recommendation and review it as the worst I have ever played. When I reached the combat training and simply could not make the mouse control work for the actions I had to search the web for a solution. That lead me to conclude that I wish the reviews I had read before buying this game had been clear that this game is really not suitable for keyboard and mouse. Once I got my USB gaming controller working the game was playable again. I also needed to change the display from full screen 5120 x 1440 to windowed and a resolution which put black bars at the top and the bottom - without those there would be points in the game where the required controls could not be activated. Maybe other reviewers have covered this, but the game is like a movie where the player uses the control to nudge the action forwards. Frustratingly these controls might be boringly simple - picking up a cup to drink - or irritatingly critical - press a button at exactly the right time a achieve or avoid an important event. For me this was bad because my USB controller buttons were not all as expected and sometimes I pressed the wrong one and missed a crucial opportunity to achieve what I wanted. The game does not provide the ability to reconfigure the buttons. Whilst the story is overall interesting, a lot of the player involvement is dull. I don't like extended "cutscenes" in other games but this one has long scenes where player involvement adds no value. On the other hand there were at least three scenes in the game that were really very good and I enjoyed them. This was enough for me to give the game a guarded recommendation (especially as I played the game for 13 hours and paid only £1.69 in the sale). A final note: I understand the end of game choices, but not the "percentage of players did this" lists after every scene. Apart from the major ones I don't see how those paths affected the overall gameplay. The only reason seems to be for replayability, and maybe I'm unusual in that I never replay games - there's always new ones to play instead.