So. Not too long ago, the Two Best Friends -- or
technically the Super Best Friends, since Matt and Pat brought Woolie along for
the "Sadness" -- finished their LP of Beyond:
Two Souls. I’m on record of saying
that I would sacrifice a goat for the gang to play the game from start to
finish, and my prayers were indeed answered.
It certainly saved me the trouble of playing the game beyond the
demo. And as it turns out, the Best
Friends did me (and our species) a greater service than they could have ever
imagined.
Yikesy mikesy. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
if I had played Two Souls for myself,
from start to finish, it would easily be
the WORST game I’ve played all year.
It’s like a thirty-car
pileup on top of a train wreck on top of an oil spill on top of a forest fire,
with a ruined birthday party thrown in for good measure. This game -- and I can’t even use the word
“game” properly -- gets so much wrong it’s almost fascinatingly terrible. Almost. I’m pretty sure I never bore David Cage and
his crew at Quantic Dream any ill will before; that’s true even now, but after
seeing them at their “best” I can’t say I have even an eighth of the good will
I had beforehand. Whatever they’re
cooking up next, if it’s anything like Two
Souls they need to start over.
A part of me was
willing to start this post by asking “Has David Cage ever played a video
game?” It was going to segue into how
you could use the medium to tell or enhance a story, given that his game has been
done, and done better. But the more
I thought about it, the more I realized that wasn’t the right question to
ask. There isn’t even a question I need
to ask. Why? Because I have a theory.
David Cage doesn’t need
to play more video games. He needs to watch something dumb.
WARNING: Spoilers for Beyond: Two Souls AND Kamen
Rider Fourze coming your way. One of
those is worth caring about. The other
isn’t. Guess which one.