I just finished this last night. I'm not giving away a lot of plot details, but if you're still playing the game I'd skip reading the next bit. It contains stuff which could alter your enjoyment of bits you've not done yet.
N
O
T
R
E
A
L
L
Y
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
,
B
U
T
O
P
I
N
I
O
N
S
P
A
C
E
.
.
.
.
Towards the end there is a bit of a jump in the narrative which comes very close to derailing the whole thing. There is a definate feeling of "we kinda ran out of time" where the game jumps into the concluding bits and ditches the beautiful attention to detail that you've gotten accustomed to. It also begins to really wear it's influences on it's sleeves (for instance, the big one-on-one rooftop fight..... and.....erm, didn't anybody find the subway station bit a little.......familiar) and gets a good bit hokier for it.
Also, maybe I was picking the wrong options in conversations but there was a lot that never got properly explained to me. Like just who one of the major antagonists were.
I found the action QTE's both inspired and bloody irritating, especially in the above major fight. Your conditioning throughout the game to get better and better at them makes a beautiful kind of story sense in this fight (even if the story is derailing). However, I had to replay this very long action sequence countless times just because right at the fucking end of it, I was unable to hammer two buttons fast enough.
That's my main gripe. The thing which consistently pissed me off. The lives system just makes no sense in this game, because having to reload chunks of the game simply because it only lets you repeat a tricky bit three or four times just grabs you by the neck and hoists you out of the otherwise fantastic immersion. It's a concession to the clichés of the medium and it goes contrary to everything else in the game.
However.... as I said above, I forgive it. It's weird, because I don't remember any other game which has threatened to make me throw down the controller in disgust so many times, yet always reeled me back in with its really cool elements. I fully see myself giving it another runthrough.
I love the mundane, day to day stuff. I love that drinking a bottle of wine is every bit as involved as evading police by climbing drainpipes. I love the fact that although you really have no freedom at all, it puts you in the directors chair and gives you the reigns of camera and character interaction.
I think the most interesting aspect of it, is in playing both sides. You care for both parties so you don't want either to fail, even though they're working at total cross-purposes. This works best, I thought, at the photofit section. Regardless of whether it made any difference or not, there's a bit of a dilemma whether to do right by Carla and Tyler, or to give Lucas a helping hand. I really think that's the game's major contribution. I shows some of the cool, player-involving narrative tricks that you can pull off specifically in vidoegames.
I also liked that the sexual content was (well, for the most part) maturely handled. I liked the fact that the earlier scene was matter-of-factly just as controllable as the rest of the game and there wasn't a typically videogame/teenager deal made over it. Nearer the end, it got a little more unbelievable, but I think that's more of a problem with the overall story than it was to do with any specific scene.
N
O
T
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
B
U
T
O
P
I
N
I
O
N
S
P
A
C
E
E
N
D
S
.
.
.
.
. |
