One of the worst games I've ever played. I love Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page, but if there was proof of the concept that an actor can't rise above their material, this is it.
I dug out an old blurb I wrote about it back when I played it:
I've come to realize that David Cage games are like the Sirens' song to me. They beckon with their beautiful imagery, their promises of incredible adventures, their assurance of an interesting merger of film and games. Their whispers always sweetly lure me, but invariably bring misfortune, in the end. But strangely, I'm always susceptible to their charms, returning again and again, never having learned my lesson that the man is incapable of crafting a quality narrative. And the problem for him is that narrative is ALL his games have. Some "games" can and, thankfully, do fall back on interesting or fun gameplay mechanics or systems in the absence of a good story. Better yet, many games START with fun in mind, and put on a coat of paint in the form of a story after they've created the foundation of compelling gameplay. But Cage games are barely more than a movie. Imagine you had a defective DVD player that for some reason paused the movie every so often requiring you to nudge or jiggle the remote for the player to unpause itself. Boom- David Cage game. Worse yet, his would-be movies are ALL bloated, over-ambitious, incoherent train-wrecks. I'm completely convinced David Cage wouldn't recognize quality writing if by some random miracle he penned it himself. The framework upon which the characters are perched is shoddy and ill-conceived. The characters' emotions are forced and vacant landing with zero impact, through no fault of the actors, mind you. They can only work with what they're given. (I really love both Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, for what it's worth.) The narrative just grates like that guy in Jaws (I'm old) running his finger nails over the chalk board. I actually got angry while playing, so high was my level of disdain for this mess. BUT, I forced myself to continue to the end. Why? Not in the hopes of finding any redeeming qualities, but as a very sincere self-flogging, a scolding of myself in the hopes that enduring this punishment would forever disabuse me of the idea that a Quantic Dream game is worth picking up, no matter how beautiful or compelling it may appear on cursory glance. By Zeus, after all is said and done, I think I'm cured!
steamdb.info
