Video Review: Beyond Two Souls

I never thought a game would make me miss Heavy Rain.

Other than how eerily similar Soha sounds like my sister, it's an interesting review. One small suggestion that I would like to make is that perhaps Soha should speak a bit slower next time? The first part she's speaking relatively fast and it shows when she has to pause several times to take a breath, which breaks the flow of the video and made me feel like she had to get it out as fast as possible before moving on to her main points. At the halfway mark though she seems to have control of her pacing which is fine for the rest of the video.

As a person who didn't play this game and watched this review, another suggestion is a longer video next time? From the video I couldn't get a good feel on the game's basic plot, control scheme and gameplay mechanics (which seems to be similar to Heavy Rain? I couldn't tell), and how the world works.It seems like most of the things that Soha said seem geared towards those who actually played the game, and for me who checked out this video to see if it would be worth playing, I couldn't really tell if I would like it or not due to things just flying over my head.

This is an very in depth review, i mean i never thought you could connect 2 of the best in the world, masturbation and video games but you did it. good job 2 thumbs up from me.

PS didn't watch the whole video, i just remember what i need to do today. :)

"navigating though the plot overall felt like I was masturbating for hours with a topical numbing cream to, and try pointlessly, never achieve an orgasm."

That comment made my day. Even if the review is a little vague, it gives a very clear opinion of the game. And I found the use of the characters' speech a nice, subtle, addition.

On a side note, that's the best "je ne sais quoi" I heard in an english speech.

tone it down on the insults, it's so jarring that I don't remember any of the actual content that was said in the review.

I really liked this review; it had a strong voice and clearly stated your opinion. With many video reviews it's hard to tell how the reviewer actually feels about the game until they say the number score, but this doesn't need a score because it was obvious how you felt and why.

So this game is a rent?

I figured it out: what bothers me so much about this review is how clearly
Soha's skill at writing shines through, then is utterly bastardized by masturbation jokes and swearing.

Every sentence of the review is well crafted. It's not just there for bullshit effect, it brings out a clear point.

"The narrative's first act is strong enough to overlook the clumsy and often unresponsive controls, but unfortunately this is short-lived..."

This is a legit professional "hey someone who knows what they're talking about" sentence. The controls are talked about, the beginning of the game and how narrative is introduced and dealt with. Then comments that sadly, this doesn't keep up. Okay, got it. Cool.

"...and the game ultimately falls on its fucking face."

It's how I mentioned before, this combination of utter professionalism with coherent sentences followed up by swearing and etc. Don't misunderstand, I'm not upset at the jokes (more in next paragraph on that).

There's the point that disgustingly has to be considered, that a male reviewer could possibly say all this and get away with it. I disagree. It's not a matter of the jokes being crass "oh girls can't say that, it's not ladylike", fuck that. I think they're good, well-crafted jokes and little stabs at the game. It's this going back and forth between a well written (spoken) review that's suddenly soured by a jump to editorialization.

It's a matter of having your cake and eating it too, it looks like. Reviews with great detail, organization and display are greatly respected (Chris Davis churns this out on the reg, see any of his for reference). While mentioning this, no, I do not expect all reviews to be HD video with a $100 mic after days of cutting and rewriting and editing. A review can be done just fine in text with good organization and thought, going to the trouble to make a video is even more appealing.

At the same time, you can have something more along the style of a Jimquisition bit where the author/speaker is free to say whatever they want about the game without having the restrictions of calling it a 'review', or really having to categorize it under any name. I'd love to see Soha rip on this game. I'd love to see her review it. What happened here is a combination of the two into one piece which made me feel that despite all her professionalism and awesomeness, this weird teenage "augh fuck yooou" comments come out of left field and make her sound not credible.

So I leave this as constructive criticism, and my thoughts - what I'd like to see are either Soha's badass skills penning a professional review, or being hilarious cutting into a game and calling it out on its bullshit. But not the two together.

Them's my feels.

Thanks for the review - interesting to listen to with good descriptions and metaphors : ) shame about the game - had a lot of promise to it.

Im just going to say I enjoyed the review. I do not plan on playing Beyond. Thank you Soha for making up my mind.