This radically alternative take on game design is a visually exceptional piece of interactive media, but by shadowing Hollywood so closely, Beyond: Two Souls loses any distinct identity of its own.

Beyond: Two Souls follows the story of Jodie (Ellen Page), a young girl who possesses telekinetic abilities that allow her the ability to manipulate the world around her via her spiritual, ever-present partner Aiden. Darting from point-to-point, this non-linear chronology charts many of the key moments in the development of Jodie’s transition from girl to women. All whilst she battles with the troubling reality of her supernatural partnership with Aiden.

Starring alongside Professor Dawkins (Willem Defoe), Jodie is one of several remarkably captured characters. Thanks to a combination of excellent motion-capture technology and fantastic performances from the aforementioned voice acting talent, the characters in Beyond exhibit the kind of idiosyncrasies that truly draw them into a reality of their own.

Convincing and often moving, Jodie’s harrowing story suffers with the same issue that the entire title is plagued with: inconsistency. Often touching on themes that it cannot hope to thoroughly explore, Beyond often feels like it’s shoehorning issues such as sexual assault and suicide in simply to add dramatic gravitas and legitimize its claim to being a mature game.

Furthermore, the structure of the game means that the pace and tone fly up and down faster than a blind pilot. At one moment Ellie finds herself tidying the house and cooking dinner, before just minutes later being sent into a warzone to assassinate a target. It’s jarring and thanks to the game’s reliance on the old “we’ll tie things up at the end” school of narrative, none of this feels even remotely grounded in any kind of context.

This constant juxtaposition may well have been more bearable, if the management of activity had been approached with a video game in mind. Although a feature film is only obligated to hang around for 90-minutes, a video game’s life span is substantially longer. And if ever this difference has shown, it’s in Beyond: Two Souls. The majority of the title is occupied by utterly laborious tasks such as yard work, house chores and mundane tests. Which in a game that boasts the presence of a supernatural entity is not even remotely compelling. The blockbuster moments do arrive, some of which are fantastically cinematic and utterly engrossing. It’s just a shame that they’re drowned out in a sea of monotony.

Quite unlike anything that has been before, Beyond is an intriguing experience that in truth is more film than game. The interaction it offers is minimal when compared to other titles; a series of on-screen prompts which sees the action directed by the player.

But in truth, such a unique control scheme lends itself much better to a more methodical frame of narrative as explored in Quantic Dream’s last title, Heavy Rain. Unfortunately, action orientated game play often feels frustratingly unresponsive and mismatched.

Compelling though certain events may be, the scene-to-scene functionality of Beyond Two Souls always suffers due its ultimate ambitions of being a film rather than a game. The title’s consistent lack of player input often results in an experience that evokes a sense of detachment, as if events are watchable rather than playable. Which is a shame when considering the admittedly fascinating concept behind the title and some of its key moments, including an astonishing set of sweeping chases set in a remote desert.

There is however, a really fine attention to cinematography. Intense close-ups ignite personal scenes, whilst imaginative panoramas sweep the picturesque locales. All of which only further exhibits the beauty of the game. Every single pore of Beyond’s religiously crafted face is rendered with the utmost attention, resulting in a final aesthetic that rivals the very best that the market has witnessed.

The inherent issue with a product that implicitly critiques its piers is that it has to be thoroughly excellent to warrant such a revolutionary standpoint. And for all of its emotion, beauty and technical innovation, on a functional basis, Beyond doesn’t offer enough in terms of user input to keep itself consistently interesting; never mind revolutionary.

It’s totally acceptable and frankly brilliant for video games to offer innovative new means of user input. But ultimately such innovations live and die on their viability as an alternative to more established control methods. And in truth, Beyond: Two Souls’ control scheme is a rather jarred partner to the on-screen action that plays out – distancing any clean run of immersive gameplay the title manages to surmount.

Capturing breathtaking performances and fusing them with frequently awesome cinematic gameplay seems like a winning formula. But Beyond is a package that uses all of these components as separate operatives, never fully culminating into a convincing whole. For all of its pretenses of reassessing the status quo in video games, Beyond: Two Souls boils down to little more than a sequence of laborious tasks strung together by a tenuous narrative.

An aesthetic exhibition to rival all others, Beyond: Two Souls is an absorbingly life-like flexing of the PlayStation 3’s technical ability. Over the course of the title, the drama offered up is all manner of dramatic, illogical and absorbing, frequently gripping and more frequently frustrating, resulting in a narrative that never gains enough consistency to rival older sibling, Heavy Rain. Make no mistake, as a technical exercise Jodie’s tale is astonishing. But ultimately, due to a muddled narrative and inconsistent tone, the title struggles to stray beyond anything other than a display of impressive technology.

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