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History of the developer Dontnod

Heavy Rain is a legendary game. It was released early 2010 and it became a succesful and critically acclaimed game. Twin Mirror isn’t developed by the same studio as Heavy Rain, but it’s coming from studio behind hit games like Life Is Strange, Life Is Strange 2, Vampyr — and recently released Tell Me Why.

Movie-like point&click game

As soon as I started the game, it became clear how outdated the graphics were. I played this fully on PS5 console, so I can’t say how it runs in PS4 consoles. The overall visual quality and realism was not there. The characters facial impressions, moves and overall character designs were painfully outdated. Even the lipsyncing was off and nothing like it should be.

So yes, visually the game was stuck in 2009 development. Then there were all the bugs and game-breaking glitches. I had to do couple of investigations twice, because the game glitched so badly. This happened after coming back from console being in sleep mode.

The awful visual uncanny valley

The graphics everywhere were absolutely horrible. Even the way things was applied to the environment felt haphazard. Looking very much like those early PS4 games, that tried to look nice, but were just OK. I do claim, Twin Mirror did look good at times. I did take many nice screenshots and checking them afterwards, they look nice.

The camera and controls was as hopeless as the visuals; awkward and slow. Many times I had to find just correct position right in front of an object to ineract with it. The camera didn’t help at all, because it was mostly stuck right side of the character I played as. It was difficult to look around as nicely as I wanted. It was weird, how they didn’t pay more attention to this, because the game was about investigation and looking around.

Deciding what happened.

More decision.

Looking at the crime scene.

Looking everything and finally entering Sam’s “Mind Palace”.

Finalizing and reenacting the accident.

The story was OK at the first and then I realized it isn’t as huge and plot-twisty as I thought, and the ending was barely just OK, as well. I liked the various ends and choices player can make to alter the storyline. I didn’t like my first ending I got, so I went back to the final chapter and played it again to see a better solution. I actually got attached to the characters a little bit, to care to see other endings, but still they were kinda bland.

Before executing a plan, Sam can visualize it in his mind.

Sam makes some bold choices.

Sam can decide what the NPC does.

Finally he can execute the plan.

Trying badly to be Twin Peaks

Twin Mirror needed much more time get polished and maybe coded much better. Everything was just stiff, awkward, painful and mostly ugly. It was like those uncomfortably dreams, where you try to move or run, but it’s pointlessly difficult.

I don’t know is reason the past year of 2020 or should this game genre have a complete overhaul, or is it time to dump it and move on?

Whatever it is, developer should patch this game up, to fix the bigger issues to make the gameplay more pleasant. Honestly, I cannot recommend this game that much. Maybe the ultimate genre lovers will like this.

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SCORE:

3/5

“The character models and details weren’t quite there, leaving everyone in the Uncanny Valley”

RELEASE DATE: Dec 1, 2020
GENRE: Adventure
DEVELOPER: Dontnod
PUBLISHER: Dontnod
PLATFORMS: PS4 (reviewed on using PS5 -system)
Xbox One
Windows

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