So the third dimension of gameplay already exists, and could very easily have been implemented with a stationary camera system a la Telltale games.Īs for what you actually do in Beholder 2, it’s not a whole lot.

This linear gameplay in a nonlinear world also required a sort of directional mechanic, where you must awkwardly stop and look at whatever you want to interact with.

I would occasionally found myself stuck behind another pedestrian who had wandered into my very specific path, or have to wait for a coworker to walk towards my two dimensional prison in order to chat. Not only are you unable to explore beyond the straight line that extends from the front doors through the offices, the rest of the world is not confined to existing within a flat vertical plane. For Beholder 2, which takes place in a much more intricate setting, this side scrolling movement feels restrictive. The 2.5D movement fit well for the first game, where you had nothing more to do than go between the floors of one small apartment building. Much like Beholder, the bulk of gameplay involves navigation of one building and going back and forth trying to find which person to talk to or object to examine. The gameplay of Beholder 2 is similar to that of the first game, in that its kind of meh. Your goals for Beholder 2 are this: navigate the bureaucratic obstacle course without being backstabbed too much, while trying to uncover the mystery of your father’s demise. Despite this completely unforeseen and blameless accident, of which I must remind you is absolutely probably not the fault of the Ministry, your father left you a sizeable amount of biometric lock boxes filled with notes of which only you can open. You have been transferred here because your estranged father seems to have slipped on a banana peel and fell to his not at all conspicuous death from the top floor of the Ministry (his parachute, tragically, was filled with an anvil and various silverware). You take up the role of Evan Redgrave, a young man beginning his new job at the Ministry’s main office. He is the deity of this society, and everyone lives to serve him as he serves the collective. The leader of the Ministry is none other than the Leader, who can be recognized by the massive statues and numerous busts of his scowly face and cool hat. The surveillance state with modern technology is matched by enormous concrete apartment blocks and brutalist architecture.

This unnamed country rests somewhere in between 1930s Stalingrad and our rapidly approaching plutocratic-fascist government owned entirely by the Disney Corporation. But by some weird alchemy, Warm Light Games has done a pretty good job of taking a bleak setting and torturous occupation and turning it into an enjoyable experience.īeholder 2 is set in a vague authoritarian country run by The Ministry. Match that with the restrictions of an Orwellian panopticon state, and you’ve got a boring setting in which you can barely do anything without being sent to a reeducation camp. It’s a delicate balance for Beholder 2 because a single building filled with dead-eyed wage slaves is just about the lamest setting you can have for your game. After all, the last thing I want to do when I get off work is enter a virtual world to do more work. It takes a lot to make office work interesting to me. Beholder 2 Review – Duty Is In The Spy Of The…Īvailable on PS4, PC, Switch, Android, Mac, and Linux

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