Detroit: BH Review. • AmigaGuru's GamerBlog

It took a while, but I finally did it. After countless iterations of the game that forced me to make decisions that I would have rather avoided, I reached a satisfactory completion rate and, with it, my platinum trophy.

David Cage‘s games have always been difficult for critics and general public to digest: while striving to picture life as it is, there are parts of his games that may appear boring or, as a minimun, unnecessary. I always thought that those parts where indeed mandatory to build the character back-story and improve their introspection. In any case, it is a fact that Detroit stands out from the mass since, compared to previous games, it is much more addictive, interesting and fast-paced (IMHO). Don’t get me wrong: I liked all Cage’s games, but I think Detroit is really a step beyond …

So let’s start meeting Chloe. She has a part in the game as well, but you will deal with here maily from the main menu, where she will address you with phrases like: “Yesterday you played ’till late. I hope you feel fine today.” or …. ok, no spoilers here!

You probably already know that the game follows the storyline of three different main characters: Connor, a detective, already seen in the demo; Kara, a maid/babysitter and Markus, personal caretaker of an old painter. All of them are not human but androids and some of them, for unknown reasons, become “deviants” and dream of a life free from human slavery.

Detroit: Become Human takes the acting and motion capture technology to its best. Following the tradition of other David Cage’s games it enrolls artist like:

Markus – Jesse Williams: Grey’s Anatomy …
Kara – Valorie Curry: Twilights, Blair Witch …
Connor – Bryan Dechart: True Blood …
Detect. Anderson – Clancy Brown: Starship Troopers …
North – Minka Kelly – Almost Human …
Carl Manfred – Lance Henriksen: Aliens, Millennium ….

and so on …. As said, the technology behind the game is really more than state-of-the-art and Detroit shows probably the best graphics we have ever seen on the PS4. Also, unlike other game where choices and subsequent story-branches are a mere illusion and not really relevant, what you do here DOES matter, leading you to full success or total failure across a full spectrum of different possibilities.

Detroit combines different game styles, ranging from the classical buttons combinations …

…. to enviroment exploration …

…. characters interaction ….

… stealth action ….

… and action-packed QTE sequences, that I will no report here to avoid any spoiler.

During gameplay 3 different stories will develop and intertwines with each other, creating a whole bunch of different branches that you will have the opportunity to explore. Unlike the demo, the full game saves your choices during gaming sessions and apart for a few trophies, that won’t unlock if you don’t play a consecutive playthrough, after the first run you will be able to use a chapter-skip feature.

You can so go back and play entire parts in a different way unlocking new subchapters and exploring different outcomes of your actions. By the time you are finished you will feel like having created an entire system of parallel Universes, where things went different according to your choices. The game won’t keep track of statistics like time-played (at least I did not find them), but I sure spent a significant part of the last 3 weeks on this game. Going for multiple playthroughs is not a matter a unlocking trophies (although this is the only way to get a platinum), but rather a mean to explore said Universes.

And now, to the score. There is always a dilemma when trying to give a game a score, since for some reasons people tend to value more titles that are closer to what the masses like: is it a fast-paced action shooter adventure that people follow as a trend? Give it a 10! Is it a visual novel with japanese voiceover and only english subtitles? Give it a 5! I personally think that we should go beyond such way of evaluating titles, for it gives no justice to games. It is sure true that Detroit is somewhat a niche product, but it is a very good title that fully does what it promises to do. Graphics and sounds are at the best level, actors actings is really good (even when dubbed in a foreign language), choices do count and you’ll really have to think twice before picking an option because IT WILL HAVE consequences. For all these reasons I gave the game a 9, and I really recommend it to you if you, like me, are into story-based games. What else can I say? I’m going back to Detroit!