Developer: Warm Lamp Games
Publisher: Alawar Entertainment, Curve Digital, E-Home Entertainment Development
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Android, iOS
Tested on: Xbox One
Beholder 2 (Xbox One) – Review
Ever wanted to know what working at the Prime Ministry of a totalitarian state would be like? Well, Beholder 2 will give you exactly that experience. As the son of a former employee that died in a mysterious accident, you will start climbing the career ladder of the Prime Ministry. Will you climb up to be Prime Minister someday, or will you, just like your father, die in a terrible accident? You will pave your own path in this interesting simulation game.
Story
The short intro lets you control a man that is walking towards the Prime Ministry where he works and he knows he did something wrong and is in big trouble. Moments after he entered the building, you will see him get thrown out of the window from the 37th floor in slow motion, seeing him falling to certain death. After this intro, you’ll be controlling the main character of the game, Evan Redgrave, the son of the man that died in that mysterious accident. You are offered a job to work at the Prime Ministry and you start playing as him on his first day of work.
You’ll be climbing the career ladder from this point on and you’ll have many conversations with colleagues and superiors. You can work your way up and try to become the prime minister, be a spy for another organization or just be a whistle-blower; it’s all up to you. Each day, you’ll start in front of the building of the ministry. You’ll have nine hours to do your job, investigate, and learn skills at home. Most actions take time to perform so you have to put this time to good use. When you can’t do anything because you don’t have enough time left, you need to go home and sleep until the next day.
As you work at the ministry of a totalitarian state, one mistake could lead to inevitable death. Refusing to do something for your boss, insulting some people, or stealing prohibited items, will quickly lead to a game over screen. These are really funny as the ending will be told by a narrator and mostly when you die early on, you’ll hear that your life was insignificant end everyone forgot about you quick. It can be quite funny to see how far you can go, and what will come from it.
Graphics
The game’s black and white color scheme fits the oppressive atmosphere of this game. The game has a sort of cartoony style with characters drawn in black and white without a visible mouth. You can see their eyes, which will definitely give off some of the emotions they express, but not all. While the people in this game are in black and white, the rest of the game is drawn in full color, which gives of a certain contrast which is kind of weird, but also very intriguing. The statues and other monumental things part of the ministry are perfectly designed to contribute to the totalitarian system.
Sound
The game has quite a good set of music for its background sounds. They perfectly fit the atmosphere and certainly won’t bother you while playing. What is quite weird, is that every conversation is accompanied by a sort of strange made-up language. While all the game’s conversations aren’t understandable because of the strange language, the sequence that starts when you die is fully voiced in English and told by a narrator. It feels like they could’ve done a lot better in this department.
Gameplay
Beholder 2 is a simulation adventure game that lets you work at the Prime Ministry of a totalitarian state. In such a state, when you do something wrong and the higher-ups don’t appreciate it, you’re in big trouble. This isn’t different in this game, as the slightest mistake can have severe consequences. You got a job at this ministry and you start at the bottom of the ladder. You need to work your way up to get a better job and find out what happened to your deceased father that died by flying through a window on the 37th floor of this building. Inside the ministry, you’ll find many biometric safes that can only be opened by you. These have important information on your father’s work and will eventually lead to the cause of his death.
The gameplay of Beholder 2 mostly consists out of talking with people at the ministry, working, and exploring. By talking to the others at the ministry, you’ll get to know more about your colleagues, your boss, and learn how to overcome some obstacles. Each day you’ll have nine hours to take actions inside the ministry. Searching for items in containers, lockpicking doors, hacking terminals, and many other actions cost time to perform. You need to spend your time wisely to earn enough money, while also investigating your father’s death and making promotion to build your career. When your time’s up, or you think you have done enough for the day, you can go home to your apartment. You will get some hours extra when you arrive there to spend at home. Here you can learn skills and watch TV shows that will help in building a relationship with your colleagues at work. You also need to pay bills at home so you need to have enough money to cover your costs or you will be evicted.
In the early game, your work consists out of handing out forms to people in the line in front of your desk to send them to the proper department. These customers come with hundreds of different questions that all have a proper place to be sent to. There are six departments you can send these customers to and there are four types of inquiries to be chosen: request, complaint, denunciation, and information. Sending them to the right department with the correct inquiry will earn you money and after some successful ones, authority points. By spending these authority points, you can talk about sensitive subjects or get specific items. Earning enough authority points will earn you a promotion to move up the career ladder in the Ministry.
As the purpose of your job at the ministry is to move up in the career ladder, you need to get a promotion somehow. To earn this promotion, you need to eliminate the competition in any way possible while also earning enough authority points. What makes the game interesting, is that there are several ways in attaining this. You can get colleagues fired, talk them over to step back in the race for promotion, or even get them killed. What’s important, is that you do all this without making yourself do bad things that could to you getting arrested or even killed inside the ministry. Colleagues could have a firearm and the Prime Leader wouldn’t hesitate to publicly execute criminals or disobedient employees.
Conclusion
Beholder 2 is quite a fun game that takes place in a totalitarian state, a state with a regime where the opposition is eliminated. Working at the ministry of such a state is quite a fun experience to endure (at least in a digital world). Finding out how to climb the ladder by eliminating your competition can be fun and it can be done in several ways. Making mistakes can quickly lead to a point of no return where you will die or go to jail for life; so saving a lot before taking action is wise to do. It can be quite challenging to spend the time you have each day to earn enough money to come by, while also earning authority points and running errands for your boss or colleagues. If you like a game that can be played at your own pace while enjoying an interesting story at the ministry of a totalitarian state, this game is definitely worth trying out.
Beholder 2 (Xbox One) - Review,
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