Beholder 2 Review

Beholder 2 is all about climbing the corporate ladder in an attempt to become the big hot shot in the office. You’re going to need to know who’s asses to kiss, and who your allies and enemies are if you wanna make it in this business. Ya know, like real life. 

Beholder 2 is an adventure game set in a totalitarian state in the 1980’s, so it’s dark and grim, which is to be expected. In case you may not know, a totalitarian government is an attempt where individual opposition to the state and its claims are completely restricted to citizens and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. So yeah, dark and grim, but back to the game. You control Evan Redgrave, son of a prominent Ministry official and newly employed department officer within the Ministry. Your mission throughout the game is to do what it takes to get to the top of the career ladder, but how exactly do you do it?

You start off by just listening to citizen concerns and filing the pertinent paperwork to refer them to the proper authorities until the opportunity arises to move onto better things. For instance, Evan can get hired by different people to do different tasks for them; from spying on your coworkers, to lying on them, the game’s entire premise is screwing anybody and everybody over. You are the only one that matters here. Everybody prays on your downfall and it’s your job to use them as stepping stones to claim your place as the boss. The dark humor is a riot in this game don’t get me wrong, it’s just there’s no moderation with it. It just gets so stale fast, and the same is true with your starter job. You listen to the citizens conversation, refer them to the officials and it’s lather, rinse and repeat.

The game loves to remind you you’re in a totalitarian society. The whole thing operates in a similar way to Papers, Please.  The game revolves around 3 main components: money, time and prestige. Each day of work has a set amount of time. Use it wisely and decide what task you want to start and/or finish. To earn money and prestige you need to complete certain mini games that actually require you to read and think. You can’t just constantly press A and expect everything to fall into place. That can actually be said for the entire game itself. I think of it less of an adventure game and more of a strategy game, if anything there’s a lot of planning and decision making. Whether you want to play the good guy role or the normalised cruel D-bag, you’re gonna wanna plan how you want to proceed with each of the actions you take. 

Graphically the game pulls off the depressing dreary look they were going for with everything getting the noir treatment, fitting the premise nicely. The game lets you freely explore the Ministry and see everything it has to offer. As you rise up the corporate ladder things begin to change around you, giving the game a refreshing coat of paint. However like all paint it begins to dry up. The music itself fits the gloomy theme as well. As I mentioned before reading is a key element in the game as all the characters mumble and grumble their words. 

Conclusion

Beholder 2 is something unique and different. It’s an easy and simple game revolving around becoming the top dog. In the beginning it’s dark humor can be pretty entertaining, but when it’s constantly forced it becomes bland. Gameplay can be the same way at times. Until you get promoted you’re pretty much doing the same thing day in and day out unless somebody has a special task for you. Until that happens though the game is pretty slow. Regardless it’s still satisfying screwing over everybody and watching as Evan gets promotion after promotion – of course, that’s only if you don’t end up with a bullet in the back of your head.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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