State of Mind Review
Your name is Richard Nolan, a big time reporter for a media giant called The Voice. You have just regained consciousness to find yourself in the hospital. You were in a bad car accident and now have selective amnesia. Once the doctor discharges you you go straight to your apartment to see your wife and kid, but no one seems to be at home. This is really where a story full of twists, turns, conspiracies, cover ups, and more begins.
In State of Mind you’re going to be controlling several different characters. The main two you’ll be in control of are Richard Nolan, and Adam Newman. These two individuals’ lives are more than a little bit connected. While controlling the different characters you will be moving around from place to place investigating where Richard’s family has disappeared to and what are Adam’s true connections to Richard.
The only combat you’ll find in this game is through the use of verbal sparring. Your choices in dialogue will either hinder your investigations or will allow you to uncover secrets that people will kill to keep hidden. The deeper you go into the game the bigger the conspiracy gets. Will you be able to survive in the end? Will your choices throughout the game bring you closure or leave you broken?
The thing is that this game definitely takes some time to get into. I’ve seen many people’s reviews out there talking about how they wanted to play the game but the beginning turned them off from playing the rest of the game. I can definitely see that, the beginning of the game where they are trying to set everything up is no where close to being smooth. Once you get over that initial hurdle you can definitely find the rhythm of the game, and you’ll be drawn into trying to find out what exactly is going on.
I really enjoyed the voice acting in this game, I thought you could actually feel the emotions or lack there of, depending on the character. The art style took some time to get used to, and to be honest I still wasn’t completely on board with it in the end. All characters have this rough polygon look to them, which in certain scenes made the characters really look wrong (I know there’s probably a better way to describe it, but that’s really how it felt to me).
When I did get over that hurdle I definitely knew I had to get through the whole game. There were some difficult parts in the game for me, mostly they had to do with characters. They weren’t poorly designed or anything, but I definitely wanted to punch them in the face for their actions or point of view. If you can get that type of reaction out of a player, I think you’re headed in the right direction. Sure I hated, no wait LOATHED, some of the players by the end, but that didn’t stop me from seeing it out to the end. This game does have different endings to it, but I’m not sure if I would ever want to replay this game. Personally this was a game that I played through once, and I’m satisfied with how it ended.
This is definitely a game that some will try, but few will actually hang in for the entire ride. It’s that beginning part that seems so disjointed and is all over the place trying to fill you in with story but at the same time not giving enough context to figure out who you’re talking to or what you’re actually supposed to do. I personally enjoyed how the game turned out, but as I stated above, this was a one time play through type of game for me.