Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness, PS4 review: More visual novel than game
NIS America - PS4/Vita/Xbox One - £34.99
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If you're looking for a game that will leave you on the edge of your seat with head-scratching puzzles and adrenalin-infused action, then Psycho-Pass is going to drive you crazy. This is less a game and more of a visual novel, during which you'll spend most of your time tapping the same button over and over as you read each chunk of text.
You really do need to be a fan of the 2012 anime series Psycho-Pass otherwise you'll feel lost right from the start. The game drops you in a dystopian future Japan where criminals are caught before they've even committed a crime and it asks you to control Inspector Nadeshiko Kugatachi or Enforcer Takuma Tsurugi in solving a series of cases.
Yet because you're primarily watching the drama unfold through a series of still images and static characters, your involvement is confined to making decisions. It's all rather frustrating for newcomers given the unfulfilled potential for getting stuck into some action. In that sense, it is one that's very much for fans of the series.
One of the problems is that it takes far too long to get going. It can be at least an hour-and-a-half before you feel you're getting into the swing of the story and understanding the characters. It's a bombardment of information that can feel tiring and dull. The translation from Japanese is often clumsy and the phrases hackneyed.
But when it clicks, it's enlightening, leading you to think and question. You'll be considering ethical questions and steering the story down different paths, experimenting with how things will eventually play out although it's not always clear what effect you've had. Even so it's varied and emotional and, surprisingly given that start, a game you can replay and gain value from.
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