State of Mind - mini game review
🎮 available on all platforms, reviewed for Nintendo Switch
Price: ~15 €, discounted ~ 7 €
After enthusiastically finishing Detroit: Become Human, I picked up State of Mind on sale. It obviously doesn’t come close to the same production values, and in terms of gameplay it can feel quite shallow — especially when compared to its more famous competitor — yet it still has something to offer.
Most notably, that something is the story. It unfolds over roughly 8–10 hours of gameplay and begins in a fairly unassuming way, with Richard Nolan waking up in a hospital after a serious car accident. Richard is grumpy and arguably one of the least likable protagonists in recent years — but he has his reasons. When a second character, Adam Newman, enters the scene with a very similar car accident experience, the player may start to suspect that something isn’t quite as it seems at first glance. Before long, the narrative accelerates into a story full of ethically questionable corporate behavior, robotization, the loss of humanity, and attempts to preserve it — sometimes at any cost.
The gameplay itself is the weaker part of the experience. Most activities are limited to reading logs, combining a small number of items, and finding the single correct sequence of actions. Thanks to this stripped-down design, however, it’s difficult to get truly stuck. Dialogue choices also tend to have little impact on the outcome — at least until the very end.
As a result, the story is clearly the main driving force. It’s provocative, fairly original, and ultimately capable of confronting the player with difficult moral choices. And Richard, too, gets his chance at redemption.
Story: 8/10
Stylization: 7/10
Gameplay: 5/10
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