Twin Mirror Reviews
Twin Mirror is Dontnods first collaboration with Bandai Namco and was developed by a separate team of senior developers. It may seem unreasonable to cast blame on this diversion from its previous team, but Twin Mirror stands as a far cry from other Dontnod titles, failing in almost every degree by its unwillingness to fully commit to anything. It wants to be a classic mystery but never offers up any questions that truly need answering. Twin Mirror wants you to care about its characters but never gives you any reason to even like them. It wants so much to be about its setting but fails to even conjure up a fraction of the sense of place that Arcadia Bay achieved. Ultimately, Twin Mirror is an amalgamation of lots of half-baked ideas that become bruised and battered as they fall from the promising heights of Basswood’s nature trail. Maybe from up there, I can spot a better mystery to play through.
Twin Mirror has some elements of it that can't help but be admirable; its concept is intriguing, its voice cast is compelling, and it could have easily been the next buzzworthy photorealistic video game. But, in execution, it comes across as a dated, surface-level experience, one that isn't sure whether to be a complex character study or an open-world mystery, and is nowhere near as rewarding as the time and effort it asks you to put into it. Twin Mirror will undoubtedly find an audience of some who want to dive into its ambiguous mystery, but it's far from the most engrossing or well-executed title that video game fans could pick up right now.
Poorly written and dreary directed Twin Mirror doesn't worth a second of your time.
Review in Russian | Read full review
A narrative game that doesn't have enough time to tell the story it's trying to tell, leaving characters and plot lines feeling unfinished. Whilst it has a lot of interesting ideas and some nice mechanics, none of them feel fully realised. Twin Mirror is bursting with potential, which is why it feels so disappointing.
Between the lack of marketing leading up to its release, its poor pacing, and the thin writing and investigation mechanics, Twin Mirror smacks of a game that just wasn't given enough time. With some polish on the game's earlier moments and more thoughtful dialogue, it could have stood a real chance. Unfortunately, between the stilted narrative development, cheerless puzzles, and wooden, small-town cliches, there's less here than whatever remains of Sam's journalistic career.
Twin Mirror is a shallow, dour few hours of adventure, with only a few moments that would make it worth a curious gamer's time. Every time you find yourself trying to fall under its narrative spell, one problem or another causes the whole illusion to shatter.
There's some small-town charm to be found in Twin Mirror, but an undercooked mystery and lack of interesting characters make the trip to Basswood a rather boring one.
The game plays out like your typical DONTNOD experience with environments to rummage through and a handful of dialogue choices to make — affecting the narrative and ending in the process — with a somewhat interesting use case for the Mind Palace. Sam enters a sort of alternate reality where he can piece together crime scenes to gain a better understanding. It’s neat, but nothing you haven’t seen before in past Sherlock Holmes titles. And while one more twist provides the protagonist with a physical manifestation of his sub-conscience, it’s more annoying than helpful. The same can be said of most characters in Twin Mirror, actually.
Twin Mirror has some great ideas, including a visually and narratively appealing Mind Palace system, but the weakness of its main character and its "tell don't show" method of storytelling drag the whole endeavor down.
Whether in respect of gameplay or storytelling, the longer Twin Mirror peers at the glass the easier it is to see a pale reflection of DONTNOD’s previous work.
While Twin Mirror is Dontnod's worst game so far, it's still a somewhat enjoyable experience, especially for fans of their work. It's a game that feels like it needs a redo, because while it presents interesting concepts, it doesn't flesh out any of them.
It was a valiant effort by Dontnod, but it missed the mark. Graphically beautiful but mechanically messy, Twin Mirror is a failed attempt at a psychological thriller. The worst disappointment, however, is that the game made me want to visit Basswood, which...doesn’t exist.
Developer DONTNOD has an impressive history of creating story-rich adventures that feature a protagonist with unique abilities. In Twin Mirror, our hero is Sam Higgs; a journalist with powers of the mind. Does DONTNOD’s latest game present an intriguing mystery or is this one best left unsolved? Find out in this Rapid Review.
Even though Twin Mirror is listed as a thriller, there’s nothing really thrilling about it.
Twin Mirror ditches the episodic format and lasts roughly five hours or so. This may sound oxymoronic but it simultaneously feels too short and too long. Too short because there’s some interesting characters that feel underdeveloped. Too long because of how predictable the mystery is.
Twin Mirror has the assets of an intriguing story, but it fails to capitalize on it. The result is lackluster and doesn't present any real value to replayability.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
I wish I could give this a better rating than I did; Twin Mirror is definitely one of Dontnod's weaker efforts that I can remember. It is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Without a key mechanic to keep gameplay fresh, or even a story that's both fleshed out and well-structured, Twin Mirror fails to find any kind of hook beyond the fleeting intrigue in how it all ends.
Twin Mirror is a frustratingly uneven adventure that left me with surprisingly little to reflect on.
Twin Mirror is a passable mystery adventure with a varied cast and the occasional satisfying use of deductive reasoning but its story and protagonist leave a lot to be desired and on top of that, it's far too short.