End of June Update

Twin Mirror is a Don't Nod game (Life is Strange, Tell Me Why)  that takes place in another small town called Basswood. You play an anti-social ex journalist named Sam Higgs. Sam is called back to his old town after the death of his close friend and he soon starts to suspect that everything in Basswood is not what it seems. 

Twin Mirror was…. average. I loved the concept, but not the execution. The protagonist is a journalist who is a bit of a misanthrope. He's highly intelligent, but he doesn't get along with others. The catch is, he has another version. of himself, his double, who has a lot of empathy. Throughout the game, you can choose to listen to your double, or make your own choices. 
 
Like I said, really fascinating concept, but the game itself is very bland. The story isn't very exciting. It never really builds into something bigger. There were no hard hitting or emotional moments. The characters are also kind of boring and your other persona isn't very likable..  I thought there would be more emotional moments involving the other Sam, or even moments that allow you to grow attached to him. There isn't. I didn't like either version of Sam really. 

Most of the gameplay is you "investigating" crime scenes. You do not have free rein to investigate as you want. It involves walking around until you find every object you can interact with. After interacting with all of the found evidence, you have to piece together the crime scene. It gives you multiple choices scenarios and you just keep clicking on them until it tells you that you got the correct one. It's impossible to get it wrong because the game forces you to keep trying until its correct. I got stuck at times trying to find a piece of evidence I didn't interact with, or trying to understand the vagueness of the scene (talking about the camp scene. If you know you know)

As far as choices go, most don't matter. Towards the end they matter more. There is (minor spoiler) one choice in the game that decides almost the entire ending… and they make it very vague. The character is supposed to know what the choice means, but the player (me) has so many questions. They didn't explain it well at all. I ended up watching the opposite ending on youtube to get the full story. I suggest playing the ending again or watching the other ending because seeing both improves the game. 

Overall, Twin Mirror isn't terrible. Just disappointing. I'm a big fan of these cinematic choice games. This one will unfortunately just get lost in the mix of avarage choice based walking simulators. There were some things the game did a great job at. The small town feel was spot on. It felt like a proper detective story (even if he's not a detective.) You being able to choose how the story ends is nice. Plus the voice acting was very believable. I think the worst part was the gameplay. Not just because it's a story heavy game. I washed dishes and did chores in Detroit: Become Human and didn't have a problem. Twin Mirror just lacks that spark of originality that compensates for the lack of good gameplay.

Overall, I would recommend this one on a steep sale, or maybe just skip it. If you already have it then give it a shot. It's a very short game. As long as these games keep coming out, i'll keep playing them.  

Steam Deck Compatibility: This game is verified on the Steam Deck and it worked great. I had no issues.