- Again, Blissful Sleep is inexpensive, and Beholder 's core mechanics are solid enough that I enjoyed having an excuse to return to the game. But despite how rich the concept is, this DLC does frustratingly little to expand on the groundwork. It's just more of the same. Rating: 6.5 out of 10.
- Beholder - Blissful Sleep This content requires the base game Beholder on Steam in order to play.
- Beholder Blissful Sleep Review
- Beholder Blissful Sleep Achievements
- Beholder Blissful Sleep Walkthrough
Mehr Leben Der Anderen
Beholder - Blissful Sleep This content requires the base game Beholder on Steam in order to play. The Ministry of Introductions is honored to introduce Hector, the ex-landlord succeeded by Carl Shteyn. Beholder, where ordinary people struggle to survive while subjected to the directives of an iron-fisted Government! The time has come to tell the stories of: the one who has fallen a victim to a horrifying mistake, and is now desperately seeking for salvation; the ones who broke the law to find happiness and are now facing the consequences.
HIGH Finally catching that damn housewife leaving her apartment.
LOW The bizarre lack of urgency in Hector's plight.
WTF The English translation, once again.
Beholder was one of the more pleasantly surprising indies that I played last year, a game of domestic espionage that shined a light on the pressures that well-meaning people face under authoritarian regimes. I remember wishing that Beholder had more replay value, and to my surprise, developer Warm Lamp Games has committed to supporting it post-launch, having just released the title's first DLC, Blissful Sleep.
Any inquiring minds that would like to know more about the base game – which I very much recommend – can read my review. In this review, I'll only be discussing what's new in the DLC… Or, at least, that was the plan. It turns out that Blissful Sleep offers nothing that we didn't see in the main campaign. It features no new mechanics or twists on the formula, and it's even set in the same apartment building from the core game and stars the landlord that former protagonist Carl replaced. It's a pure rehash, in other words, its only distinction being that it's considerably shorter than the original campaign was.
The setup is that our East Germany lookalike of a government has begun executing citizens when they reach the age of 85 as a means of sparing the country from healthcare costs once older folks, as the authorities argue, can no longer contribute to society. Our new landlord, Hector, is mistakenly believed to have reached that age, and therefore has two weeks to solve the issue before the Not Stasi come to collect him.
Players are running on a tighter schedule this time around. Two weeks only translates to two or three in-game hours, and the funds we're expected to accumulate in that period – all while maintaining a pleasant living atmosphere and spying on all of Hector's tenants for the government – are mountainous. Blissful Sleep does have a 'happy' ending, i.e. one in which Hector survives. But, as with the core game, it's unlikely that anyone will earn it without stealing, blackmailing, and altogether ruining the existence of others.
While the shorter time limit does add to the tension, much of it was undone by the simple fact that I already mastered these systems last year. Blissful Sleep's inability to offer any new surprises, either in the form of obstacles or interesting characters, makes the package feel like little more than an extra difficulty mode.
I also just didn't feel particularly engaged with Hector as a sympathetic figure. Part of it is the fact that he has no family to care for. 'Success' had numerous definitions in Beholder's main campaign, as it was possible for some of Carl's relatives to die even if he ultimately escaped. In Blissful Sleep, there's less urgency because the outcomes are so black-and-white. Either Hector lives or he doesn't.
There's also the fact that we spend so little time with him. Blissful Sleep isn't necessarily a terrible value proposition – it only costs a few bucks – but I'd almost rather have seen a pricier, more in-depth new story.
Finally, the vanilla game's one major flaw, its hideous English translation, still hasn't been rectified. I can tolerate a missing apostrophe here or there, but it's pretty infuriating when I'm fined for incorrectly profiling a male character as female when the game explicitly refers to him as 'her.'
Again, Blissful Sleep is inexpensive, and Beholder's core mechanics are solid enough that I enjoyed having an excuse to return to the game. But despite how rich the concept is, this DLC does frustratingly little to expand on the groundwork. It's just… more of the same. Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Warm Lamp Games and published by Alawar Entertainment. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately three hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated Teen and contains violence, blood, drug reference, crude humor and use of alcohol. There's no explicit content in the game, though thematically it deals with a lot of dark material – domestic violence, demands for sexual favors, government-sanctioned murder, and so forth.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: For whatever reason, the DLC's opening cutscene isn't subtitled, though all of its important information is then relayed through in-game dialog. Otherwise, everything's written and sound cues play no significant role.
Remappable Controls: Only the game's camera controls are remappable.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.
Mike Suskie
He was born and raised in Amish country and has yet to escape, despite a brief stint in Philadelphia, where he attended Temple University. He took a one-credit course there called 'Career Opportunities for English Majors,' which painted a bleak picture for prospective writers. Mike remains steadfast in his ongoing role as a video game critic, however, and has recently written for GamesRadar. Most of his work can be found on HonestGamers, where he has contributed over 200 reviews to date.
When not playing games or writing about them, Mike is a rabid indie music fan and ardent concertgoer. He doesn't read as much as he probably should, but his current favorite author is Alastair Reynolds.
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Beholder is a fairly unique game that draws constant comparisons to a game similar in vein- Papers, Please. In this game you are presented an incredibly depressing, dystopian environment where your character has to make difficult decisions that tend to hurt other people for the sake of your character's safety and that of his family. You play as Carl, the new manager of an apartment complex run by a totalitarian state. Carl and his family move into the basement of this apartment complex, and Carl is also given experimental drugs that suppress his need for sleep so that he can monitor the occupants of the apartment complex constantly, reporting any infractions and doing all that is required of him by the Ministry of Allocation. So, will Beholder acquire your means of production, or should you save your dollars and watch the iron curtain fall? Let's find out.
Beholder is a type of management simulation game: As Carl, you will accomplish tasks assigned to you by the Ministry, almost universally dealing with observing your tenants, and complete reports to send in for rewards. Observation is done quite simply: You can speak to the tenant to try and get information out of them, plant cameras in their apartments to be able to see what they're doing, dig through their belongings, etc… Of course, doing the latter while the tenant comes back to their residence may wind up with them losing faith in you, potentially causing issues down the line.
There is a tutorial, thankfully, in Beholder, and the game starts off relatively slowly and giving you plenty of time. A particular residence is suspected of trafficking drugs, so you're tasked with installing security cameras in common areas and in his apartment, and are to notify the Ministry when you see the illegal action occurring. The police come by, arrest him, and you receive your reward. This is among the few simple choices in the game- as many are wrapped in moral dilemmas, such as evicting or arresting a relatively upstanding couple for something simple or going through an elaborate plan to help them leave the country as fortune has really turned its back on them.
Notwithstanding, there aren't just missions from the Ministry that you have to worry about. The tenants each have their own requests for you to do. Some are simple, some may leave you in a worse position than before you tried if you didn't find the right solution ahead of time (one that's fairly early on is a request that may rob you of $300 if you make the wrong choices, and this is during a time of the game when money is extremely tight due to other requests). Some choices, if ignored or not completed in time, will result in the arrest or death of a tenant or family member that could have otherwise helped you further in the story.
Each mission or request in Beholder has a time limit, usually a number of hours. The game starts off with easy to complete requests that you can take your time in fulfilling, but you'll eventually reach a state where you're given so many requests at once that you have to choose between shielding a tenant from the grip of an obviously tyrannical government, stealing all of their belongings in order to pay off your child's hefty medical bills before it's too late. Depending on how quickly or slowly you complete certain tasks, you may wind up being in a nearly unwinnable game state by a series of poor choices.
[amazon asin=B01NGUKCA4&text=Come stay in Beholder's murky world with a copy from Amazon!]
The main difference between Beholder and games like Papers, Please is that Beholder largely acquires its difficulty from time pressure and multitasking- a vast majority of the time you're being pulled in several directions at once. Sometimes events may crop up, without warning, that are nearly sheer cliffs in terms of difficulty spikes (one, in particular, requires an exorbitant amount of cash so high that unless you played nearly perfectly, you won't have the cash or the proper way to circumvent the cost). These events are largely what shapes the replayability, as you'll always know that you could do better if you can't complete that one event and save that person in the building.
As the building manager, it's Carl's job to handle fixing up apartments when tenants move out, repair various furniture and appliances around the building, and more. If time is ticking down on a task that you haven't yet completed (such as evicting a specific tenant) and you can't find that they've done anything illegal, you can always purchase illegal paraphernalia and hide it in with their belongings. As a totalitarian state tends to do, random things will be declared illegal throughout the game that, if found, can be used to incriminate tenants if you want to blackmail them or get a reward from the Ministry. The things that are made illegal are truly random from a player's perspective- apples, even crying are made illegal at one point or another in the game. Due to this, players are given quite a bit of leeway in how to accomplish tasks.
The first thing players should notice when starting up Beholder is that the game is visually striking: The graphics aren't particularly impressive, but every character is a shadowed, nigh-featureless figure that still allows you to recognize which character is which through high contrast use of negative space. Shing digital deluxe edition download for pc. The visuals lend to the dystopian atmosphere very well, as the apartment complex itself always appears dreary… almost dire in appearance. The music pairs with this quite well, reaching dramatic swells when you're caught sneaking into a tenant's abode or when police arrive to arrest a tenant. Characters speak in a low-tone sort of babble, similar to how characters communicate in games like Banjo Kazooie. While it's not as engaging as voiced dialogue, it's significantly better than silence and still fits with the cartoonish themes of the game.
The Blissful Sleep DLC is a short little expansion to the game that offers more of the same. You play as Hector, the building manager who came before Carl, and the DLC sheds some more light on the individual stories of quite a number of the tenants, as well as the totalitarian state. It takes maybe four hours to get through, which is perfectly reasonable for a $4 expansion.
[amazon asin=B01NGUKCA4&text=Come stay in Beholder's murky world with a copy from Amazon!]
The main difference between Beholder and games like Papers, Please is that Beholder largely acquires its difficulty from time pressure and multitasking- a vast majority of the time you're being pulled in several directions at once. Sometimes events may crop up, without warning, that are nearly sheer cliffs in terms of difficulty spikes (one, in particular, requires an exorbitant amount of cash so high that unless you played nearly perfectly, you won't have the cash or the proper way to circumvent the cost). These events are largely what shapes the replayability, as you'll always know that you could do better if you can't complete that one event and save that person in the building.
As the building manager, it's Carl's job to handle fixing up apartments when tenants move out, repair various furniture and appliances around the building, and more. If time is ticking down on a task that you haven't yet completed (such as evicting a specific tenant) and you can't find that they've done anything illegal, you can always purchase illegal paraphernalia and hide it in with their belongings. As a totalitarian state tends to do, random things will be declared illegal throughout the game that, if found, can be used to incriminate tenants if you want to blackmail them or get a reward from the Ministry. The things that are made illegal are truly random from a player's perspective- apples, even crying are made illegal at one point or another in the game. Due to this, players are given quite a bit of leeway in how to accomplish tasks.
The first thing players should notice when starting up Beholder is that the game is visually striking: The graphics aren't particularly impressive, but every character is a shadowed, nigh-featureless figure that still allows you to recognize which character is which through high contrast use of negative space. Shing digital deluxe edition download for pc. The visuals lend to the dystopian atmosphere very well, as the apartment complex itself always appears dreary… almost dire in appearance. The music pairs with this quite well, reaching dramatic swells when you're caught sneaking into a tenant's abode or when police arrive to arrest a tenant. Characters speak in a low-tone sort of babble, similar to how characters communicate in games like Banjo Kazooie. While it's not as engaging as voiced dialogue, it's significantly better than silence and still fits with the cartoonish themes of the game.
The Blissful Sleep DLC is a short little expansion to the game that offers more of the same. You play as Hector, the building manager who came before Carl, and the DLC sheds some more light on the individual stories of quite a number of the tenants, as well as the totalitarian state. It takes maybe four hours to get through, which is perfectly reasonable for a $4 expansion.
Overall, Beholder is a very entertaining game with excellent use of atmosphere and visuals to evoke a very dismal feel, and aggressive time management mechanics and multitasking to always keep the player busy doing a variety of tasks. Due to the level of flexibility players have in reaching goals and the sheer level of difficulty in handling certain tasks within the time limit, multiple playthroughs may be needed to fully experience all of Beholder's content. Those who enjoy simulation games that repeatedly apply pressure on the player through time limits and moral quandaries will appreciate Beholder, while those looking for an action game or something more relaxing may want to try a different type of simulation style game.
Beholder Blissful Sleep Review
Developers: Warm Lamp Games
Platforms: PC, Steam OS
Beholder Blissful Sleep Achievements
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