Twin Mirror

 PC
User Score
5.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 113 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 37 out of 113
  2. Mixed: 45 out of 113
  3. Negative: 31 out of 113

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  1. AllNewSuperfake
    Dec 2, 2020
    7
    Imagine "Deadly Premonition", with the same kind of small town archetypes and a very similar hero. And now take out all of the goofiness, the jokes, the comedy, the collectables and the wonky car. And replace it with the boring dystopia that it would be in reality, and what Francis York and Zack would look like if they grew up in that reality, starting with the medication they would haveImagine "Deadly Premonition", with the same kind of small town archetypes and a very similar hero. And now take out all of the goofiness, the jokes, the comedy, the collectables and the wonky car. And replace it with the boring dystopia that it would be in reality, and what Francis York and Zack would look like if they grew up in that reality, starting with the medication they would have to take.

    Yeah, this won't be for everyone, and you will have to be in the mood. A lot of people will just be plain bored or disappointed because they expected a murder mystery you solve with superpowers, but that's really just the cover of this book.

    Don't expect a technical marvel, but it's polished, well-designed and with only few exceptions has exactly the right pacing and playtime. But I don't think that the motivations, symbolism and themes are as relateable and accessible to everyone like in Dontnod's other games. Which is one underlying theme of the game, right along with the conclusion that you shouldn't take it personal.    … Expand
  2. ujicadusy
    Dec 8, 2020
    5
    My expectations are my problems. I wanted a game at the LIS level, but I got a game with intrigue from a cheap TV series. The game is very short, but that's good. There is no point in wasting your time on it. I do not advise.
  3. philzlz
    Mar 18, 2021
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. While visually pleasing the games story was very disappointing. Are we really supposed to believe there is this huge drug ring in such a small town? Why does the main character burn the wood carvings in homeless shelter if he can just sneak around the forest and get close to the trailer? Dontnods games are slowly getting worse, they need to focus on the story and characters again.… Expand
  4. m1asmatic
    Feb 19, 2021
    7
    Solid 7/10. Nice story, town and characters. Background as well. Gameplay is simple, as in all games like that. IMO game is too short and detective part could be more complex and intriguing, but anyway, i enjoyed it. So if u are fan of Dontnod games and wanna spend 2-3 evenings, buy it. Simple but charming detective story in lovely small town.
  5. SethGrey
    Dec 3, 2020
    6
    Although tad predictable, the story's enjoyable. It's visually beautiful but with subpar facial animations and couple of visual glitches but nothing game breaking.

    It sometimes looks like Control in some scenes, which is the only notable thing about it. Voice acting is forgettable. Soundtrack is unexceptional unlike Life is Strange by the same developer which is one of the things that    Although tad predictable, the story's enjoyable. It's visually beautiful but with subpar facial animations and couple of visual glitches but nothing game breaking.

    It sometimes looks like Control in some scenes, which is the only notable thing about it. Voice acting is forgettable. Soundtrack is unexceptional unlike Life is Strange by the same developer which is one of the things that elevated the franchise from good to great.

    Overall it's not their best work and you can get better interactive games for similar price (Dark Picture Anthology), I'd recommend waiting for a sale.

    6.5/10.    … Expand
  6. snoozey
    Dec 16, 2020
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The only Dontnod game I haven't played is Remember Me. I have played the Life is Strange series and I have played Vampyr. I'm part of the niche who loved and enjoyed Vampyr despite its undeniable performance issues. But this game, as flawlessly as it runs, is tragic.

    The setting is gorgeous. The lore of the town and the personalities of the townies really makes for some great atmosphere. I like that you can interact with some townies and sometimes they tell you about themselves or about the town. The visuals aren't triple-A quality but you don't play a Dontnod game for graphics. I'll get back to that later.

    I am writing this review after finding out that my save file was corrupt and I lost two and a half hours of progress. That might not seem so bad, right? Nope. It's bad. Dontnod has this unnecessarily stupid "feature" where you can't skip dialogue until your second playthrough (I'm going to be saying "unskippable dialogue" a lot to drill it into everyone's heads because this is a real "feature" in the game. The fact that you CAN skip dialogue in your second playthrough makes it a feature.) That alone should be part of your "pros and cons" list when thinking of purchasing this game or any Dontnod games. I see a lot of good reviews praising it for its aesthetic and story and I see a lot of bad reviews just saying the game is boring. All of those are very valid, but they don't really tell you what you're getting into with gameplay.

    Back to unskippable dialogue. Unskippable dialogue wasn't a problem in the Life is Strange series as I found the characters and stories interesting and compelling, but Twin Mirror is not all that compelling. The plot seems dry. The main character is as bland as an improperly seasoned potato salad. The only good characters become annoying because of the unskippable dialogue issue.

    I do want to solve the mystery in the game and finish it. I am a Dontnod fan and that's why I'll put up with it. But that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the flaws in the game or just pan it. Perhaps by the end of the game, my thoughts about the plot will change, but I'm not looking forward to having to put up with waves and waves of melodrama. Melodrama doesn't add much to the plot and doesn't hit me in the feels. I cannot relate to Sam (the character you play). He is probably the second most annoying character aside from Bug.

    Before I dive deep into my issues with Bug's character let me make some things clear. The Life is Strange series was written by (as credited on Wiki) Christian Divine and Jean-Luc Cano with Zak Garriss writing for the spin-off Before the Storm. Tell Me Why was written by Stéphane Beauverger and Morgan Lockhart. I have no idea who wrote Vampyr as Dontnod was also working with another developer for that game. But what I can tell you about Twin Mirror's lead writer, Matthew Ritter, is that he (or his team of writers) did not know how to write a character like Bug.

    Bug is a preteen who has lost her father and has a mother who neglects her. She's supposed to be like Sam in the sense that she's intelligent and is a complete loner. But Bug lacks intellectual nuance. She is just a trope that is part of the game and is used as a way to show more facets of Sam.

    Foil characters are not uncommon in books, shows, movies, and games, but the fact that Sam has so many and none of them make him any more interesting or sympathetic is just bad. What's worse is that the writers made those foil characters unbelievably annoying and not widely relatable. I said widely because subjectiveness plays into what is or isn't relatable.

    Anyway, the character writing in this game is shot to **** because it's just bad writing. I have no idea why they wrote the characters the way they did. I don't know if the gameplay concept of Sam's inner-self came before or after the story, but something was compromised because for a fact no writer (or writers) wants to write a lackluster story. Especially considering (and as I said early I'd get back to this) the fact that Dontnod games are all about storytelling.    … Expand
  7. runner
    Aug 14, 2021
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The first DONTNOD game I've played was their very first release (I think) Remember Me, which I greatly enjoyed, and felt the narrative was pretty strong as well. I got Life is Strange on presale, something which I almost never do, and didn't regret it. DONTNOD indeed built a reputation of a storytelling empire of a sort, but having tried recently their Vampyr and Twin Mirror - I'm not sure the recent titles up to the task.
    I've purchased Twin Mirror some time after release thanks to an Epic coupon, I've already seen it got average reviews but the trailer really got me and it all seemed pretty interesting.

    I'll start by saying I think the graphics are stunning, perhaps excluding the character models - Twin Mirror's surroundings look incredible and it was very eye-pleasing to explore the various environments, especially the "Mind Palace", which is a sort of alternative realm inside our protagonist's mind, I thought it looked very elegant and beautiful, especially on the very last stages of the game.

    Unfortunately, the rest is simply not as good. The general story was OK, but the characters were mediocre at best, down to annoying or simply redundant. The dialogues felt really dull and awkward at times, not to mention incredibly unbelievable.
    What bothered me most is that towards the end there's some extensive "traveling though our hero's mind" section where he sort of confronts his alter-ego and we get some weird revelations of his childhood, etc.. This whole part felt like having a great potential, yet it felt completely irrelevant to the big picture, very sudden and misplaced, and also led to the conclusion and last scenes of the game - which also made me realize how short this game was!

    Gameplay consists mostly of going around and talking to people, this got slightly the Life is Strange touch to it, and it wasn't completely bad, but LIS somehow still felt like it had more depth and substance to it, while in here it felt like the game is reduced to walking simulator, most of the time.
    The additional "gameplay" layer in this case is some sort of investigation-mode where you need to gather clues and reconstruct some past scenes, or alternatively diagnose a present scene to determine what to do next. While I personally actually enjoyed this scenes (they kind of reminded me the memory-alteration scenes from Remember Me, which I quite enjoyed), I feel like they failed to add that much substance to the game and that many players would find them boring. It also felt like they weren't such a major part of the game as I'd like.

    Of course, the 'choices matter' gimmick is still here, not surprisingly the game itself is mostly linear and the choices matter very little throughout. The strategy here is that most of the "consequences" of your choices are seen only in the "epilogue-ish" scenes. While this is not done too badly, this feels a bit cheap and some artificial way to just make you feel like you're making important choices.

    I actually felt the variety of endings was impressive enough. Of course, it all comes down to the very final choices you make at the very last stages of the game, but there are actually about 5 different scenarios which may play out, with even a slightly different gameplay, depending on some of your very last choices. I think, for once, this was actually done well.
    The down side of course, was that I had very little motivation to go through the slow scenes once again WITHOUT ANY OPTION TO SKIP DIALOGUES, and to figure out the rest of the endings.
    I preferred just watching the whole thing on Youtube and appreciating it through someone else's efforts..

    All in all, I'm not regretting for playing (and paying..) this game, and while it's not completely bad, this is far from DONTNOT's best work.
    I do think this is vary ambitious to make games like this nowadays, so I'm still appreciating their works and I still have a lot of faith in DONTNOD, and hoping that their next titles would be a little more on track of their earlier releases.    … Expand
  8. tdl
    Jan 24, 2021
    5
    It's your typical stereotypical story about a run down town and a whodunnit but it feels very mediocre. The mechanics of the mind palace and imaginary friend seem to just be there to hide the fact its a very boring story.

    Where's the challenge? The only real puzzle you are going to come up against in this game is the fishing bag lock and even the solution is mere feet away from you!    It's your typical stereotypical story about a run down town and a whodunnit but it feels very mediocre. The mechanics of the mind palace and imaginary friend seem to just be there to hide the fact its a very boring story.

    Where's the challenge? The only real puzzle you are going to come up against in this game is the fishing bag lock and even the solution is mere feet away from you!

    The cinematic direction is nice but without a challenge or a substantive story whats the point? It's one of those games where you know what's going to happen even before it happens. It's that predictable of a plot.

    Boring start. Anticlimactic end and very forgettable characters. And to think this game from the same makers as Life is Strange? Don't buy at full price but maybe play it when its on sale as its competent enough to keep you occupied for a few hours at least.    … Expand
  9. gameking
    Dec 13, 2022
    5
    This is a not feels like a game. It is like a movie. You can't do almost anything. Just walk and click things. The story is very basic and some scenes are tooo long.
  10. Mehrshad_MB
    Jan 10, 2022
    7
    First of all the game has changed a lot since first trailer and I'm really glad they changed it!
    Twin Mirror probably has the best graphics and character design amongst the games I've played. The game was incredibly optimized for this level of graphics and it's really admirable.
    Great story, perfect music, beautiful environment, details that every single character... all of them were    First of all the game has changed a lot since first trailer and I'm really glad they changed it!
    Twin Mirror probably has the best graphics and character design amongst the games I've played. The game was incredibly optimized for this level of graphics and it's really admirable.
    Great story, perfect music, beautiful environment, details that every single character... all of them were excellent. Though I can't say the same for gameplay; it was just another walking simulator. Specially a 'slow-paced walking' simulator!
    Some choices did affect the ending but most of them were simply a choice-illusion.
    Endings could be better; Actually the ending I got was very disappointing. Whole the game's point was to discover who's behind all this, and when we finally discovered (guessable from the beginning), everything ended with a single cutscene!
    At last I have to say that it's a good game and definitely an under-rated one.
    (December 2021 - January 2022)    … Expand
  11. watchm824
    Jun 8, 2021
    6
    The game is a little boring and has little freedom of action. But if you like the genre of interactive films, then it's worth playing.
  12. Bloodnes
    Jan 20, 2021
    7
    Отличная игра, сюжет простоват и раздут, но пройти игру можно, 7/10
  13. Kioy
    Jun 16, 2022
    7
    Very short game and the main character and story was a bit bland, hopefully next time will be better
  14. rhrj
    Oct 3, 2022
    5
    it's an alright game I think too average though so nothing really good or bad about it

Awards & Rankings

85
#85 Most Discussed PC Game of 2020

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
65

Mixed or average reviews - based on 51 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 51
  2. Mixed: 36 out of 51
  3. Negative: 3 out of 51
  1. CD-Action
    Jul 23, 2021
    65
    Those who played Life Is Strange will surely feel similar vibes in Dontnod’s latest release. However, this game has even more sluggish pace and although I enjoyed reconstructing events in the mind palace, I was annoyed with the fact that I had to find every single piece of a puzzle even if the solution was already obvious. The story is decent, but some of its potential was wasted and the characters are not as well-written as in Dontnod’s previous games. [02/2021, p.32]
  2. Riot Pixels
    Apr 1, 2021
    59
    A lackluster detective story which has nothing to hook you with is not what I was expecting from Dontnod Entertainment.
    Read full review
  3. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Feb 17, 2021
    70
    In all aspects it’s a run-of-the-mill adventure game, but there’s one thing to be said for it: it’s not a pamphlet. For once, Dontnod stopped talking about politics and focused on making a detective game. [Issue#251, p.58]
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