Twin Mirror is the latest from Dontnod Studios, best known for the critically acclaimed Life Is Strange series. Instead of dealing with angsty teenagers this time, the mood here is definitely more adult but carries the aesthetics of the Life Is Strange series. You are Sam Higgs, a reporter returning to West Virginia after the death of his close friend. Like Arcadia Bay before it, the small town has secrets and it will be your job to ferret them out while coping with Sam’s crumbling mental state. This is our review of Twin Mirror for the PC.
Unlike Max Caulfield in Life Is Strange’s first season, Sam doesn’t have superpowers but he does have a rather sinister double that he engages with throughout the game. He also retreats into his crystalline mind palace from time to time, where he can relive past memories and has something of inner life. The citizens of Basswood, West Virginia are generally hostile and resentful due to an article he published sometime before the beginning of the game about the local mining industry. Soon Sam begins to realize there’s more to his friend’s death than what initially appears.
All of this should be a setup for something intriguing, but I found it hard to immerse myself in the story. I didn’t find the story particularly gripping and interacting with the world around me was tedious; you often have to hold down buttons for a long time to interact with the environment and progress the story along. The gameplay is sluggish and I found myself putting it down in frustration more than once. The plot, such as it is, doesn’t have what makes the Life Is Strange series so gripping: well-developed characters that we genuinely care about. It’s doubly disappointing because I genuinely love most of what Dontnod puts out as a studio and I’m sad to say I can’t really recommend this game. A copy of this game was provided by the publisher.
