Detroit: Become Human review

Tortoises may look a lot like turtles, but if you throw one in the sea it’s not going to have a fun swim.

Likewise, while French studio Quantic Dream and writer-director David Cage have fulfilled their ambition of making a cinema-like story in game form, you may not enjoy playing Detroit: Become Human as much as you might have enjoyed watching it.

Progressing like a long interactive movie, Detroit is mercifully broken into a series of brisk chapters. It’s your job to effectively direct these scenes, making the calls to cue the next line, move to a specific spot, or pick up a prop.

But whether such a narrative-driven video game will sink or swim depends largely on the quality of the story, and unfortunately, Detroit feels like a rather cliched affair. 

Out of control

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Detroit‘s scenes can play out with all manner of explosive confrontation, fists flying and guns blazing, but how these are prompted is more about the decisions you make, narratively, than your reaction time with the X button.

Mike Diver Contributor