so I thought this game sucked. more on that in a minute. here's what I thought was cool:
- it's pretty good looking with the expected amount of jankiness in control/facial expressions
- the story is at least initially interesting
- the qtes and the controller sound is pretty novel. the qtes are also fast (except for aiming ones).
- collectibles actually add to the game and story (and even affect some of the outcomes of the game). way better than filler. as I discovered this morning though it is literally painful to have to sit back through all of the dialog to pick up ones that I missed.
So I know that a bunch of people really liked this game and I have no problem being in the minority. Maybe it's really great and just not for me. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't even stack up with the walking dead s1 from telltale. Here are a couple of the major problems I had:
- no redeeming characters - why make a story driven game where everyone is entirely unlikable? from the onset with the 'prank' you know it's going to be like this and I guess that it's supposed to follow in the vein of a slasher/horror movie but outside of that cheerleader from heroes (who is absent for a lot of the game) the characters are completely obnoxious. no fun playing them.
- the illusion of choice/danger - once I discovered that the saw scene with josh/ashley was rigged I started just blowing off a lot of qtes and choices because so few of them actually matter. you can miss a bunch of the button prompts and still survive with no impact on the outcome. climb or jump? doesn't matter, it just seems to change the difficulty of qte (I'll admit I never failed a climbing qte so I don't know if you die or just have to start over). around chapter 8 I went to the trophy guide to figure out the steps to kill everyone and while there's probably more options than listed there, it's not nearly as easy as it should be to kill everyone given the presentation of 'danger at every step.'
As a manner of combining those two points, if you choose to shoot ashley with chris during the psycho's second 'test' - ashley doesn't seem to be the least bit bothered with chris's decision... until he's in mortal danger and then suddenly she's all like '

him, let him get torn apart'. if you choose to shoot emily with mike? sam is totally put off ... for about 5 minutes of that chapter and then the two of them are yukking it up in the mines like best pals. I get that making a choice have lasting consequences and different behaviors is probably really hard - but then
don't make such a big deal about your amazing butterfly effect system unless you can bridge that gap.
I did like the psychosis of josh and the general story of how it worked through that - even the weirdness of the therapist and how the room kept changing was a nice touch (although goddammit all of the interactivity in therapy seemed to have zero impact on the story too making it a big ol waste of time). the wendigo thing was ridiculous and funny and confusing (anyone that wants to clarify this feel free - there was a cave in at the mines and miners died? or did they go to the nuthouse and get experimented on? or did they eat each other in the mines thus triggering the cannibal curse of the mountain turning them in to wendigos? and why was josh's sister a wendigo? did she eat someone?)
Anyhoo, I might re-borrow it from the library in a couple weeks just to do the 'save everyone' trophies and finish up the plat. I still prefer heavy rain/the walking dead.