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Beholder: Blissful Sleep
By Neilie Johnson,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Prequel strategy has more moral choice, little new content.
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Beholder: Blissful Sleep
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What’s It About?
BEHOLDER: BLISSFUL SLEEP functions as a prequel to its base game, Beholder, and tells the story of Hector Medina, the first apartment building manager (the poor schmo being arrested at the start of Beholder). While the base game's focus was spying on tenants and deciding whether or not to report their activities to the authorities, Blissful Sleep focuses on a euphemistically named government policy that dictates citizens be exterminated once they turn 85. Gameplay still involves talking to and spying on tenants, but from the moment Hector receives his notice, that takes a back seat to trying not to die.
Is It Any Good?
This prequel features the same mix of cynicism and black humor as Beholder, but gameplay changes add little new content to this tale. The spying aspect is de-emphasized here, and gameplay is structured so that talking to people is more important than watching them. Rarely are you required to gather information on anyone, so your role as government stooge is seriously downplayed. Because of this, the tenant melodrama is harder to focus on. Much as you might want to help people, it's hard to find time when you're mere days away from being dragged to that big government waiting room in the sky. As a result, you're bound to fail a lot of timed missions and cause a lot of people a lot of suffering. If you have any compassion at all, that's not easy to face. Difficult moral choices still abound: Do I help a family avoid persecution or turn them in? Do I make money selling bootleg medicine, even if it makes people sick? The ending changes according to those choices. Though the expansion seems free of the base game's technical issues, the timer aspect combined with obscure mission solutions often makes it feel like you're fighting a losing battle. That, along with minimal new content, makes Beholder: Blissful Sleep feel less like a meaningful expansion and more like a slightly modified version of the base game.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the morality of government. Does might always make right?
Discuss what you'd do if a friend or neighbor was being persecuted. Would you step in, or would you protect yourself? Why?
Game Details
- Platforms: Mac , Windows
- Pricing structure: Paid
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: Alawar Entertainment
- Release date: May 18, 2017
- Genre: Strategy
- ESRB rating: T for Cartoon Violence, Blood, References to Drugs and Alcohol, Crude Humor
- Last updated: August 4, 2017
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