6) Beyond: Two Souls – 2013
Estimated cost: $27,000,000
I would imagine that a large portion of this vast, vast amount of money went on Ellen Page’s salary. And then, whatever David Cage had left over he gave to Willem Dafoe – because surely no money was spent on actually writing this turgid abomination. I’ve written before – at some length – of my hatred for this game, and finding out that Sony gave Cage nearly $30 million dollars with which to fuel his ridiculous mind-wank has done little to quell my rage.
To recap, you play Ellen Page, who plays some other girl, and she has some kind of pet ghost (called Aiden) who floats around watching her take showers and objecting to her dating. Dafoe looks after her for a while, and he works for the preposterously titled US Department of Paranormal Activity. Then she joins the CIA. Then she’s homeless. Then she’s in war-torn Somalia. Then she’s a clichéd goth teen again. Then she goes on holiday to the Bahamas and Aiden rides a jet-ski.
Fine, that last one isn’t true – but might as well be, for all the muddled nonsensical barf that Cage insists on covering you in. And you know what else they must have saved a lot of money on? Mapping actions to the controller. In fact, I’m 90% sure that if you threw your pad out the window it’d be about 3 or 4 hours before you needed to go fetch it again to press another button. Dammit, wait, this is the bit where I can take Ellen’s bra off! Where did I throw it this time?? OH GOD A RACCOON IS RUNNING OFF WITH IT.