➤ The Hidden Agenda review 🎮

Sony has launched the PlayLink project a few months ago, which is to bring a series of small PlayStation 4 titles to the living room that can entertain relatives and friends for a few hours. All you need is a Dualshock 4, the rest of the actions are carried out intuitively by downloading the application of the individual games on the smartphone of those present, so as to allow everyone to participate. The forerunner was Tell me who you are, available from this summer as a free title of the PlayStation Plus subscription, but three other products from the most disparate genres are now available: a party game at the quiz show (Knowing is Power), the spin- off SingStar Celebration, and most recently Hidden Agenda. The latter, a cinematic investigative thriller, is perhaps the most interesting of the three, especially for the originality of the mechanics put in place, for the first time proposed in a social game sauce.

Crime scene in the living room

Hidden Agenda deserves attention even only for those who took care of the direction, namely the guys from Supermassive Games. Exactly, the same ones who churned out that half masterpiece of Until Dawn. If you have had the opportunity to try it, with Hidden Agenda you will immediately find yourself at home, in the company of a decision-making system consisting of crossroads, of excellent quality in acting and an excellent graphics sector. Instead, the narrative genre changes, moving on to the detective / thriller at the CSI. We are in an undefined large American city, struggling with a series of brutal murders that somehow seem to involve local police officers among the victims. The player's perspective fluctuates between Becky Marnie, the lead agent on the case, and Felicity Grames, the district attorney. Our task is to shed light on the events, discovering who is behind the face of the mysterious Manipulator. Over the course of a couple of hours between investigations, dialogues and distressing decisions, the relationships between the characters will show increasingly turbid and ambivalent aspects, so that until the conclusion, understanding something will not be an easy task. Some very unclear moments do not help, in which the reluctance of the protagonists or the reference to simple names of characters that we have seen yes and no for a couple of minutes leave us confused, even if they can prove to be fundamental later on. The fate of the heroes and of human relationships between them is linked to the actions we will choose to perform, to the meditated or aggressive game approach, and to the various narrative crossroads of the crucial moments; but the title never hides its nature as a pleasant film driven by force by the developers towards the different possible endings.

Decisions at your touch screen

The PlayStation 4 controller is required to start the application, from then on Hidden Agenda provides for everything to be managed smartphone in hand. One of the players, for a maximum of four participants, is appointed group leader, basically the person in charge of on-screen navigation in the tutorial and in the few game menus. While the story is told, divided into three parts, the players are asked to democratically make the decision on what to do, by dragging their finger on the touch screen to move their colored cursor on the TV to the box they want. Do we explore the garden or enter the house? We drag our finger and make our decision, the majority wins. But not always: certain situations, usually crucial ones, require all participants to agree. And this is where Hidden Agenda pushes players to confront each other, to chat, and shows its best results as a social game. The title also manages to tease those present with some interesting "found". He can ask us, for example, to vote which of our friends we think is more decisive, honest, or compassionate. Later the person in question will be called to answer for a precise action within the title, very important, and only she can do it (the cursors of the other competitors will disappear), a considerable responsibility. Or Hidden Agenda gives us the chance to become real infamous. Do we disagree with the majority decision? We can then impose our will by spending a Decision Card; we have a limited number of them available, but nobody forbids us to collect others in the short and sporadic QTE sessions of the title, or in those to "look for hidden objects" in the scenario. There is also a Competitive Mode next to the Story. In this case we will live the same story and we will have to make the same choices, but the game will secretly assign certain participants objectives to achieve, showing them on the smartphone. Our friend or family member, without being discovered, will have to convince us to perform certain actions, thus earning points. However we found this variant far less inspired and fun, and frankly it feels completely forced. Not only does Hidden Agenda gain nothing in terms of replayability (the proposed story remains the same), but one is led to neglect the narrative and not enjoy the plot, to focus on mechanics that do not convince, especially if you play in two (or in three).

Comment

Resources4Gaming.com

8.0

Readers (15)

8.4

Your vote

Hidden Agenda is an excellent cinematic thriller, in which the decisions of the players determine the outcome of the story. It can be tackled alone like any modern graphic adventure, but in groups the cooperative mechanics proposed make it much more fun. The technical and narrative quality is really excellent, and the proposed price is extremely interesting. We all have the smartphone, to play together you don't even need to buy additional controllers.