Best of Us 12+

A pale and unoriginal copy of more popular Hosted Games.

Its clear that The Best Of Us has ripped off the plotlines of at least one similar Hosted Games series - and if you've ever played HG stories before, you'll know exactly which one I mean. Unfortunately this one falls very far short of them.

In the beginning, there are hints of what could be some interesting story arcs peeking out between paragraphs - like the history of Pacifica or the backstory to the mysterious Icarus. But just as you start to get into gameplay, the next page seems to skip forward huge sections. This happens a few times in the game. If I was reading a book, I'd be convinced I'd missed several whole chapters.

There is no sense of the kind of person that your character is, and no stats for developing any type of relationship with other characters. The one hint at a possible liason with a male character (as straight female anyway) is rejected and not explored (or explained). The stats that exist barely move up or down with the choices made.

And there are few genuine choices to be made anyway. Most of them are conversational starters where you get to choose which one you say first.

A huge section of story is dedicated to outlining the many varied fighting techniques used on different continents for the main character to adopt one. This alone promised such a cool experience ahead, but actually amounted to a big fat zero. The fighting skills lovingly described are never used in the story and are therefore very unlikely to make the slightest difference to the outcome anyway.

Topped with the very abrupt ending, I get the distinct impression that the author quickly got bored with writing the game part way through, and was just racing to finish and publish the story.

Overall I'm pretty hacked off that I had to pay nearly £3 to complete a very pale imitation of a popular and much loved storyline from another Hosted Game.

Play the free sections but don't get fooled into buying the rest, believing there's a great epic to experience ahead of you! The results will be a huge disappointment.