Hidden Agenda
PS4
Nothing gets a party started like a rollicking tale of braindead coppers, grisly murders and child abuse, does it? We’d suggest turning down an invite to any soiree with a game of Hidden Agenda planned, as showing up means resigning yourself to two hours of teeth-gritting awkwardness.
It’s a shame, because by all accounts, a party game made by the developers of campy schlock-horror Until Dawn should be a success. It was a singleplayer game, sure, but branching storylines and jumpscares made it an entertaining couchplay experience. Supermassive has doubled down on this by building thriller Hidden Agenda around Playlink, Sony’s multiplayer scheme which repurposes smartphones as controllers. Trite conversations progress at a languid pace, with players voting on dialogue choices by moving their cursor into the corresponding box on their phone’s screen. When detective Becky Marnie’s partner tries to console her after she’s put on file work instead of being allowed to go hunting the Trapper Killer, everyone must decide: should her response be ‘assertive’ or ‘depressed’?
It’s about as gripping as it sounds. The whodunit is cliché, starring expressionless character models – and you can spot the twist a mile off. Story mode falls flat, but things pick up in Competitive: at the start of a round, someone receives an Agenda, visible only on their phone, to fulfil and score extra points. When rounds end, everybody votes to out the manipulator.
Sadly, many Agendas feel inconsequential. One tasks us to have lawyer Felicity Graves act hostile towards a suspect. The vague objective doesn’t require much in the way of scheming: we’re not even sure how we achieve it. Come voting time, our pals are confused as to what Agenda could have been realised, and by whom, so we get off scot-free. Pivotal choices that require unanimous agreement are where the real fun lies, triggering debate. Here, takeover cards come into play; awarded to whoever completes basic quicktime events the fastest, using one lets you override group decisions. Two problems arise. One, anyone with half a brain hoards these for the big choices, leading to a tedious takeover chain; two, non-gaming party guests are at a disadvantage, which rather defeats the point.
Narratively and mechanically clumsy it may be, but at least Hidden Agenda isn’t socially awkward: it’s a laugh, albeit at the expense of itself. Supermassive has created an icebreaker, and that’s no mean feat. Then again, charades doesn’t require 150MB of precious digital real estate, banal chit-chat is banned, and if any lecherous priests turn up to spoil the mood, then you’ve only yourself to blame.