Kiss of Beth

I can’t decide whether Kiss of Beth works better the first time or on the replay. Oh, even from the get-go of this dialogue-based two-hander, you’ve got more than enough indication that what your interlocutor, Cordero, thinks is happening (nosy roommate grilling the new boyfriend before a date) isn’t what’s actually happening. But you’re not sure exactly what direction the game is going to go, so even as you’re feeling him out by asking leading questions about his family or job, you get the sense that this is building to an important choice, but the stakes for whether to send him on in to see the eponymous Beth after she finishes showering, or fake a family emergency, are deliciously unclear. On a replay, though, despite knowing exactly how the horror is going to play out, I found I was scrutinizing Cordero’s responses to try to get a level of certainty about that final decision that just isn’t possible to achieve – as well as paying even closer attention to what the protagonist’s questions were revealing about them.

The presentation here is effectively off-putting. The text splays over an aubergine background, with a slightly-pixelated photo of Cordero off to the side. Then as you get over the preliminary greetings and the not-so-subtle interrogation begins – you want to make sure you have a clearer sense of who he is before you make a final call – the photo snaps to black and white, before slowly filling in with color as you learn more. The dialogue is well-done too, naturalistically shifting from topic to topic with a sheen of awkwardness that’s entirely fitting for the circumstance. Most of the questions you can ask have at least a hint of passive-aggressiveness about them, but that also makes sense – for reasons that eventually become clear, the main character is looking for reasons to dislike Cordero, which makes for some entertaining friction between the seemingly-cordial dialogue and your inner monologue.

You don’t get a full biographical readout on him through your questioning, of course, but the game does do a good job of sketching out a sense of who he is, both in terms of class, background, and personality, with solid attention to detail (when he mentioned that he wanted to get an MSW, I was able to correctly guess that Columbia was his dream school since I know that they have one of the best social work programs). There are ways to get him open up a little more, or to push him to be more defensive, which makes the conversation still engaging the second time through (again, this is a game you’ll definitely want to replay), but you’ll never be completely satisfied that you’re getting the real Cordero, and not just a scrubbed-up version he’s trotting out to make a good impression.

The eventual reveal isn’t one that’s unguessable by any means, but the details are memorably horrific, and left me feeling queasy regardless of the choices I made – the final screen puckishly tells you “this game has two endings. You got a bad one” in text that doesn’t vary regardless of your decisions. And it effectively throws the spotlight from Cordero back to you; as I mentioned, the second time through the game, I found it interesting to consider whether the questions I was asking, and the asides I was making to myself, meant that I was a better fit for Beth than him.