Black Mirror: Bandersnatch Review - 7 Ups & 2 Downs
Downs...
2. The Superficial Story Choices
It was claimed ahead of the film's release that Bandersnatch offered over five hours of play-time and "trillions" of story permutations, though it's worth knowing that only about half of the available video is actually original content.
In fact, it's entirely possible to unlock all five of the film's main endings within about two hours, which is a tad disappointing.
As much as Bandersnatch has been hyped up as a labyrinthine, layered spin on CYOA stories, the core is revealed to be quite simple once you've played through it a few times.
Now granted, the idea of limited player agency is a theme the film itself touches on, but if you were hoping for the differing options to open up wildly divergent paths and story choices, you might end up feeling a little disappointed.
The film is extremely generous with allowing "players" to correct themselves in the event of a mistake, which while respectful of players' time, also helps highlight the limitations of the branching paths.
What's there is certainly well executed, but ultimately if you've spent 90 minutes tinkering your way to the end credits, you've already seen the majority of the prime material the film has to offer.