I Am Your Beast is a sensationally fast-paced action game in every sense, but there's also a surprisingly well-crafted narrative thread running through it.
Ruthless. That's what this man is. Every enemy you encounter – all the identical soldiers in combat fatigues, with their red, dead, insect-like masks hiding the human faces beneath them – will succumb to the same fate when you pass unnoticed, and the corpses will fall to the ground before they even realize they're dead. I guess that's the life of a hitman.
I am your beast is glorious. Gloriously brutal, bloody, brazen and intense, in the vein of Superhot, Children of the Sun, which means I can only play in fifteen-minute bursts for fear of giving myself an aneurysm. You barely have time to… breathe As blood and bullets fly by, let alone carefully plan your route, meaning much of your early playthrough will be a desperate sprint as you shoot, punch, parkour and loot everything that stands between your position and the hatch that takes you away from here. With even the longest level in the entire roughly three-hour game time lasting less than two minutes, there’s no time for mistakes either. If you miss the timing, the throw or the shot, it’s over. This time, at least.
You fly through the comic book shooter I Am Your Beast as Agent Alphonse Harding, an assassin born – and possibly destroyed – by the U.S. military. Despite enjoying his retirement (and by enjoying, I mean embracing his hermit-like era in a frozen forest in the middle of nowhere), handler Burkin asks you to do one last job one more time. He doesn’t take kindly to your refusal, and you don’t take kindly to him doing it. thatneither. To use his own expression, Harding “loses his mind” and for the next three hours, you find yourself on a solo killing spree.
I still don't understand why Burkin feels it necessary to sacrifice hundreds of soldiers and millions of dollars worth of government equipment to go after a retiree. It's an interesting premise, especially since it's hard to imagine what the hell Burkin can do to control Harding now that the latter—a soldier exposed to years of training, torture, combat, and sleep deprivation—has decided he no longer wants to be controlled. It's not a novel idea, I admit, but I find it fascinating how one man's wounded ego leads to hundreds of deaths at the hands of another.
This story is light, though. It only unfolds through audio communications interspersed between levels, and you don’t need to follow it or even care about it if you don’t want to, because the frenetic action is barreling along at full speed anyway, and I Am Your Beast’s delightfully satisfying combat and creative level design mean you’ll enjoy every second of it anyway. Sometimes, you’ll need to take out satellites along the way. Other times, you’ll need to activate laptops, survive waves of enemies, or just kill every soul you see. Most of the time, though, it’s a fight for the exit. Harding’s training means that it moves seamlessly through the terrain, giving you a sim-like sense of immersion that, if you can see (a tree here, a red barrel there – and do you think that hornet’s nest might offer a distraction?), you can probably use to your advantage.
Much like the parkour, the gunplay is a delight. You use what you can when you can, reusing enemy weapons, using up all your bullets, throwing guns at heads when they're empty, kicking skulls when you run out of ammo. The fighting is intense and varied enough that, despite its stylized presentation, every round is a success. feel It's different, even if it doesn't seem that way, and the desire to try again (i.e. try again with a different route or strategy and secure that S rank) is strong. Don't stand still. You won't survive the attack.
However, it's often hard to see what the hell is going on. A dark palette, stylised graphics and a screen that shakes every time you get hit means you often don't know what happened until it's already over. The fluidity of the game means this doesn't get in the way as often as you'd think, but as someone who normally is dying Since the modus operandi is very different, preferring to sneak around a camp or outpost to pick off enemies one by one, it was a big change. Especially since sometimes the only way to learn a map is to relive it over and over like it's Groundhog Day, playing over and over until you memorize the locations of everything.
And look, I could end this review here. I could leave you with the assurance that this is a fantastic, furious, fun shooter that is sure to put you at ease, and that would be enough. But while some may see the revenge story as simply the vehicle upon which Strange Scaffold ties together its otherwise outrageous and pulpy shooter, I too found myself fully invested in Harding’s story.
Though we never see him, Harding is genuine and likable, a man forced into an impossible situation that will likely only end with his death—and he knows it. We get the sense that he’s been conditioned to push everything aside—the pain, the trauma, everything—but he’s not a machine. Occasionally, between levels, we hear him moan in pain, and shortly after the halfway point, he starts to feel really bad. hurtHis injuries severely affected his ability to recover between battles.
To our biggest downside, this drastically reduces your starting health and prevents you from ever fully recovering, and Harding’s panic is palpable. “It’s so much blood. It’s so much blood,” he mutters, screaming as he rips away branches that have pierced him. This bit of dialogue (there are no cutscenes of any kind) humanizes a soldier we never see, and cements the idea that there’s a chance he won’t survive this. And even if he does… well, what the hell will his life be like afterwards?
It was this, along with the familial relationship Burkin used to share with his ward, that fostered my curiosity about how it would all end. Add in an additional detail of a wandering soldier who is unwilling to die for Burkin's unfathomable and deadly pursuit, and I found myself worrying about what will happen, all From them, which is quite a feat, really, given that I don't usually think too much when I'm walking around with an assault rifle murdering people. The voice acting is some of the best I've heard in a long time, masterfully bringing to life what could otherwise have been a very forgettable and shallow cast of characters.
But I guess that’s the magic of I Am Your Beast. Despite a lackluster (and jarring) presentation, this action-shooter is exactly what I needed: a delightfully bombastic experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome or feel unfairly punishing. Accompanied by an incredibly potent soundtrack, this is a stylish, frenetic, and thoughtful shooter that stayed with me far longer than its short playtime.
Strange Scaffold provided a copy of I Am Your Beast for review.