By all accounts, I Am Your Beast is a thrilling, fast-paced action game that also has a surprisingly well-crafted narrative thread running through it.
Ruthless. That’s what this guy is. Every enemy you encounter – every soldier in combat fatigues with red, dead, bug-like masks that hide the human faces beneath them – will suffer the same fate as you pass by, bodies falling to the ground before they realize they’re dead. Such is the life of a hitman, I guess.
I am your beast brilliantIt’s extremely brutal, bloody, reckless, and intense in the style of Superhot and Children of the Sun, which means I can only play it for fifteen minutes straight for fear of having an aneurysm. You barely have time breathe Blood and bullets fly, not to mention the need to carefully plan your route, which means that much of your initial playthrough will be a panicked scramble as you shoot, punch, parkour, and loot everything from your position to the hatch leading to the escape hatch. Even the longest level in the entire three-hour game takes less than two minutes, leaving no time for mistakes. Wrong timing, wrong throw, or wrong shot, and it’s all over. At least this time.
You’ll be playing as Agent Alphonse Harding, a hitman born into the US military, broken by it, as you race through the comic book shooter I Am Your Beast. Despite a comfortable retirement life – and by comfortable, I mean secluded in a frozen forest with no human habitation – your manager, Burkin, is asking you to do one last mission, one too many. He won’t take no for an answer, and neither will you. ThatHarding, in his own words, “broke down,” and for the next three hours, you went on a murder spree all by yourself.
I’m still not sure why Bergin felt the need to sacrifice hundreds of soldiers and millions of dollars in government equipment to go after a retiree. It’s an interesting premise, especially since it’s hard to imagine what Bergin could do now that Harding – a soldier who has endured years of training, torture, combat, and sleep deprivation – has decided that he no longer wishes to be controlled. Granted, it’s not a novel idea, but it’s interesting to me how one man’s wounded ego can lead to the deaths of hundreds of people at the hands of another.
The story is pretty light, though. It’s conducted solely via audio communications sandwiched between levels, and you don’t need to pay attention to it or even care about it if you don’t want to, as the frantic action continues regardless, and I Am Your Beast’s enjoyable combat and creative level design mean you’ll enjoy every second of it regardless. Sometimes, you’ll need to destroy satellites along the way. Other times, you’ll need to boot up a laptop, survive an onslaught of enemies, or simply kill every soul you see. Most of the time, however, you’re scrambling to find the exit first. Harding’s training means he can traverse the terrain seamlessly, giving you an immersive sense of the simulation’s atmosphere, and if you can see it – a tree here, a red barrel there, do you think that hornet’s nest would be a distraction? – you can probably use it to your advantage.
Like parkour, the gunplay is enjoyable. You can use whatever you can get your hands on, repurpose enemy weapons, use up all your bullets, throw bullets at enemy heads when your pistol is empty, and kick enemy heads off when you run out of bullets. The combat is intense and varied, and despite the stylized presentation, each round is full of surprises. Feel Even if it looks different, it’s still different, and the desire to try again (i.e., go back with a different route or strategy and secure an S rank) is strong. Just don’t get stagnant. You won’t survive the onslaught.
It’s often hard to tell what’s going on, though. The dark tones, stylized graphics, and screen that vibrates every time you get hit mean you often don’t know what’s happening until the game is already over. The fluid gameplay means this isn’t as frequent as you’d think, but as a game that usually Endless pain I’m more of a stealth-oriented person than MO, preferring to quietly pick off enemies one by one around a camp or outpost, so this takes a lot of adjustment. Especially since sometimes the only way to learn a map is to keep revisiting it like a bloody Groundhog Day, playing it over and over again until you memorize where everything is.
Look, I could stop there. I could tell you that this is a stylish, intense, brilliant shooter that’s sure to keep you itching for more, and that’s enough. But even if some might think that the revenge story is just a vehicle for Strange Scaffold to attach its already outrageous shooter to, I’m definitely interested in Harding’s story.
Though we never see him, Harding is real and sympathetic, forced into an impossible situation that will most likely only end in death… and he knows it. We kind of get the sense that he’s been conditioned to suppress everything – the pain, the trauma, everything – but he’s not a machine. Occasionally, between levels, we hear him groan in pain, and after halfway through, he starts to really harmhis injuries severely affected his ability to recover between battles.
The inconvenience for us is that this drastically reduces your starting health so that you never fully recover, and Harding’s panic is palpable. “So much blood. So much blood,” he screams and mutters as he pulls off the branches that have impaled him. This dialogue alone – devoid of any movie effects – humanizes a soldier we’ve never seen before, making us realize there’s a chance he might not survive. And even if he does… well, what does his life look like afterward?
It’s this, and the familial bond Burkin once shared with his ward, that makes me curious about how it all ends. Add in a misguided soldier unwilling to sacrifice himself for Burkin’s impossibly deadly pursuit, and I found myself caring about what happens next – all That’s a truly remarkable feat, since I don’t usually think too much when I’m running around killing people with an assault rifle. The voice acting is some of the best I’ve heard in a while, deftly bringing to life what could have been a very forgettable, perfunctory cast of characters.
But that, I guess, is the magic of I Am Your Beast. Despite its crude and appalling presentation, this action shooter is exactly what I needed, a delightfully over-the-top experience that never felt boring or unfair. With a powerful soundtrack, it’s a simple, frantic, and thoughtful shooter that left an impression on me far longer than its shortened playtime.
Strange Scaffold was provided with a copy of I Am Your Beast for review.
