Skydance’s Behemoth
Review
Colossal Beasts
by JesseGatt
reviewed on PC
Become the Slayer
From the creators of Saints and Sinners, the long-awaited Skydance's Behemoth has finally made its way to our hands. Skydance's Behemoth is a hack-and-slash-style VR game with epic battles between man and Behemoth. However, even after this long wait, Skydance's Behemoth may have stepped its foot out too soon.
You are placed in the shoes of Wren, a man tackling a feat no other man has been able to accomplish, the annihilation of behemoths. With your inhuman abilities and advanced skill set, you will fight each one to the death, for the sake of humanity.
A keen edge
Skydance's Behemoth merges combat, advanced movements (such as climbing and grappling), and other unique abilities into one cohesive and satisfying experience. When fighting rouge enemies, you will find yourself using all of your arsenal to gain an advantage in these challenging endeavours.
Wren has a special ability to gain extra strength, allowing him to effortlessly punch through walls, slice through enemies like butter, and throw them into spikes like ragdolls. He also has a grappling hook with some of the best rope physics I've seen. Players can use this to traverse levels and can be used to seize items to yourself which can be useful in intense combat situations. Both of these are upgradable and also have uses in puzzles. These puzzles are fun at first but later on get very repetitive where you'll be required to "move box on pressure plate" or "shoot bow at wood" style puzzles. Sometimes they get a little creative with it and hit you with the 'box stuck manoeuvre' where you have to break obstructions or open a gate to proceed. These puzzles don't require much thinking at all to solve. Yeah, we get it, your game is more focused on combat, but it just feels like the puzzles are there just for the sake of being there.
The combat however is definitely there, Behemoth uses stamina to force you to be precise and only strike when the time is right. You can parry enemies to give you a free strike - encouraging you to use skill instead of mindlessly swinging your weapons. Enemies have set move sets depending on what type they are. Something cool is that some harder enemies will feint their attacks which will catch you off guard at times. However, their attacks are not randomised which is both a good and bad thing. On the one hand, you can learn their attack patterns and annihilate them, but after a while, they start to feel less like a force to be reckoned with and more like moving training dummies.
Colossal Beasts
The Behemoth fights are a cinematic masterpiece. Each behemoth has its own unique abilities and mini puzzles. However, they all involve the same concept - climb on them and hack away at their weak spots. This is not a bad thing by any means, each has their own fighting style, forcing you to strategise, keeping each fight feeling fresh. You cannot begin to appreciate the size of these beasts until you see them inside your headset. They are spine-bendingly tall and require you the strategies and seek out opportunities to cling onto them for devastating blows.
One thing that bothers me, is that Skydance has placed so much emphasis on the behemoths, but has included only 4 of them in the entire game. I am not saying that they are bad by any means, there is clearly a lot of work that has been put into them, but for the game's core selling point being the behemoths, you would expect a little more of them to fight. Even then, the behemoths are still fun to fight and satisfying to take down.
Not like this
Ever since the first trailer for Behemoth was released, I was dying to get my hands on this game, It seemed like a perfect concept for a VR, fighting rogue enemies in vast and hellish landscapes, travelling through the unknown to reach your ultimate goal of striking down daunting Behemoths. The showcase of grapple physics and combat mechanics got me hyped up even more, and it's great, at least when it works.
However, the game often feels like it's a baby chick that has been kicked out of the nest too early. Its parents heard it chirp and thought it was ready, but it needed a bit more time to mature before it could fly. First impressions matter, and when your game can't handle simply respawning a player without them falling through the map or having mobs attack you instead of phasing through walls, well that's a problem.
Yes, a lot of these glitches (quite a few of them being game-breaking) are known to Skydance, and they will be fixed in the future. But why release the game in such a terrible state? I'd much rather have the game delayed and have an experience that just works, than having to go through unbearable glitches that honestly made me want to stop playing the game. This wholeheartedly had me disappointed with the Skydance's Behemoth, but bug fixes will come and it will eventually be in a state where it should have been at release.
Bring the patches
Overall, Skydance's Behemoth holds a great concept and when it is running properly, it is a blast to play. Unfortunately, I do not recommend this game in its current state as you will quickly become frustrated at the bugs littered within this game. However, when they are inevitably fixed, this game will surely live up to its initial potential.
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6.5
fun score
Pros
Visually stunning, Satisfying Combat, Enemies are challenging and each Behemoth is unique
Cons
Only four Behemoths, Littered with bugs in the game's current state
