Fun and challenging swordplay can’t make up for bland and repetitive action between behemoths, making this far from the epic adventure it wants to be.
I thought we’d all decided during the Xbox 360 days that checkpoints just before boss fights that kicked off with reams of unskippable dialogue were very annoying indeed. No one in their right mind wants to hear the same voice lines repeated over and over again each time you restart a fight, especially fights that are as tough as those in Behemoth. But I guess developer Skydance wasn’t paying attention during that era because this game features some of the worst checkpointing I’ve experienced in a long time.
The checkpoints were so frustrating at times that I literally had to stop playing in order to calm down, dragging down my enjoyment of the game that otherwise succeeds in many other areas. I have nothing against challenging battles and hardcore gameplay, which Behemoth has by the bucket load. But the irritations of having to walk or climb or grapple your way back along a linear path to then listen to the same pre-fight chatter and intro animation after every, single, death had me letting out Behemoth-sized sighs on multiple occasions.
This isn’t just a problem before the brutal mini-boss fights or towering Behemoth set pieces either. It also happens with challenge towers and secret areas, too. Challenge towers often need to be climbed to reach the riches within, something that can take a fair amount of time and physical effort to do as the climbing is mainly motion controlled and there are puzzles to work out along the way too. Since the collectibles and upgrade resources you gain from these towers are stashed away near the top, though, this means that if you slip off an edge and fall to your death on your way back down, you’ll lose everything and will have to climb all the way back up and solve all the puzzles all over again if you want those collectibles and upgrades back.
On one occasion I explored a winding side dungeon that featured some epic grapples across a bottomless chasm and I was rewarded with some cool collectibles along the way. Fun! After that though, I continued along the main route only to die to an archer and then find myself back at a checkpoint that started before I’d completed the side dungeon. This meant that once more all of my hard earned collectibles had been lost. Fury! This kind of checkpointing would be annoying in a normal, flat game, but to have this happen in a VR game where you can’t just sit back and sulkily restart makes having to redo even smaller sections a gigantic pain in the arse. Suffice to say, I never bothered going back to get a lot of these collectibles a second time around, which ultimately meant I wasn’t able to upgrade my characters and weapons as much as I probably could have done had the checkpoints been a bit more forgiving.
But now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, it’s time for me to get back to business by telling you exactly what Behemoth is all about. Or should that be Skydance’s Behemoth? This is what the game is officially called after all, and Skydance is the prolific VR development studio that made The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, one of my favourite VR games of all time, so I guess I can see why affixing its name to the title might add a bit of prestige. But I also can’t help but think it’s like when a parent writes their kid’s name on a sock in case it gets lost at school. This is Skydance’s Behemoth after all, so don’t steal it, OK?
In Behemoth, you play as Wren, a man cursed with something called the rot, a disease which has ravaged his lands and turned its inhabitants into bloodthirsty killers. For a reason that is explained later in the story (no spoilers here, don’t worry), Wren is able to use the curse of the rot to his advantage, channeling the rage it causes him and using it to enhance his strength and stamina in ways normal people cannot. And so, Wren must hack and slash and stab his way to the Forsaken Lands where the rot originated in order to stop it at its source. Although by stopping it at its source, the game actually means defeating a number of different Behemoths along the way.
These gigantic and imposing boss battles against towering Behemoths are certainly impressive, visually and mechanically, but considering they’re the selling point of the game, they’re also few and far between, appearing sparingly throughout the game’s eight-to-ten-hour run time. To fill in the gaps between each encounter, players must make their way through a series of fairly linear levels using both the game’s fantastic and weighty melee combat to take out rot-infected copy and paste bad guys, along with its sturdy traversal mechanics to cross hazardous environments and sniff out hidden areas that often take a bit of puzzling to enter.
Visually, these environments are very impressive at first, offering up stunning vistas and detailed textures that, at times, rival those of Horizon: Call of the Mountain in terms of jaw dropping views. The magnificence of these visuals never really dips in quality during the game’s runtime, and the moments when Behemoths loom into view are always impressive. But locations do become increasingly repetitive as you make your way through the small selection of biomes, which range from snowy castle exterior and muddy castle exterior through to castle interior and, well… cave. It’s hardly surprising then that the events between Behemoth battles are largely forgettable, aside from a few cool set pieces here and there.
Thankfully, the combat in Behemoth is very fun indeed, and Skydance has taken everything it’s learned from The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners games to kit you out with some really neat weapons that, despite being virtual, still have a really good feel of weight and heft to them. This is, in essence, a game about feeling like a badass with a sword and that feeling is consistently nailed. From the little button press that allows you to change your grip on your sword so it looks like you’re twirling it like a deadly drumstick, through to the upgraded sword you get later in the game that returns to you, Mjolnir-style when thrown at enemies, encounters are always exceedingly fun.
Melee combat itself is simple to get to grips with but tough to master, especially due to the game’s challenging difficulty. But once you nail the flow of blocking, dodging and striking at weak points (don’t underestimate the power of a good stab), it feels great. I found it fairly tricky to pull off a successful parry though, which could just be user error on my part, especially as I did occasionally do it by accident when going for a block.
This aside, though, Behemoth’s swordplay is a power fantasy come to life, with the added awesomeness of virtual archery thrown in for good measure. Honestly, nailing a couple of headshots in a row with the bow in this game feels so good and it gives you exactly the same kind of adrenaline rush that a successful sword fight does. And let’s not forget Wren’s rage power which gives you super strength for a short moment and then recharges over time. When activated during a fight, the rage allows you to cleave enemies in half and lop off limbs with a bladed weapon, or even pick them up and effortlessly toss them into a wall of spikes for an instant kill. It can even be used to punch through weak walls in order to uncover secrets, although the Hulk-like roar that Wren emits every time it’s triggered does get a bit tiresome especially if, like me, you keep activating it by accident.
These moments are fantastic, sure, but combat can sometimes feel a bit clumsy too. Occasionally swords will act like they’ve been embedded into enemies heads but visually they’re still about an inch away from the skin. Thrown weapons like the knives can feel very inconsistent too, sometimes they’ll land exactly where you want them too and other times a gentle flick of the wrist will see them rocketing off into space. Better, then, to stick to close quarters combat most of the time, rather than risk long-range attacks going awry.
Still, considering how much effort has clearly been put into Behemoth’s combat, it’s a shame that the vast majority of standard enemies that the game throws at you are basically clones of one another. Just with some wearing more armour than others. They attack you in waves of varying numbers too. Sometimes it’s a swordy man, sometimes it’s a stabby lady, sometimes it’s an arrow person, but most of the time it’s a combination of all three and you’ll have to chop them all to bits before a door will open and you can continue.
This did, admittedly, cause me to actively look forward to the mini-boss fights the most. There’s a challenge to these hulking, but still mostly human-sized opponents that will appeal to Souls-like fans especially, but I also liked how they introduced some cool new combat twists. A particularly memorable mini-boss requires you to physically cover your ears to protect yourself from its deadly scream. It’s a nice, simple trick that I’ve not really seen in a VR game before yet it’s a perfect use of the medium. Just let me skip all the dialogue and start from the beginning of the fight if I die, please?
The puzzles and navigation also exhibit great understanding of what makes VR fun, but again suffer heavily from repetition that makes the solutions easily predictable. Every puzzle hinges on basically the same themes – pull things, smash things, put things on pressure switches. It’s all handled nicely from a mechanical perspective but instead of offering me constant headscratchers that involve real working out like in, say, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, most puzzles here can be solved by looking up for a wooden crate and then working out how to push or pull it down onto the floor.
Thankfully, climbing is solid and accurate, and you’ll rarely fumble for edges or ledges, and getting up from hanging to a standing position is done with a nice, satisfying flick of the wrist. You also have a wrist mounted grapplehook that helps you to zip around places too. It’s not as flashy or speedy as the one in Batman Arkham Shadow, but it gets you up to the top of things quicker and it can also be used to pull items towards you such as the aforementioned wooden crates or, after a couple of upgrades, items and enemies too.
One word of caution to newcomers to VR, though, is that Behemoth has no teleport-to-move functionality at all. There’s click turning and both seated and standing options but, much like Batman Arkham Shadow, it’s smooth locomotion only due to the frenetic fights and the speed at which you need to dodge incoming attacks. This assault on the senses will probably be a bit too much for first time VR users to deal with – though given how much Behemoth relies heavily on some really intrusive vignetting, your senses may well be dulled even further than you’re expecting. These comfort vignettes can be turned off in the settings, but it’s worth bearing in mind that there are also vignettes for pain and low stamina effects which, when active, take up an inordinate amount of your peripheral vision. I don’t know how this got through playtesting without someone saying ‘can you tone them down a bit?’, but they did. There is a separate toggle for these vignettes, which I didn’t realise for ages, but it seems like the only option here is to either suffer through the game with them on, or turn them off completely and have no idea whether you’re close to death or not.
Behemoth is a game that constantly promises too much and then fails to deliver. A great example of this is the fact that it gives you eight weapon slots on your body so you can gather up and cart around a huge selection of blades and bows. That’s awesome, can’t wait to use them all! But then along Wren’s journey you’ll unlock weapons like the Mjolnir-like sword, a bow that regenerates arrows, and an armor-smashing axe. All three of these weapons can be upgraded using physical actions at a forge using scavenged alloys which is a lovely touch but, once I got my hands on those three, I never touched the conventional, enemy dropped weapons again. I mean, why bother? And in that case, why would I even need eight flipping weapon slots?
Even the arena mode in the game, which would have given Behemoth a bit more replayability, is only in beta mode at the moment so you can only do basic wave battles in one singular arena. It’ll be finished one day, I’m sure, and in the meantime it’ll scratch the Blade and Sorcery itch for PSVR2 owners who are missing out on that legendary game. Anyone else can just play Blade and Sorcery on PC VR or Quest though, especially as that game has a much more fleshed out arena mode and the option of mod support too.
That leaves me with the Behemoths themselves, which are undoubtedly the game’s USP. It’s hard to talk about these without completely spoiling the ensuing fights, but each one has a nice twist to it, and a little puzzling element. The core approach to taking the beasts down is basically the same every time, though – climb something, smash something, pull on something, stab a pulsating pustule of evil, repeat. Viewed through the lenses of your headset, these are pretty epic events, and they’ll have you craning your neck to look up at a monster’s undercarriage as its gigantic foot swoops through the air above your head. Moments like these feel absolutely epic, but what you won’t get is the same sense of satisfaction, or even guilt, that you do when you bring down a colossi in Shadow of the Colossus, for example, the game that has so obviously inspired this one.
Basically, I think I was expecting a bit more depth from Behemoth, not least because at a preview event I attended earlier in the year, I was introduced to a character called The Healer who allowed you to craft healing items and a selection of arrow types using ingredients gathered along your journey. This healer, and all of her associated crafting mechanics have now been completely removed from the game and instead, consumables are just regularly dropped by enemies, meaning you rarely need to hoard resources. This makes Behemoth feel much more arcadey and simplified than the immersive and tense Saints and Sinners games that Skydance is best known for. It smacks of pushing the game out too early before it was able to meet the lofty goals it was originally aiming for. You can feel the cut corners in the repetitive environments and enemy design and, of course, the lack of the more immersive survival and crafting mechanics that were, at one point, definitely in there.
Because of this, Skydance’s Behemoth now feels like a standard, fairly uninspired AA action game rather than the AAA behemoth of a VR game that I think it was originally envisioned to be. If you want to run around cutting people to bits with swords and living out a Conan fantasy, you can certainly do that here. And if you want to indulge in a bit of basic dungeon crawling with a predictable and fairly bland storyline, there’s some of that too. None of it, besides the checkpointing, is especially bad either, it’s fine and fun and challenging but not unfair. Unfortunately though, other, older VR games out there have already done most of the things that Behemoth does and ultimately they do them all in bigger and better ways. And that, in my opinion, is a huge Skydance’s Disappointment.
A copy of Skydance’s Behemoth was provided for review by developer Skydance Games.
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