Virtual reality continues to evolve, offering more robust experiences that trend towards fully realizing the fantasy of physically manifesting oneself in a game. We have seen recent titles, such as Asgard’s Wrath 2 and Batman: Arkham Shadow, garner praise for successes in this pursuit. Skydance themselves are no stranger to such commendations, with their work on The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners receiving its fair share of love from players and critics alike. Now we’re looking towards the developer’s latest virtual reality VR experience, Behemoth, to see if they can match (or hopefully exceed) their past efforts to once again show us the visceral and engrossing capabilities of this technology.
Skydance’s Behemoth, as it’s officially called, places players in the body of Wren, an individual afflicted with a deadly curse. That curse extends beyond their corporeal form, however, and the titular behemoths will need to be slain in order to end said curse and forge a future. But this is a video game, which means there needs to be a hook. That hook is the fact that said curse also imbued Wren with awesome powers, like super strength. Skydance’s Behemoth is nothing if not a power fantasy, one that toes the line of something great without ever fully grasping that achievement.
A Team Ico Inspiration
As the name implies, Behemoth is about the towering monstrosities that lie at the heart of the curse ravaging the Forsaken Lands. And you, as Wren, will get to battle these gargantuan beasts in Shadow of the Colossus style battles. Scaling these skyscraper-sized terrors is absolutely the star of the show here. Scaling each is a spectacle elevated by the enhanced immersion that virtual reality provides, offering up a pre-existing experience in a way that makes it feel wholly fresh. Truly, there is little else out there that presents this level of scale, causing you to crane your neck to take in the tremendous opponent before you. That said, there are but a handful of these behemoths to be felled, and you will need to slay countless human-sized foes in-between those mountainous showdowns. This is where Skydance’s Behemoth fails to maintain the lofty heights of its titular villains, spending too much time wading around in the shallow end.
That’s not to say that human-to-human combat is dull; in fact, combat can be quite brutal and entertaining, as you would expect from the Saints & Sinners developer. Wren can send a dagger sailing through an enemy’s head with ease, lodge the pointy end of a battle hammer into a skull, bring down a greatsword with excessive force and more. Take into account the strength-boosting “curse” and Wren can manage even more superhuman feats. When the strength ability is activated, which has a generously short cooldown, Wren’s power is amplified immensely. Those sword throws no longer result in a blade becoming lodged into an enemy; they straight cleave them in half. The same ability allows for the effortless grappling of basic combatants, the bullying of mini bosses and all manner of powerful maneuvers. Not only does it feed the power fantasy, it acts as an on-demand “easy” button, allowing you to brute force your way through the other combat mechanics.
Consistent in its Inconsistency
You see, the combat in Skydance’s Behemoth can actually be challenging otherwise. Some of that is borne from the fact that enemies can be aggressive and deal ample damage, and some of it stems from poor or inconsistent game design. When throwing daggers, as mentioned earlier, it can be greatly satisfying to lodge that blade square between a target’s eyes. But that never felt like a consistent outcome. It didn’t feel like a result of learning the right touch, but rather it seemed like the game was changing the rules on the fly in regards to what it wanted from me. Sometimes I would send that dagger sailing on a string right into the desired foe’s head; other times it would fly into the stratosphere with a fraction of the effort. I couldn’t get a good read on this. And the same goes for parrying and blocking. Those mechanics are critical in combat, as enemies attack in set patterns. I really couldn’t tell you if this was user error or not, but it often felt like I’d fail parries I should have succeeded and vice versa. At one point, I was simply standing there with an axe unmoving and upright in my right hand and that managed a parry.
The inconsistency in combat made those largely present human encounters in-between behemoths feel less than desired. Perhaps with a more predictable and manageable combat system, Behemoth could be a more formidable VR title. But even then, I’d be pining for more battles with the actual behemoths than we were given here. For a game that touts these impressive clashes as its selling point, they are far too scarce. It’s a shame, really, because those engagements are quite memorable when they do occur. The mechanically diverse confrontations seem to understand the purpose for which VR was created. Even some of the mini bosses get in on the mechanical creativity, with one such battle requiring the player to physically “cover their ears.” It’s unfortunate that the moment-to-moment battles sporting mediocre AI primarily filling this linear journey are not as refined or clever.
The puzzles suffer in similar ways, being overly simple and unimaginative. A wrist-mounted grappling hook enables players to zip their way around predetermined hook points, further supplemented by a very competent climbing system—you would hope a VR game attempting to capture the spirit of Shadow of the Colossus would nail climbing. There’s nothing to write home about here. You’ll grapple into areas, pull levers, move boxes and so on in the usual fashion. In fact, the shallow puzzles are matched by an equally shallow narrative, hosting an insipid protagonist. There’s simply no flavor.
Skydance’s Behemoth shows glimpses of greatness in its titular battles, but there are far too few filing this 8-10 hour journey. The bulk of creativity was poured into these scarce moments, leaving the remaining majority to be lifeless by comparison. Even the horde mode affixed to the game to sell its replayability is only in a content-lean beta state. There’s a much better game lying underneath this all, one that understands how to fully harness its brutal combat and leans into the breathtaking moments of scaling horrific creatures in heroic acts of defiance.
Skydance’s Behemoth Review Verdict
Skydance's Behemoth: Skydance's Behemoth is a competent VR game that hosts enemies that dwarf players and know how to display the visceral nature of cuts, stabs and so on. Where it fails is in not grasping onto its behemoths with both hands and making the entire game filled with these moments. Instead, it loses itself in a linear corridor of throwaway encounters, ones that suffer mechanical inconsistency. – Joshua
Editor’s Note: Skydance’s Behemoth was reviewed on PC, and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.
