Strange Scaffold have quickly become a name next to Raw Fury and No More Robots in that I try and play all their releases. The curation and design decisions in their titles means that even when it isn’t quite my cup of tea there is always a spark there, something that keeps me playing.
Both the games I reviewed for Xbox Tavern had great ideas, and great writing. I am your Beast might be the most straightforward in terms of execution and setup, but there is still plenty of that Strange Scaffold personality.
It is in first person perspective where each level is laid out as a puzzle with a high score objective. The player controls Alphonse, a one-man killing machine that has grown tired of working for his government. He gets pressed to do one last job but refuses and chooses to kill every soldier that his former boss sends after him.
The campaign is split over 27 missions, with additional levels available in non-canon challenges (which were previously DLC on other platforms).
There are short, narrated dialogue scenes in between levels that are sparse but effective (with some excellent comic timing from the voice actors). There are also some great environmental chatter, one in particular has a henchmen obsessing over his partner taking a leak and had me smiling every time I heard it.
The missions are varied, sure there are the standard ‘kill everyone under the time limit’ that goes with this sort of genre, but there are also missions that are about getting out as quickly as possible or surviving wave-after-wave of enemies. There is another in which Alphonse is bleeding out and has to collect a stream of health pick ups to stay in the game.
On completion, each mission is scored from D to S, and this also unlocks new objectives for replaying those missions. Those objectives vary between ‘kill no one’, and ‘only use headshots’. Later missions can only be unlocked by reaching certain score on levels, or completing a number of the objectives.
This could become repetitive, but it is thanks to the expressiveness exhibited in both the gameplay verbs, the weapons available, and the level design that it is not.
I am Your Beast has fluid movement, ducks, jumps and shooting, there are also slides, head stomps, contextual parkour, weapon tosses and quick turns that made me feel fully in control. The arsenal ranges from knives to rocket launchers and each of them have their advantages, the game does a good job of dolling them out slowly so that I never got overwhelmed. The levels themselves are explicitly built to make each of these verbs/weapons essential to consider, with barrels ready to be blown up, Snipers looking to take sneaky shots, and short cuts to take to open up new tactics. Most of them have optimal routes for the perfect score, but they don’t stop the player from experimenting with the arsenal, and no run outstays it’s welcome.
This is all coupled with a sense of speed. Not just in the way that Alphonse moves but also for the way a weapon will snap into his hands after grabbing it from midair, and the thudding finality of a headshot.
For a good example of this there is an early level that I played 10-15 times to get an S Rank on. What I had to nail down was kicking an in the back, detonating a barrel with his caught gun, sprinting across a small path, shooting two bee’s nests (to land on enemies below them) and then turn and finish off the last enemy on the map before going to the exit point. The key point was to already be turning before the bee’s nests had landed and being confident, they would hit their targets. It all felt like I was in a film as an assassin and there is slash/flurry of action and without confirming the people fall around me.
With everything being so busy it helps that the art style is focused on big, bold, straight-forward colours and sharp black lines. This more minimalist approach makes each level much readable at a glance, but I still struggled, on occasion, to spot health packs and some special weapons.
Finally, I have to heap praise on the decision to not drag out these runs into the deeply frustrating length that deadened my enjoyment of other games in this genre (I am looking at you Neon White). Too often difficulty = length and in late stages it becomes a game of “Simon Says” instead of engaging with the inventive.
Now all I need to do is go back and get those S Ranks.
Conclusion
I am Your Beast is lean, well paced, and full of style and humour. An essential purchase for anyone that loves to chase a perfect murder run.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
