This game has made my Alphonse Harding. Support Group update! TL;DR: 9.75/10. Amazing game, cheap, underrated af, go get it. This review is spoiler free. Dear Diary... Today I 100%'d I Am Your Beast , a game by Strange Scaffold . I've never had played a game from them before but let me tell you, they did a fine first impression. The game reminds me of the frantic pace of Hotline Miami mixed with the gameplay from Neon White , with a little bit of Ultrakill : Go fast, kill everyone as stylishly as you can and reach the goal. The game will give you an A, and show you how close you are to getting an S rank. You feel like you can do better, because you know you can, so you try again. This time, the game proposes a challenge. It's usually a hint on how to do the mission faster and... well, better. Sometimes it's just something fun. You do it, and get a new perspective. You retry and do better. You play again. And again. Until you get that S rank. Yet you know you can do better... Story A lot of people think the purpose of life is to be happy. And that's wrong. The story is better than I expected. I just didn't expect much. Without going into spoilers, you play as Alphonse Harding, ex-COI. You're done ending lives, many times innocent lives, just so some 1% can fill their already filled pockets with some more cash. Five one-last-jobs later, your ex-General Burkin asks you once again for your skills. You decide enough is enough and defend your dignity and humanity by the skin of your teeth. Whatever it takes. The story feels like it's a cliché, but I feel as if it's meant to be like that. You're supposed to feel like a character such as Rambo, and the game does a good job at that. I know I'm not the best shot. I'd say I'm very subpar when it comes to skill (lmao skill issue) but the game helps a lot by having some auto-aim, enabling most people to run and gun effortlessly, as the lore-accurate Harding would. It's a choice I feel some people won't agree with, but for the sake of immersion and fun, I'm all for it. I digress. It's easy to feel empathy with the presented characters, and while the game has some acid humor, it's not the main point. Art It had brown feathers and a red chest - It gleamed against the sky. The art style reminds me a lot of The Long Dark . The snowy landscapes, the cyan, orange, magenta gradient skies, hand-painted textures... Both games made to feel like a comic book, and while The Long Dark takes this art style and gives it a more somber, cozy, lonesome, dare I say realistic direction, I Am Your Beast simply won't allow the cozyness to settle in. You've got a huge, snow white canvas waiting to be painted red. The sound design is very good. The gunshots sound amazing and satisfying and while they play a HUGE part in a first person shooter, I have to give kudos to the voice acting and the music. The VAs did a great job in this game: Xalavier Nelson Jr. , the creative director AND Harding's voice actor does an amazing job at making the character feel natural, and while he whispers a lot, as a lone character talking to himself would, the lines are delivered quite clearly. I personally love the little whispers of "Yeah...", "Alright..." when you complete an objective. It's a neat way of notifying the player diegetically that the objective was completed. The soundtrack, by RJ Lake , is top notch. It fits the general style of the game very well, it's stylish all throughout, it's beautifully calm when it needs to be, and it's very energetic when the game demands, with a neat little addition of a simple dynamic BGM system. The overall art direction fits the game very well. Final thoughts Well, the pleasure's been mine, babe. Give this game a shot. It's not that expensive and you'll get a lot of replayability from this one. It's very well made, and the genre of movement shooter is right up my alley, so if you like action packed games, movement shooters, first person shooters, this is a must buy. If you don't enjoy FPSs that much or you're not too fond of movement shooters, I would still recommend you give this one a try. The game never forces you to play at peak performance, it's a satifying experience. My only serious complaints about the game would need to be the climbing/parkour mechanic, as a game dev I understand it's hard to make something like that as smooth as possible, but in a game with such tight control and gameplay, it's a shame I sometimes get stuck in a climbable ledge, or fall through a rope. That and the fact the fact that the weapon and item pick up button is the same as the interact button. Finishing a level just to be denied of actually ending it just for me to realize I picked up a herb or a weapon instead of interacting with a laptop is something that happened more than once, and while I'd usually say it's a skill issue from me (I'm not denying that though), objective laptops are usually filled with armor, health and weapons around, so it's easy to pick them up by accident instead of doing the objective. I 100% the game in 11 hours and 30 minutes of gameplay, but I basically ate the levels. I'm not that good, so if you're a pro gamer, you can probably 100% it in around 9 hours or less. Update:The Support Group I don't think Alphonse Harding is human. I think he can fly. Strange Scaffold has put the modern gaming industry to shame by releasing such a great update with content that would be DLC in many other games completely for free . Props to you guys. While the Challenges mission set are considered non-canon, Strange Scaffold has released a canon 9 mission long campaign with a very creative setting: You, still as Harding, experience tales from surviving members from the COI, as they share their traumatic experiences with one another. With new music and game mechanics, the Support Group is an epilogue to the story, meant to further challenge the player with harder S-Ranks and challenges. Without spoiling, the missions feature some interesting stuff that will leave you questioning whether or not the survivors are sharing true stories or tall tales. It's more of the game, made to be challenging, may net you some more hours of gameplay, so there's absolutely nothing to complain about this. Amazing work.
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