While I love 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Astro Bot and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elden Ring - two extremely similar games - I’m not always a big action game person. I appreciate the work that goes into them and I certainly appreciate the skill that goes into being good at them. A skill, I might add, that I do not have in spades. I’m not bad at action games, per se, but you’d probably want to pick me for an 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Overwatch team the same way you’d pick me for a real life, in-person dodgeball game: Absolutely last. And only then because mom is making you include me. That’s all to say, I’m not always the action genre’s primary audience. That is, until 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I Am Your Beast gave me an unquenchable thirst for blood.
Before I go on, I do want to lay down a disclaimer: I am friends with some of the people at 168澳洲ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ幸运5开奖网:Strange Scaffold, the company behind the game. That said, apparently I’m not good enough friends, because my ass paid for this game. Ain’t no free code coming to ol’ Mike Drucker. This article is going straight to Steam-related credit card bills. I kept opening my email like it would have an important message from my oncologist. Nothing. So, when I praise this game, let me assure you that it’s coming from a place of honesty and not loyalty. Because these ‘friends’ really dropped the ball this time and - now that I think of it - every other time they’ve released a game. I’m not even sure if they’d consider themselves my friends. Man.
Part of my resistance to action games probably comes from my obsession with narrative. Ever since I was a kid, I loved lore and stories and figuring out what was happening in a game and even outside the boundaries of the screen. Despite being completely linear, I was obsessed with games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 4 and King’s Quest 6 almost solely because they told melodramatic stories that made my little brain sparkle like the stars in the firmament. That said, these aren’t the most fun games to play. If anything, the gameplay sometimes got in the way for my idiot brain. I didn’t mind ♎holding a walkthrough and just, uh, walking my way through a story.. And when just walking your wayꦦ through a story became its own genre, buddy, I was right there for it.
I Am Your Beast doesn’t care about my desires or my wants. It’s an action game. Yes, there is a loose story wrapped around it with small interstitial scenes. Like in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hotline Miami - one of the ༺closest comparisons I can make - the interstitials help set the mood more than just hint at what’s happening between stages. It doesn’t need a grand scroll at the beginning. I don’t have to go through a wiki page of lore to catch up on a Japanese entry in the series that was never translated but does load-bearing lore work. If you buy the game - possibly because yoꦜu incorrectly thought buying a developer a drink at a DICE Party was going to get you into the world of free stuff - you start shooting immediately. The tutorial is done almost before it begins. The game is efficient. It respects your time.
I Am Your Beast Is About Raw Speed
That makes sense, because it’s a game that’s basically just a series of time trials you want to keep coming back to.𝔍 The fact that the levels last only a minute or two at max actually does the impossible and makes it fun to start over again and again and again. You begin t🥂o strategize. A Groundhog Day comparison for anything is cliched, but there is something to dying, instantly respawning at the start of the level, and thinking, “Okay, I’ll move left and draw out the guards from that tunnel by hiding behind a tree and then I can then blow up the area without hurting anyone, which means I can complete the no-kill challenge.”
I do understand this is the bread and butter of many people who enjoy these games. But it’s rarer for me. Maybe I Am Your Beast just fills the hole in my heart left by Superhot or - again - Hotline Miami. But unlike Superhot, I don’t feel like I need to be nearly perfect to move to the next level. I can be messy. When playing I Am Your Beast, I can knife some people while they shoot me. And unlike Hotline Miami, the first-person nature of the game makes it feel all the faster. It takes what those games did and cleanses them of all impurities. It’s what an action game should be, even if it’s an action game that requires me to open my wallet because somebody ༒doesn’t want to respond to my text messages. That said, $20 is a great price for this much enjoyment and, personally, it’s well worth it so I can bring this up any time I see those selfish a-holes.
I Am Your Beast also pulls off another magic trick: It makes me want to do the old ‘just one more turn’ thing. Except without turns. Elden Ring and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom 🅰nailed this for me, but that’s because the moment I got bored or stuck, I could just chart out some other place. Here, you’re basically running through a narrow level and then another narrow level and then, believe it or not, another narrow level. But just the same, I kept wanting to do these levels over. I kept wanting t🦹o see what the next challenge was. Never did I think I was simply done after completing an area. That may be normal for all you nose breathers, but I’m a simple man who once got a trunk door of a car shut on his head. That’s true, and so is my worry that it took something from me I’ll never get back!
None of this is to say that I Am Your Beast is an action game for non-action fans. Even with exact planning, levels still require fast reflexes and faster thinking. And I don’t think too fast. I was once on a legendary run through a level and thought I’d scored the top ranking - only to realize I hadn’t killed one single dude at the very start of the level. The game asks you to constantly be on your guard. The moment you start, there’s a timer running out and you need to go. And all it makes me want to do is kill, kill🏅, kill. If you’re not moving fast, you’re doing it wrong. There’s no chatter from other players demanding you do something stupid. There’s no massive arrow on the ground pointing to the next set piece. Just playgrounds of trees, ropes, cliffs, and deserving victims.
Do the victims deserve it? I dunno. The game gives some of them cartoonish personalities and broad reactions so sometimes you feel bad. But while the game is violent, its focus is on the playing itself. You’re only murdering for its utility at that moment, not the blood. Killing someone with a gun isn’t the same as killing them with a knife or knocking them out. Creative ways to kill enemies aren’t cool because they are gory or have some slick look. They’re cool because you’ve just di🍷scovered a new way to set up traps for the bastards. With every run, you become more brutal, with every run, you want to knock’ em down and stomp ‘em out. Going back to earlier levels after I’ve figured a few things out is like entering the Matrix. It’s a beautiful, compelling thing. Plus, I paid for it, sဣo I better enjoy it.
I'm So Glad We're Getting Action Games That Aren't Soulslikes
Complex, interesting combat d♏oesn’t have to h👍ave a thing to do with swordplay.
