Introduction
When it comes to virtual reality blockbusters, Skydance Interactive has plenty of acclaim off the back of its two instalments of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. This time the studio has embarked on its own original IP – and is clearly trying to capitalise on its reputation, given the game’s full name is Skydance’s Behemoth.
A Meta Quest and PS VR2-friendly version of Shadow of the Colossus is certainly a very appealing pitch, and when you’re dealing with gigantic beasts, it’s a sense of scale that sounds perfect for the medium. It’s however also a game with a focus on melee-based action – something VR tends to struggle with compared to just picking up a gun to aim and shoot. So, is Behemoth worth the crack or does it collapse upon itself?
Raging and forsaken
Set in the harsh Forsaken Lands, you play as a partly customisable warrior named Wren tasked with ridding the land of a curse that they’re also afflicted with, and the way to do that is to fell the Behemoths that roam these lands. Only there’s far fewer of these than you might expect, certainly nowhere near the number in Shadow of the Colossus. Still, when you see them, often craning your head up to do so, it’s a real spectacle, one that Skydance is happy to tease out for a while before you actually get to face off against them.
If that sounds like padding, that’s because it is. Not quite doing what it says on the tin, you actually spend a larger portion of Behemoth fighting against regular-sized enemies, marauders who have gone mad from the curse. While you can acquire bows and throwing knives, your main experience of combat is up close with melee weapons like swords and axes, with the ability to pick up and discard them as you find them, fitting them on either side of your waist and shoulders. That said, this becomes a bit obsolete as you’ll also gradually acquire permanent weapons imbued with special abilities that can also be upgraded, which you can also recall to your hand a bit like Kratos’ axe in God of War.
You also have a grappling hook that allows you to attach to parts of the environment, usually with roped tied around it, which you can then use to zip over to, swing across platforms, or rappel down with. It also has upgrades during the story for more functions, including for puzzles where you can use it to attach to a crate to yank over, or even for yanking over enemies.
There’s a lot of tools at your disposal then. The highlight is perhaps rage mode, which you can use for a brief time that allows you to break through rocks or deal greater damage to enemies, including dismembering them in ridiculously gory fashion, like punching a guy’s head right off.
Colossal blow
Yet for all the fun ideas in Behemoth, it’s the execution that holds it all back to turn much of it into a frustrating slog. When it comes to fighting regular enemies – and there’s an awful lot of them, just when you thought you got through the last wave – it wants to be a sort of VR Dark Souls, focusing on heft and precision. The problem is compared to something more intuitive like a shooter, you can’t really create a sense of heft from just holding a pair of VR controllers, two-handing weapons being the most awkward thing to simulate. What you end up finding is that your own real-time hand swings aren’t in sync with your virtual ones that are supposed to behave more realistically, except there’s also times I try bearing a blade down but it’s somehow stuck and only lightly taps the enemy’s helmet.
It’s also important to play defensively because even though you can pick up wooden shields with pretty limited durability, you’re meant to block or parry oncoming attacks by angling your sword so that it’s side-on to the direction they’re going to strike. Maybe there were times where it was a skill issue but more often than not I felt like the tracking of how I positioned my weapon was just off, whereas some enemies you can just try slashing in whatever direction and not land a hit – these also being the ones that only expose themselves if you successfully parry.
Sometimes the action is frantic, calling for you to quickly adapt and change weapons but this also feels messy in execution, with many occasions I find myself grabbing the wrong weapon or squeezing the wrong trigger for a different unintended interaction. You might just prefer to lower the difficulty to handle the tedium of these melee skirmishes. Using rage mode also feels like a necessity more than a simply cool power as any way to get through these fights felt like a blessing. Suffice to say that Skydance including an optional Arena Mode, designed for you to just fight against escalating waves of enemies, sounds more like my idea of torture.
They may be giant (bugs)
It’s a shame because Behemoth is often an impressive game to be immersed in, its harsh environments still occasionally giving way to stunning vistas. In the case of one recurring character usually encountered wearing a full suit of armour, it’s not afraid to have him remove his helmet so you can appreciate his detailed facial animations, whereas other games might have elected to keep it on and save costs.
Then of course, there are the Behemoths themselves. When you do finally face these enormous towering titans, they do live up to what you expect, not so much a traditional boss (leave that to the numerous sub-bosses) as they are giant puzzles to traverse to make your way to the weak points. There’s a number of phases to the fights too, such as one winged behemoth where you start by fighting at the top of a tower and then the next when you’re grabbed onto its legs as it takes flight in the air while you try to scale its back.
Unfortunately, even this isn’t immune to bugs that blight the experience. Too often what should have been a straightforward and satisfying interaction turns into repeated frustrating trial and errors. In another case, after an annoying fight with a sub-boss where I almost defeated them only to die at the last moment, upon reloading they suddenly died, robbing me of any sense of achievement, even if there was some relief I wouldn’t have to make another attempt.
Behemoth verdict
With inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus and the ambition to be an Asgard’s Wrath not just for Quest headsets, Behemoth could have been something pretty special as a much needed blockbuster hit for VR. Given the graphical prowess and the many ideas it has, in conjunction with facing the actual titular foes themselves, it had all the ingredients for it.
Sadly, it’s more of a colossal disappointment. It’s not just because it doesn’t fully live up to its own title while making you go through slogs of battles against normal-sized enemies with a melee combat system that sounds good on paper but a chore in practice in VR, but also the litany of bugs that further undermine any saving graces. Post-launch patches will know no doubt iron enough issues (another including how on PSVR2 you could only play in seated mode at launch) that might bump up the final score by a star. In any case, this isn’t a VR blockbuster ready for this holiday season.