Skydance Interactive is best known for The Living Dead: Saints and Sinners, one of the most popular games on the original PlayStation VR. Combining visceral battles with TWD’s usual dramatic twists, turns, and zombies, it felt like correct VR game.
Behemoth is an action-adventure game that builds on the combat and physics of The Walking Dead games, but focuses more on combat and less on survival. like saints and sinners, there’s still a crafting system, but it’s much simpler, reinforcing the action-adventure slant here. I got to play a part of the game that combines early snippets of tutorials outlining controls and mechanics with more exciting scenery and exploration segments – oh, and a fight with the giant himself.
Shawn Kittelsen, Vice President of Creative, says Behemoth has a more complex combat system. You’ll have to watch enemies, time your counterattacks, and generally think a little more about your strategy instead of just swinging your weapons around in virtual space. This will drain your stamina bar, leaving you unable to dodge or block if you’re not careful. Even though the combat looks tough, you can still swing weapons and deal damage – the limitations turn swinging a plastic PSVR controller into a massive four-pound broadsword. This stamina system helps keep that in check, at least a little.
Kittelsen says the game is slightly inspired by Dark souls for battle dynamics. At the same time, the most fascinating part – a short fight with the giant – reminded me Shadow of the Colossus… from a completely different perspective.
You can split my demo into two halves. The initial part of the demo introduces control systems, traversal techniques, and how to fight other human enemies. Like many VR games, it takes a while to get up to speed. Fortunately, Skydance equipped my character with a magical sword that I could throw and re-summon, Thor-style with a hammer. It didn’t fix my habit of dropping my shield right after fights though.
I tried out bows, axes, and other weapons dropped by human enemies as I progressed through the early parts of the game. I swung across monkey bars and climbed vertical rock walls and ropes, and felt more than a little nervous doing it in a room of game developers and PR people. The wrist-mounted grappling hook adds a bit of speed to exploration, but all these systems together (plus not playing VR on the reg) made me feel a little uncomfortable. The creators have added the ability to reduce your field of view to lessen the effect, but I broke out in a cold sweat during my demo. However, it did not reach the levels of Resident Evil 7the infamous nausea-inducing demonstration.
I went into the second part of my demo, a brief skirmish with a monster called Seal, with some trepidation. Will running and dodging a colossal monster make me feel even more VR sick? It is not so. Maybe it was because I focused on a single target—the giant monster—as I spun around on my grappling hook, firing arrows at its weak points, avoiding stomping feet, and more, it felt… good. That’s a great sign, as my brief fight with the giant was the highlight of the demo. I did die a few times though.
like SatC and recent Zelda games, you can scale this behemoth (if it has the right climbable surface texture). You can also use your grappling hook to lunge at Seal’s knee. You can’t just hang on, as your stamina meter will burn as you approach the giant’s weak spots. In a somewhat flawed approach, I tried using arrows to hit the creature, but inevitably dropped the bow instead of releasing the arrow. This was due to my skills, not the control system.
like Horizon Call of the Mountainclimbing and passing with hands inward Behemoth is fun, but this PSVR2 exclusive is a prettier game. The good news is though Behemoth it comes in almost all modern VR headsets, from Meta’s Quest 2 and up, as well as PC headsets and PSVR2.
The creators say the main campaign will last around 12 hours, with an optional arena mode to fight more enemies — or, hopefully, offer a quick shortcut to fighting the giant. I can’t wait to be crushed again.
Skydance’s Behemoth launched in autumn 2024.
