izigame.me

This is one of the most difficult reviews I’ve ever had to write. If there would be an option to leave a neutral review, I’d choose it because the game is not ”bad”. It is actually really solid and you’ll like it a lot as a regular consumer that wants to enjoy a good horror game with the versatile gameplay and strong story. But if you are a trophy hunter/patient gamer, read the second part of this review.

Part 1. The game is good. But

If you like good horror games defined by three things – great story, immersive gameplay and understanding of fear, this game will fit the right spot. Here’s the list of games you’ll be reminded of while playing it: Amnesia series, Layers of Fear, Alan Wake, Outlast, Resident Evil (7), The Vanishing of Ethan Carter… Sounds pretty packed right? Because it is. What makes the game stand out though is how versatile it wants to be while still following some classic cliches. ‘The Beast Inside’ is the Frankenstein that wants to give you some psychological horror with eventually unfolding story like Amnesia, with the tense background like in Layers of Fear. And also it wants to give you some really rapid and thrilling chase like Outlast! Oh yeah, and what about a boss fight with the gun like in Alan Wake?! We’ll give you just one… and then the gun will be gone forever and you’ll be back to Amnesia world again. Oh wait, do you remember this crazy Margarite lady from Resident Evil 7 and the disgusting swamp she lived in?.. Well here you go and grab some stealth mechanics too! Oh wait-wait-wait, and do you also want to play a completely different character at the same time who is like a code cracker and has to solve some unimaginably difficult puzzles and hunt for Soviet spies? What makes me positive about it is how the game is allowed to combine well-known cliches of horror genre and also some really new and fresh ideas. But I also think that the game carries all this crazy mix pretty well.

But what you also should expect from the game, is the imminent downsides coming from all the things I mentioned above. The story sometimes tries to present itself as more difficult it actually is. Some chapters are bloated with unnecessary repetitions of the same levels. A lot of levels do not actually reference other games but copy them entirely. Remember the iconic invisible water monster from Amnesia and how you escaped it? You’re going to get the exact same level here, copied step by step. Remember the level from RE7 when you had to run and hide from Margarite? Here’s the exact same character and the level here. Remember the mines sequence with zombie miners and the wagon thing from ‘The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’? Guess what.

But overall, this is a really good game. It is a solid project that was clearly made with lots of love, even though sometimes the developers mixed ‘appreciation’ with ‘appropriation’. But as a consumer that wanted to have a blast with some really intriguing and twisted game, I enjoyed it.

Part 2. If you’re a trophy hunter… beware

1) The game does not respect your time. It doesn’t allow you to have separate saves, so if you mess up and miss at least one collectible, you’ll have to restart the entire chapter. In the last chapter when you’ll have to get all four endings to have an achievement, you’ll have to restart the entire chapter, and the save before the crucial cut-scene won’t actually work just… because.
2) It’s way longer than it should be, and if you’re a patient gamer, eventually you’ll just stop having fun with it because some things are really overdone and it’s not good.
3) Some implemented mechanics don’t work properly. The game got a lot of stuff from Amnesia, but didn’t do it well. The movable objects will get stuck and block your way or bug your character leading to restarting the check-points. The turning objects take forever to turn which will piss you off in fast chasing sequences.
4) The game does not understand the principle of limitation. It wants to be Amnesia really bad, but there are no truly dark places, and all the consumables are lying everywhere which becomes a joke by the end of the game. The develops don’t really know how to reward and punish gamers which ruins one of the most important gameplay aspects of Amnesia-inspired game.
5) Achievements. That’s what inspired me to turn the blue color of this review to red. The game does not respect your time and efforts. In order to get the ‘platinum’ you should have all the achievements being listed in one specific document that updates not with achievements that pop out in your Steam page but with the interactions within the game. In order to get all endings you have to replay the entire last chapter and watch the same unskippable cutscenes. It may take you an hour to do. Well, I had all saves from the first playthrough to get back to the last chapter and got screwed. Because you actually shouldn’t touch this one file that counts your achievements manually like we came from Middle ages. So I had to waste around two hours to just understand why the most important achievement doesn’t pop out for all the efforts I put into the game I really liked. It’s exhausting. And really not fun.