What is fear, fear is an emotional response to visual and auditory stimulation brought on by danger and or the perception of danger. The horror genre has been able to play on those emotions to deliver games that will make you jump out of your seat or even have issues sleeping at night. The beast inside takes the player through a story of past and present while solving puzzles and obstacles. This, of course, is while being shocked and frightened at various turns. This is our review of The Beast Inside.
The Beast Inside released October 17, 2019, by developer “Illusion Ray Studio” is a very unique twist on the thriller/horror type survival games. Players are immersed in a story that focuses around two protagonists that bounce back between past and present. Adam who is a CIA Cryptanalyst leaves the city to Blackstone with his wife, Emma. His timeline is set in the Cold War and his job, of course, is to decipher military codes and his work may even alter the course of the war itself. His plans of working in the believed peaceful woodland area maybe, well not what he was hoping for.
I would say this game falls in the same lines as Amnesia: the Dark decent as they have very similar mechanics. Do not get me wrong I am not bagging on this at all in fact for me this is a plus. Recently I have been lucky to experience a bit more of the horror genre than before and has allowed me to experience different mechanics and ideas that are very indulgent to me. One of my favorite mechanics is the ability to interact with my environment, by having this type of interaction a player will have a better sense of being part of the story. When I think of being immersed I do not think just a good story is everything. At times you need to feel like you are right there getting your hands dirty and of course, getting randomly scared out of your mind is key.
Graphically speaking the game is very appealing as the developer has made good use of the unreal engine combined with a 3D Scanned environment. The texturing of the models is very well on point with only minor glitches from time to time. The attention to detail on each area very well thought out and plenty of items to interact with. Some items even hold hints or messages to help drive the story. Right at the start, you find a hidden spot with a box that requires you to break the code in order to access it. This immediately thrilled me as puzzles and challenges really get my mind working. I will admit at first it took me a moment to realize when the game switched from one character to another, I thought at first I was merely transferred in time or seeing the past. Well once the reality of what was going on set in and my dumb moment was over I moved on.
There would be no horror games without the use of a good soundtrack and audio effects. Everything from the simple musical tones during the calm scenes to the random horror sounds during encounters more than aided in making me jump a few times. Already know this was a horror survival game it was a bit surprising to hear the main protagonist use let’s say strong language. The beast inside is no tame beast by any stretch of the imagination, if you are looking for gore and violence then look no further. The beginning of the game sets the mood right away with a very nice visual display of a severed head and a good detail knife.
The overall gameplay as mentioned was focused on interactions but after a few hours in-game it does seem to switch focus to a more of a First-person Shooter. This of course for me was easy to overlook as story-driven games often need to include various elements to keep things going. The controls were tested both with a traditional keyboard and mouse as well as the use of a wired USB Xbox controller. Both were fairly easy to adjust to and play with no input lag.
