I Am Your Beast review

One thing I really appreciate in an action game is when enemies are demonstrably shit-scared of the player. No tough guy swagger and cheesy boss lines, just fodder who have bitten off way more than they can chew. The Batman: Arkham games did a great job of this, as did the latter Halo titles. New lightning-fast FPS I Am Your Beast from El Paso Elsewhere developers Strange Scaffold wastes absolutely no time in establishing your character, Harding, as a John Wick-style badass, and it keeps you there for the whole game.

Harding just wants to be left alone. A highly trained operative for the COI, he absconded from service and is trying to live a peaceful life in the forest, until his old employers come calling. They want Harding to do one last job, and they’re prepared to bring him in by any and all means. Maybe the premise is a little shaky, but it’s as solid as it needs to be to support the weight of two to three hours of some of the most satisfying first-person combat I’ve played in a while.

I say two to three hours, but that’s just to scoot through the short, snappy missions with the necessary A or B-grade. It doesn’t include aiming for perfect runs, finishing all the bonus objectives, finding secrets, or playing the huge list of challenge missions that are an entirely separate entity. Realistically there’s five or six times three hours here, but the movement and combat feels so good you may not mind repeating missions and aiming for better scores.

Harding is an instrument of death. He’s the quintessential legendary killer just trying to get by without bothering anyone, but when the agency destroys his home, he vows to murder every one of them with their own guns. Of course, it gets a little more creative than that, but the intention is there.

See, you don’t begin many missions armed. There are guns, knives, bear traps, lumps of wood, and explosives lying around in field tents or in camps, but the fastest way to get a weapon is to take it from an enemy’s dying hands. You scale trees by running at them (they’re signified by snow-covered branches), and can move from tree to tree silently and swiftly. Get the drop on an enemy and it’s an instant kill. When they die they’ll drop whatever they’re armed with and Harding can catch it fluidly.

You have only the ammo that’s in the gun when you pick it up. After that, pressing the trigger will cause Harding to throw it instead, which knocks enemies down for you to stomp to death. The mission timer usually starts when you’re discovered or make your first kill, which is when the enemies will come at you. More stylish kills will improve your mission times, so it pays to be dexterous, something that only comes with practice.

As you pick off enemies with headshots or well-thrown knives, they’ll shout out to each other, and you really get the sense that you’re a mythical presence to them. The game makes reference to Baba Yaga, of course, and you really feel like a creature of nightmare, punishing these fools for their transgressions. You can lay traps, knock enemies down with slide tackles, or pick off two or three at once with a lined-up sniper shot. It is quite easy to get turned around in missions, though, and you’ll need to think super fast to deal with some of the situations.

You’re scored each mission based on manner of kills and speed, but like any good speed-run game you can restart instantly whenever you want and failure drops you right back to the start without fanfare. Mission objectives vary, but almost all of them end with Harding reaching one of his escape hatches.

In between missions the dialogue and voice work is fantastic, selling a believable story and making you invest in Harding and the NPCs he talks to, such as former boss Burkin, or Byron, a reluctant soldier sent to kill him who would rather be anywhere else. It’s not played for laughs, despite the aesthetic, and I was fully sold within just a few missions’ worth of static cutscenes. The narrative here is deceptively strong, and the voice actor playing Harding is fantastic, imbuing every line with pure menace.

Most missions are over inside of two minutes but the game is so smooth you won’t mind replaying them. It helps that it looks gorgeous, with bright, chunky visuals and cartoonist environments. It also runs really well on Steam Deck so it’s ideal for a game to play on the commute or in a waiting room (maybe keep the volume down though, eh?).

I was genuinely a little surprised by I Am Your Beast. Like Children of the Sun, it takes a solid core concept and runs with it, not cluttering it with unnecessary baggage or pomp, in order to deliver a truly memorable, moreish experience that you’ll keep coming back to just because it’s fun. Despite some occasional awkwardness, I Am Your Beast is an excellent FPS like a cross between Superhot and XVIII. Absolutely recommended.