VR has been chasing its next killer app ever since the release ofHalf-Life: Alyx. Valve’s long awaited adventure felt like the unmissable game you needed to get a VR headset to experience, but despite some solid entries into the medium since then -Asgard’s Wrath 2being the most notable - nothing has pierced through the mainstream as a not-to-be-missed extravaganza.Behemothis looking to change that.
After getting my hands on it atGamescom, I can confidently say it’s the meatiest VR experience I’ve ever had. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s tough to infer weightiness in virtual reality. In a regular video game, your character might heave and wobble as they pick up a heavy object, but in VR, whether it’s a feather or an anvil, you can go right up to it, press the trigger, and raise your weightless arm upwards. VR can’t really counteract that - it can make it impossible to pick something up unless you move slowly and simulate weight, but that doesn’t convince the player they’re holding anything heavy. But Behemoth has cracked the code.
Behemoth Is The Most ‘Hands On’ VR Has Ever Been
In Behemoth, you have a wide array of weapons, with every enemy you meet lootable. In my 30 minutes with the game, half of which was spent traversing, I found a katana, a dagger, and a short sword, on top of the two ‘hero weapons’ you’ll always have on you - a great sword and an axe. It’s the axe that gives the game a sense of weight. While most games give you a harder swing the faster you move in real life (as makes sense) Behemoth is tied to range of motion, carrying over the legacy from The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners from the same developers. So, if you want to powerfully swing the axe from over your shoulder, you’ll need to lean back and heave forward, as if carried by the heft of metal itself, to bring it crashing down on the boulders in your path or an enemy’s head.
This does make the game more tiring (I played five VR games in total at Gamescom, and this was the only one I ached from), but also a more rewarding experience. Combat was fairly intuitive too, with a parry system that let you take risks and a range of movement. As well as pulverising enemies with my axe, I killed them with jabs in the eye, slashes across the torso, one (unfortunately not very graphic) unseaming from the navel to the chops, and even by plunging my sword into the exposed neck of an armoured guard, leaving them to bleed out in a crumpled heap on the dungeon floor.
Of course, while there are lots of human enemies to massacre, the main draw for Behemoth is the titular Behemoths. These are massive, scalable enemies that you will hunt down and, eventually, conquer. Inspired byShadow of the Colossus, these mighty titans need to be toppled or climbed before you can fight them, bringing a grand sense of scale into VR. The dev team even told me that Shacklehide, one of the bosses who has been previously shown off at public demos, was retooled to be doubled in size to push VR to its limits since he last saw the light of day.
Dreddstagg Highlights The Scale Of Behemoth
However, the enemy I fought at Gamescom was Dreddstag, one of the later enemies, and the physically largest in the game. He towers above players - I barely came up to his ankles, but that didn’t matter when they held the key to victory. Racing ahead of him as he shambled around an area, I had to tie his ankle collars to nearby rings and beams to rip his shackles away, then tie both ankles together to bring him crashing down. From here I could finally climb him and start to deal damage, or would have if my time with the game wasn’t up.
Even in that short burst, I felt a scale in VR that I’d never experienced before. However, it also felt a little contrived. Why he was walking in a circle, why those rings and beams existed, and even why I wanted to kill him wasn’t clear. Demos that drop you in later do sacrifice the narrative, so I understand I’d learn more about my journey had I earned my way there, but it still felt a little like the PS3 era when you’d walk into a warehouse with lots of health packs and ammo dotted around crates you could cover behind and you realised this was where the boss battle would be. VR is a newer medium, and is in the business of catching up quickly.
This battle also relies on physics and traversal, and that’s the only area I’m concerned is a little overcooked. While fighting is motion driven, with just basic button use to activate super strength or grab a weapon, the heavy use of ropes as pulleys means tapping a lot more buttons than I’d like when flying blind, and I often detached myself when trying to tie a loop around a beam, falling to my death. I’m sure I’d get it with a bit of muscle memory, and checkpoints were generous and frequent, but if Behemoth has a failing it would be in its overambitious attempt to move on from Saints & Sinners with a blockbuster approach, and it does feel as though there might be a little much going on in traversal.
Still, that’s a minor gripe for a game aiming to push VR forward in both gameplay and scope, a goal that (from my brief time with it at least) it seems capable of achieving. Launching on November 14 for Quest (PS VR2 and Steam are coming later), this could be the biggest VR game of 2024, or possibly ever - in more ways than one.
Skydance’s Behemoth
WHERE TO PLAY
Taking place in the Forsaken Lands, Skydance’s Behemoth is an action adventure game designed for VR platforms. As Wren the Hunter, you must take on a series of monstrous Behemoths and free your village from its troubles.
