okay, so ironically, out of all the VR games I had the pleasure of playing whilst I was at Gamescom last week, Behemoth is the one I have the most to say about. And now that I can talk about it, I've lost my voice. Seriously, my throat feels about five sizes too small right now, and my voice is at least three octaves lower. So sadly, I'm going to keep it much more concise and straight to the point with this video. First off, do you see this game right here? Do you know what this game is? If you answered yes, then we should probably be friends. Maybe we should grab a pizza or a beer sometime because you clearly have impeccable taste in video games, and I respect you a great deal. This is, of course, Shadow of the Colossus, a seminal PS2 game that blew my mind straight out of the back of my head when I played it all those years ago. I, and I'm sure most other people, had never seen anything like this before: a mysterious, ambiguous, mystical adventure with essentially no

dialogue that sent players on a quest to take down 16 giant beasts with nothing more than your trusty steed, a sword, a bow, and a dream. Honestly, the feeling of climbing all over these varied and incredible creatures has stuck with me ever since I played the original, and I've returned to it time and time again over the years just to see how it holds up. And boy, does it hold up. This game still blows me away in 2024, even just thinking about that incredible score. Damn, what a genuine masterpiece. I wish someone would make something like this again, maybe even in VR. How crazy would that be? Flash forward to 2024, and those mad scientists at Sky Dan Interactive have bloody done it. The team that gave us the incredible Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners are about to blow everyone's minds with Behemoth, a game that mixes the physics-based combat of Saints and Sinners with the awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, and vertigo-inducing giant encounters that popularized Shadow of the Colossus all those years ago.

seriously, alongside Batman Arkham Shadow, it feels like these two titles really have the potential to move the needle for high-end VR and truly Behemoth in particular. Whilst running on a top-end PC, all maxed out and looking incredible, feels like the first genuinely triple AVR game I've played in quite some time. The short demo I went hands-on with at Gamescom, which you will be seeing a mixture of 4K b-roll and genuine raw gameplay from my session throughout this video, was a perfect introduction to this new adventure. I felt the weight of combat, I got to grips with the movement mechanics, I marveled at the gorgeous environments, and I went toe-to-toe with the dread stack, the biggest of the behemoths we'll be facing when the game comes out this November, in a section of gameplay that made me feel things I haven't felt in VR for quite some time. Okay, in the interest of keeping this video short for my throat's sake, I'll speak today about the main

focus of the demo, the Behemoth encounter itself. Now, I do have thoughts about every other aspect of the game that I encountered, and I did engage in a short section of combat, but it wasn't quite enough to form a fully rounded opinion on that particular aspect of the game. At a very basic level, it felt extremely weighty, like a true evolution of the combat from Saints and Sinners. The enemies felt aggressive, and the game is clearly geared towards parrying, blocking, and timing your attacks to capitalize on the best moments to break through their defenses. But the way you approach combat is entirely up to you. I can see some players really leaning into the physics-driven systems here to create some epic-looking fight scenes. After all, you can mix and match all the tools in your arsenal to take on enemies, and you can even pick up the weapons the enemies drop on the fly to improvise if you're caught short. Enemies can be dismembered, weapons can be thrown at high velocity, and players have a rage mode that can be

activated to assist you in really leaving your way through any flesh that stands in your way. It felt exciting, heavy, and certainly not mindless. I just need a little more time with the combat to find my footing and really get a feel for how each encounter will play out, so I'll speak about it in more depth when my full review drops closer to [Music] release. Okay, let's get into this, the Behemoth encounter, facing off against the dread stack. Oh my God, what a rush. This is officially the biggest Behemoth that you'll face over the course of the game. Dread stag is a skyscraper-sized, living, breathing, moving NPC creature that you need to climb from toe to Temple, and I have never seen anything like this in a VR game before. One thing I'm always preaching about in VR is the sense of scale it provides. It's something you can't truly capture or convey in flat-screen video, and frustratingly, it's one of the biggest selling points for VR as a medium, so let

me just tell you right now in plain English. I have never seen anything this big in VR before. I have never encountered anything that felt this size in any video game ever before in my life. And the fact I could climb this creature or whilst it roamed around and occasionally tried to remove me from its body felt like a reset for my brain. I mean, I thought I'd seen it all in VR, but scaling The Dread stag made VR feel brand new again. My previously solid VR legs turned to jelly as I crept ever higher, and the childlike wonder it filled me with every time I took in my surroundings whilst parked up at one of these safe spots on my journey upwards was genuinely magical. After my demo wrapped up, I sat with the senior vice president of creative for Behemoth, Sha Kson, and he said something that really stuck with me. Truth be told, he said a lot of incredible things, and his passion was infectious, but I've mulled this particular statement over a couple of times when I mentioned my legs turning

to jelly whilst climbing the dread stag. She said they don't ever want to make players feel motion sick, but they are fine with making players uncomfortable. That statement almost perfectly sums up my encounter with this Beast for the first time in years. I felt a small hint of fear and discomfort climbing this thing. I'm not great with Heights, and behemoth reminded me of that over and over again. Climbing this thing wasn't as simple as putting one hand in front of another. Oh no, it's a mixture of climbing, shooting your grappling hook, taking a leap of faith, swinging, mantling, and investigating to find the right route upwards. Honestly, there were a few instances of swinging around the side of this Beast that genuinely challenged me in the best way possible. And it isn't as simple as just walking up to the behem and then grabbing its leg to start climbing. Oh no, these beasts are also like giant puzzles, and just starting your Ascent is something you'll need to figure out. Here with the dread stack, I had to use my Empire Strikes

Back knowledge to tie the creature's legs together, forcing it down onto one knee to access my first foothold. Now, sadly, I will admit during my short 30-minute demo, I did not manage to kill the beast. But every time I fell down, I wanted to get straight back up and jump into it again, which the game allowed thanks to its generous checkpoint platforms on your journey upwards. All in all, this encounter with the dread stag was my favorite moment from Gamescom, a week packed with incredible VR games and experiences, and I cannot wait to do it all over again at home, where I will definitely be finishing the fight. I really do want to keep talking about this game, but I've been cursed with this painful tight throat, so let me just lightly touch on the grappling hook itself and the visuals of the game. The grappling hook definitely has a learning curve to it, and it isn't as simple as just shooting towards a point and automatically zipping towards it. Players have a lot of agency and control over

how they use this device. You can hang from the rope and swing back and forth to gain momentum. You can grapple onto something and then physically climb the rope with your hands. You can grapple a point, reel yourself in towards it, and then fling yourself off the other side to shoot to another grapple point. It's a complex device that will take players a little bit of time to fully gel with. I felt myself finally getting comfortable with it right at the end of my 30-minute demo. So, if you're struggling with the mechanics initially, stick with it and keep practicing. It's a versatile tool that will no doubt play into every aspect of the gameplay, and before long, you'll be swinging around behemoths like Spider-Man, propelling yourself towards the top at high speed. Now, the team at Sky Dan have also communicated to me that they've heard players' worries about the grappling hook being fixed to the left hand. Left-handed players have voiced their concerns, and the team have heard them. But I haven't received

confirmation as of yet that there will be a left-handed mode at launch. Watch this space. It's something else that I'll communicate as soon as I know for sure. Finally, I played my demo on PC VR using a Quest 3, and it looked absolutely fantastic. Everything had a high level of polish; textures were high quality, lighting was beautiful, cave walls looked wet and had a real sheen to them. Enemies and environmental elements cast shadows across the world. It had everything you'd expect from a high-end PC VR title and certainly looks like it's utilizing a very similar art style to Walking Dead Saints and Sinners, particularly when it comes to the human enemies you'll be facing. They have that same semi-cartoonish look to them, a stylized sort of realism. I can't speak, however, to how the game looks on native standalone devices. Behemoth is coming to Quest 3 and Quest 2, which baffles me beyond belief. I'm very excited to see what kind of magic Sky Dance have worked to get

this game running on Meta's devices, but during my talk with Sha, he said that across all platforms, the core gameplay is exactly the same. It's just the fancy visual stuff that needs to be scaled back to get something like this running on those more power-restricted devices. I have so much more to say, but frankly, I can't. So, in conclusion, Behemoth felt like a true AAA VR product that I cannot wait to play through in its entirety. It wasn't without its issues during my play session; a few bugs did rear their ugly heads. For example, a checkpoint didn't activate after a death, meaning I needed to get myself killed to force it to work. And sometimes, whilst climbing the dread stag, my hands would shake and almost clip through the surfaces I was trying to grab as the beast's body moved. But it's all hands on deck now in the run-up to launch. There should be ample time to hopefully squash all of these pesky bugs and ensure the game is as smooth as physically possible come November. But I don't envy the team at

Sky Dan, after all players are climbing on a giant moving NPC, and no two players will likely climb the same way using the same tools or the same platforms. That is one hell of a bug-fixing challenge right there. Behemoth is shaping up to be not only the most ambitious game that Sky Dan has made, but easily one of the most ambitious games we've ever seen in VR. If the team at Sky Dan can stick the landing, it looks like they're about to have another huge hit on their hands, and potentially something even more impactful than Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. November 14th cannot come soon enough. I'm going to go and have a tea with some honey and lemon. Oh my God, my throat is killing me. Peace out, much love, take care. [Music] [Music] oh [Music]

BEHEMOTH is a TRIPLE A VR GAME! // Hands-on With One of The BEST VR Games of 2024

BEHEMOTH is a TRIPLE A VR GAME! // Hands-on With One of The BEST VR Games of 2024

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