RPG Snowy Fantasy will make you feel the cold

To put your name in front of a game title, you need to be a game studio or developer of a certain level. Sid Meier's Civilization. Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding. Behemoth from Skydance. It doesn't quite match the rest of the list, does it? But it's a sign of Skydance's lofty ambitions and what it hopes to achieve with its epic VR fantasy story.

These high ambitions are placed on equally high Behemoths. These four huge bosses are the most ambitious, exciting, and impressive fights in the game, but they threaten everything in between.

Immersive world

Skydance Nail Dive. Turning keys and parrying blows, you will feel like a real hero opening real doors and fighting real enemies. Craning your neck to see the Behemoth's head gives bosses an impressive sense of scale that is much harder to achieve in traditional games. This is what VR is made for, what I envisioned when I first bought the headset and plugged it into my mainframe.

It doesn't matter that the graphics are nothing to write home about when the scale of the environment is so impressive. It doesn't matter that there are a few glitches when (for the most part) you can immediately dive back into the world, hooking the giant beast's ankle.

There are quite a few bugs, but hopefully the planned day 7 patch (since when was that?) should fix them. By the time you're stuck in a corner because you tried to search in the wrong corner or explore the wrong gap, you need to reload from your last autosave. This can cause you to lose a lot of your progress, so maybe hold on to your famous horses until the patch.

Fresh battles

The eponymous Behemoths are the stars of the show, but to get to the four impressive battles, you have to make your way through countless raiders and guards. The combat is enjoyable enough, but the amount of this game's eight hour runtime spent fighting the giant beasts it models its marketing on is surprisingly small.

Combat favors coolness rather than realism, which I don't mind. Being able to throw daggers through opponents' heads to kill them instantly feels great when you're actually throwing a real dagger (Editor's Note: The dagger remains fake), so I don't mind the knife penetrating two layers of steel helmet to kill my enemy. However, when your shield takes noticeable, real damage from blocking attacks, you wonder if the whole knife and helmet thing was an oversight or just a bug.

The combat feels good, if inconsistent. You really feel like a warrior when you parry and slash with a melee weapon against the warming flesh. However – and I don't know if it was a problem with my timing or the game itself – neither the parry nor the block registered with much regularity. Pairs I thought I nailed sometimes failed to connect, blocks that seemed sure to stop a hit resulted in health damage. On the other hand, sometimes I would swing wildly (hey, that's a proper battle tactic) and somehow parry perfectly. However, when it works, it feels great.

The satisfying combat is unfortunately completely undermined by your strength. A kind of “Ultimate” that you can use every 15 seconds, it makes you incredibly strong. It gives you more speed, health, and homing daggers for the duration of its effect. Why deal with parrying and dodging when you can just wait a bit for your ult and blast through a room of guards with ease?

Battles also usually take place in designated battle arenas, removing any sense of tension or uncertainty the game was trying to create. It's these archaic design decisions that hold Behemoth back.

It also represents the only semblance of a story in the game. You are cursed, as is your entire village, and ridding this world of Behemoths is your only path to healing. Also, I'm not entirely sure why you're looking for a cure. Because the curse gives you stupid powers? The logic does not add up. Perhaps a selfless protagonist would have played better (the other afflicted villagers just rot and die instead of gaining powers), but Ren has no personality, no character development, and no interesting NPCs to interact with.

The ground shakes as you approach. Your head rises to the top of their nails. Your neck hurts as you crane it to try and catch a glimpse of their faces.

It seems like Skydance got so caught up in epic boss battles that they forgot what games are really about: stories, people. Behemoth's fights feel incredible, but I don't departure about their murder. I just did it because the game told me to. There are no choice-based decisions, branching narratives, or optional quests or conversations. Even within the limits that many other games have, I wasn't sure why my character wanted to do any of this.

It's a linear game designed to take you through guard after guard to serve up a delicious plate of Roasted Behemoth every couple of hours. It sounds boring, and it often feels like it, but those boss fights almost make up for the brilliance of, well, everything else.

Ren's opponents are the savior of Skydance

Behemoths carry this game. They are just as terrifying and impressive as the trailers suggest. Have you ever wanted to play Shadow of the Colossus in VR? Well, here's your chance. The ground shakes as you approach. Your head goes up to their nails. Your neck hurts as you crane it to try and catch a glimpse of their faces.

Climbing on the back of a giant to hit it in the weak spot is hardly creative game design, but it's a first for VR, and it's quite something. Even with my standard travel nausea pills (which generally worked pretty well), there are times when the dizziness sets in and you really feel like you're tiptoeing over the shoulders of a creature hundreds of feet in the air. Skydance provides a deep dive into Behemoth, but the fact that you don't believe such an incredibly fantastic battle shows the mastery of the medium.

But boss fights are not only visually impressive. This is where Skydance invested most of their mechanical invention. Covering your ears to protect yourself from the giant bat's screams works well as a combat defense, reminiscent of Half-Life's Alyx vs. Jeff mechanic (covering your mouth later in the game feels a bit derivative in comparison). The hook shot feels great throughout the game, whether you're jumping across chasms or pulling enemies into them, but it really comes into its own when picking up a huge creature.

Behemoth's combat has shades of Shadow of the Colossus, shades of Dragon's Dogma 2, but unfortunately the rest of the game lacks the atmosphere of the first or the generative storytelling of the second.

Skydance's Behemoth is a big step forward for VR, but a step back for gaming

Behemoth has a lot of extras that seem unnecessary because they're made in fantasy RPGs, not because they fit this game. There's rudimentary mastery (it's cool to wield a hammer and anvil in VR, but the mastery itself is pointless) and incredibly simple puzzles, none of which serve much of a purpose. I'd prefer a half-decent story, any kind of Ren's character design, or fixing the many technical issues – the pop-up is pretty ridiculous, not to mention the framerate drops – over a simplistic blacksmithing sim.

Skydance clearly understands virtual reality. He understands that VR games rely on spectacle and immersion, and he nails those aspects of the genre. Behemoth is an impressive VR game. Or at least the boss fights are probably the best Wednesday has to offer. But is it a good video game? Not really. Is it comparable to the Elden Ring? Does it compare to Shadow of the Colossus, the 20-year-old game it so maligns? The answer is negative.

VR is still waiting for its Breath of the Wild moment. Climbing is still only allowed on certain surfaces, certain rocks, certain areas of hideous dry giant bat skin. This is very much a “yellow paint” scenario. Battles only take place in prescribed arenas. It is not recommended to stray from the planned path. Enemy AI is basic. The plot can be non-existent. Behemoth makes the most of its medium, but I can't wait for the first VRPG to abandon these archaic design philosophies in favor of complete virtual freedom.