I Am Your Beast review: Speedy spy thriller

With I Am Your Beast, Strange Scaffold channels the vibes of classic action films. This revenge story is the perfect set-up for a combat and movement system that made me feel like an unstoppable force of nature. Once again, this studio has delivered an experience that feels wholly unique.

Going rogue

I Am Your Beast follows Alphonse Harding, a retired special agent who gets pulled in for one last job. As he dashes through the North American wilderness, he comes face-to-face with covert operatives tasked with bringing him down. Harding is more than a man and proves to be quite the handful for his pursuers.

I love how I Am Your Beast slowly doles out its story throughout the campaign. In the beginning, you know very little about Agent Harding or the people trying to kill him. In between missions, cryptic conversations with your superior and other characters provide a slow drip of information to the player. It felt right in line with classic spy thrillers like the Bourne series.

The story's intensity is enhanced by a jamming soundtrack composed by RJ Lake, who has worked on previous Strange Scaffold titles.

I Am Your Beast delightfully jabs at the military-industrial complex and the cliches of the genre it’s replicating. Despite its serious tone, I couldn’t help but laugh plenty of times throughout my playthrough.

One man army

I Am Your Beast creates the ultimate power fantasy with its combat and level design. Each stage is essentially a mini sandbox filled with weapons, hazards, and enemies that can be dispatched in seemingly countless ways. You could hand 10 people the controller and put them on the same stage, and they’ll all clear it in 10 different ways.

I mentioned Harding’s superhuman capabilities earlier, and they shine through in combat. He can climb trees like a monkey and leap great distances like The Incredible Hulk. Every projectile is a weapon that can be used to knock out or kill enemies. One of my favorite things to do was shoot a bunch of enemies with a gun and then, once I was out of bullets, use it as a projectile and fling it at someone’s head. It’s the same satisfying feeling that I got from playing Superhot. Levels are also carefully designed so that you can use your surroundings to your advantage, like setting up traps or destroying explosive barrels.

At the end of each level, you’re scored based on factors such as enemies killed and time to completion. This creates a speedrunning element as I was hardly ever satisfied after my first time clearing a level. I needed to go back and plot the optimal route, killing enemies and moving through a level as efficiently as possible.

Each level in I Am Your Beast also features a unique challenge for all the completionists out there. One level early on tasked me with clearing the level without killing any enemies, which proved much more difficult than I expected.

The way levels are implemented makes I Am Your Beast an excellent game for playing in short bursts. Whether it be a quick couple of levels on my Steam Deck or attempting to beat my personal record on a level while waiting to game with friends, I loved how easy it was to jump in and out without sacrificing progress.

One hang-up I had was with the way you transition between levels. When you clear a level, there is no option to immediately start the next one, only to replay the current level again. It was tedious having to back out and manually select the next cutscene so that I could play the following level. This feels like the result of the emphasis on speedrunning, as players are encouraged to perfect levels. I appreciated this aspect but would have enjoyed some other design philosophies mixed in there.

Become the beast

I Am Your Beast is a straightforward action game that wastes absolutely no time in giving players what they want. The engaging combat mechanics and revenge-driven narrative craft a superb power fantasy that left a strong impression on me.

This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. I Am Your Beast is available now on Steam.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_