The Godbeast

this game's badass. you get to drive around on a motorcycle for hours

The Godbeast is a unique and rather ambitious action game drenched in atmosphere. You play as an outcast son of the ex-ruler of the city, come for vengeance to take their place as head of the city. It doesn't sound all that unique from that, but the modern gothic feel, with this idea of an old family of rulers in this setting struck a chord with me. The game play is half soulsborne (you can attack and dodge, you have a stamina bar etc...) and half shadow of the colossus (climbing the eponymous Godbeasts and taking them down) and both of these are executed well, though things like animations are a little stiff (which makes sense for a team of this size making a game this way). There are also mini-bosses to find (these and other points of interest are marked on the compass at the top of the screen) for upgrades which make you explore further if you want to take them down. What impressed me the most was the structure and flow of the game: You are given the run of most of a huge city, with only a few gated points with bosses. The flow is: you find where one of the bosses godbeasts reside (by killing regular monsters that tell you), find it and attack it. It'll escape and you hunt it down again. Once it's dead, you take on the boss that the godbeast protected. Making such an open game seems extremely ambitious and though it's not without it's issues, but you get the feeling you are hunting and the large area is a big part of this. It was a very satisfying loop and I'm glad the devs chose to go with this unique vision. The issue here (and it can be quite a big one if you don't have the info you need) is it's rather easy to get lost and a little frustrated. To explain: you move quite slowly (even with the vehicle you get) through a huge city hunting monsters. The landmarks are all quite similar and it does all mesh together in a way that just did not allow my brain to figure out the layout whatsoever (the art style, which looks great btw, doesn't help with this). You have a map but I found it far more stylish than useful. You can fast travel with bells, but as I didn't know how the areas fit even after travelling through them several times, I sometimes would not know if I was closer or not to my destination. To find Godbeasts you hold up your spear and allow the ribbon to show you the way. If you're not close enough it does nothing, which makes sense as it'd likely take you into a wall. My issue is I was missing a KEY piece of info: Godbeasts change district! I got the info a Godbeast was in a certain district and I assumed (wrongly) they travelled within this boundary. Thankfully I randomly sought the info again and noted it had moved but not without a long period of just travelling around the wrong place. (Mini complaint: if you've played Dark Souls, all the minibosses are named after NPCs/bosses from the game, except one because it's a direct reference in it's design... this really took me out of the atmosphere and I wish they'd just come up with their own names to make them feel integrated into this world, which otherwise was very cool!) With a bit of patience and the above info, I think fans of the genre can see what's so cool about this game. Once you're into the flow, you can really soak in the vibe of the atmospheric music, the cel shaded visuals and the cool modern-gothic lore while you hunt the bad guys down. I really commend the devs for committing to this vision and think they have made a great game!