I am sure that Illusion Ray’s The Beast Inside is a fine game on other consoles. Inspired by the timeless tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this first-person survival horror game follows two men in two distinct time periods as they uncover secrets and horrors hidden within the Hyde estate in Blackstone. When I first heard the premise, I was hopeful that The Beast Inside could deliver on its promise of an atmospheric psychological horror romp, and I’m sure that it is on any other platform. Unfortunately, the game’s Nintendo Switch port ultimately undercuts its strongest aspects while highlighting its failings.
The Beast Inside’s narrative is its most interesting aspect. The game sees you switch between two interweaving stories. In 1979, you will play as CIA cryptanalyst Adam Stevenson as he and his pregnant wife move to Blackstone to get away from the pressure of the Cold War. While renovating their home, Adam becomes obsessed with finding the journal of the estate’s previous owner Nicholas Hyde: an amnesiac who tried to uncover a sinister mystery surrounding his family.
I’m not going to pretend this game’s story is a wholly original masterpiece. It’s quite predictable (I know you’ve predicted this story’s twist when you heard it was inspired by the Jekyll and Hyde story), but I did find parts of it quite interesting. While Adam finds pages of Nicholas’s journal, he also finds evidence of Soviet agents spying on him and his wife, and seeing Adam descending further into paranoid madness is incredibly compelling. By contrast, Nicholas’s story is your standard psychological horror video game fare. While the central mystery is somewhat interesting, I didn’t think his half of the game stood out from other games in the genre.
Despite this, I found The Beast Inside’s tone to be inconsistent in a way that undercuts the more serious vibe it wants to aim toward. The music and art direction will try its hardest to establish a tense, frightening tone, but then something indisputably silly will happen that rips you right out of your immersion. For example, Nicholas will spend the entirety of one level exploring a run-down, haunted inn, and then he’ll get attacked by the zombified brother of John Wilkes Booth (yes, that John Wilkes Booth), who comes out of nowhere and is never mentioned again. It’s very silly, and there are other moments like it that take you out of the experience. While not a moment, I’d add Adam’s weird sci-fi time scanner to this list of incredibly silly moments. Watching Adam give into the paranoia and delve further and further into insanity just doesn’t hit as hard when you’re running around scanning “temporal echoes” to figure out what happened.
Speaking of gameplay, The Beast Inside is your typical Outlast-type romp, at least in Nicholas’s case. You’ll run and hide from every monster and ghost that you see, and when you aren’t doing that, you’ll be trying to find keys to locked doors and solve puzzles. It’s not anything you haven’t seen before. For Adam’s side of the story, you’ll mostly be running around, scanning “temporal traces” to track people down, and solving puzzles that make you utilize different code-breaking methods and ciphers. Adam’s puzzles are the best the game has to offer, and make you think in a way most games don’t really attempt to.
If you read all of this and are interested in buying The Beast Inside, then I suggest you get it for any platform that isn’t the Nintendo Switch. Illusion Ray boasts that the game features an incredibly detailed, realistic world, so much so that they 3D-scanned every object into the game. Looking at footage captured on other consoles, this is true, and the game looks incredible. Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch port seemingly couldn’t handle that level of detail. While playing it on the Switch, I often compared The Beast Inside to Gary’s Mod. Textures range from low-poly to non-existent. Trees, character models, and other assets will regularly pop in and out of the game world. Character models often look like moving wax figures. The lighting is completely flat and shadows are practically non-existent, rendering the game’s consumable light sources useless. This undercuts all of the game’s attempts at building atmosphere, turning many of the game’s scares either boring or comical.
Like I said in the beginning, I am sure that The Beast Inside is a great game on other consoles, but it is a disappointing showing on the Nintendo Switch. The lackluster performance on the switch undermines the game’s tone, which only exposes the game’s lackluster elements.
For more information, visit the Nintendo eShop.
Related: Reviews by Josh Freeman
I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.
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