Without a shadow of a doubt, this is a multiplayer game, and unless you like your own company, eating dead flies and sensitive to interaction, Gang Beasts is made to play with your friends.
Without health, the only way you can win a match is to grapple them and drop them off the edge of the fighting environment, but as I mentioned earlier, they grab back, hence a very drawn out game.
You can’t exit out of it, and it was getting to the stage where I was going to reset the PS4 until a countdown appeared until it reached a draw. We were enjoying it, well, my daughter was as my dad gene kicked in and I was getting eliminated first in most rounds, but once we were both out, we were observing other players, and it was looooong. Thankfully, for parents and snowflakes, the only sound was the grunts and laughter from the characters. We played online.Īt first, I was a bit anti-online as assumed they’d be YouTube type audio commentaries from some goons on the other end. That’s when we did something extraordinary (for me). The other choice was ‘gang’, but again, it was only the two of us so seemed fruitless. I was looking forward to this, but as a one-on-one, it didn’t work, and we ended up slugging it out, ignoring the ball. Sounds fun, but the difficulty was erratic, and the bots seemed to have the advantage. The first was the wave: random AI characters would come onto the stage and bundle us until we threw them off the course or into a moving train. Other than the melee, we weren’t fussed about the other options. On that part, it was nice to bond together over stupidity. Rather than both of us throwing our own wobbly about it, we were laughing almost hysterically. While we were squaring each other up and dishing out fighting talk, little did we realise that two signposts would take us both out at the same time. We usually would play a best of five melee one-on-one on random levels, thinking we had the edge on a particular stage, but something random would happen like fighting on the roofs of two moving trucks. With Gang Beasts, I would give it my all about 8/10 times as the outcome would differ most of the time. As a reasonably decent parent, I let her win here and there, but when she improved, I pushed and got her to try harder. It has to be one of the most enjoyable multiplayer games I’ve played in a while, and it didn’t get old even after a couple of hours. I initially played this with my daughter as she was keen to try it out and despite having a big steaming pile of backlog sitting on the counter featuring some triple-A games we were due to play, we couldn’t stop playing Gang Beasts. This is where the unpredictable side of things comes in to place, and it’s an absolute blast. Sounds easy but when your opponent can grip onto you with one arm and punch you with the next, it often results in you both falling to your doom.
You can pummel your opponent to wear them down, but what you will mostly do is grab hold of them and throw them into the abyss. It’s a free-for-all battle royale where the last one standing is crowned the winner. The move list is punch, kick, headbutt, jump and kick and the indispensable grapple. There aren’t any health or stamina bars to monitor or a power gauge to unleash a special move. There are a handful of modes to choose from, but the concept remains the same: beat your enemies to a pulp, minus the KO factor. So why on earth is Gang Beasts so much fun? You’re never sure if you’ll be able to pull off a move that throws your opponent into an oncoming train or off an airborne blimp. Again, this is inaccurate and very hit and miss. Headbutts are a little more accurate, but to get anywhere in the game, you need to implement the grapple technique. The square button unleashes a kick, according to the pause menu, but it couldn’t stomp on an ant wearing stilts and sporting a top hat. If you want to punch your opponent, it’s sloppy, sluggish and inaccurate. I’d honestly have to say that it’s one of the worst examples of fighting mechanics I’ve ever experienced. If you haven’t already played it, let me give you the skinny and tell you that Gang Beasts is ludicrous. Gang Beasts has been doing the circuit for five years now but has an imminent physical release on December 6th.
Gang Beasts is a beat ’em up published by Double Fine – those who dished out the Day of the Tentacle remasters (and others), as well as their own IPs – Psychonauts, and one of their latest currently on my playlist, Rad. Hat the hell is this? First off I misunderstood the name of the title and was pleased to find out I was wrong in thinking this was something else.