The Beast Inside Code

[Suyay Escarsega]

Polishindie developers Illusion Ray Studio released a Kickstarter in April 2018 for a Survival-Psychological Horror game titled 'The Beast Inside,' followed up with a demo in early March 2019. An immense level of hype surrounded the title, which received the support of over 2,000 backers. The title was finally released on October 17th, 2019. You can watch the trailer here and play the demo here. On its face, it appears to borrow concepts from games such as Firewatch, Resident Evil 7, Amnesia and Remothered: Tormented Fathers. If you enjoyed those games as much as I did, then 'The Beast Inside' could be right up your alley! After playing the new title, I wanted to share my review.

The Beast Inside is a heavily narrative-focused, survival-horror game that takes place in two parallel time periods, following two protagonists: Adam Stevenson in 1979, and Nicolas Hyde in 1864. Their lives become interconnected as they work to unravel an unsolved murder mystery. The game begins in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1979. You play Adam Stevenson, a Cold War CIA cryptanalyst, who leaves the city with his pregnant wife, Emma, and moves to a fixer-upper home he inherited from his father in the countryside. His employers send him there for his own safety as he tries to crack a complex Russian military code, which could alter the course of the Cold War. Things quickly takes a turn for the worse in the new home, as he discovers its troubled history and the beast hidden within himself.

At the beginning of the game, Adam finds a mysterious diary written by a young man named Nicolas Hyde, who grew up in Adam's inherited home in the 1800s. Through the diary, we learn that Nicolas spent 10 years in an asylum, due to abuse from his father. The nightmares of the past come to life in the 1979 time period, putting the lives of Adam, Emma, and their unborn child in great danger. Both Nicolas and Adam have many secrets and suppressed, violent memories. Both are unaware of the danger that hides within their minds.

Also, Adam and Nicholas were both the lanky unsporting type and couldn't jump to save their lives unless it magically had to do with a QTE. Every gap was a potential death. On that note, QTEs in the game were another issue. I couldn't figure out if the QTE wanted me to press the right or left side of the mouse once or continuously click it. It's annoying when Adam or Nicholas is jumping off a bridge, and the QTEs cue up for you to grab onto the ledge. The controls change from the left side of the mouse to the right with only a small window of time to click the correct button to avoid death, and no way to know if it needs to be clicked once or continuously.

Nicholas was hands down the character I cared the most about, even though he was schizophrenic and predictably the more violent of the two. His name was Nicholas Hyde, after all. In addition to its video game inspirations, the entire story seemed to borrow some from the classic book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Adam's last name is Stevenson. Coincidence? I think not. I hope that there will be future DLC that follows the plot of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde more closely. The game still needs to find an identity for itself, so perhaps that could help steer it in the right direction.

I feel that The Beast Inside was generally successful, even if it relied on its influences too much. The jumpscares were well-placed, although the suspenseful sound design allowed you to see many of them coming from a mile away. At least I did not become desensitized to them.

What is fear, fear is an emotional response to visual and auditory stimulation brought on by danger and or the perception of danger. The horror genre has been able to play on those emotions to deliver games that will make you jump out of your seat or even have issues sleeping at night. The beast inside takes the player through a story of past and present while solving puzzles and obstacles. This, of course, is while being shocked and frightened at various turns. This is our review of The Beast Inside.

I would say this game falls in the same lines as Amnesia: the Dark decent as they have very similar mechanics. Do not get me wrong I am not bagging on this at all in fact for me this is a plus. Recently I have been lucky to experience a bit more of the horror genre than before and has allowed me to experience different mechanics and ideas that are very indulgent to me. One of my favorite mechanics is the ability to interact with my environment, by having this type of interaction a player will have a better sense of being part of the story. When I think of being immersed I do not think just a good story is everything. At times you need to feel like you are right there getting your hands dirty and of course, getting randomly scared out of your mind is key.

Graphically speaking the game is very appealing as the developer has made good use of the unreal engine combined with a 3D Scanned environment. The texturing of the models is very well on point with only minor glitches from time to time. The attention to detail on each area very well thought out and plenty of items to interact with. Some items even hold hints or messages to help drive the story. Right at the start, you find a hidden spot with a box that requires you to break the code in order to access it. This immediately thrilled me as puzzles and challenges really get my mind working. I will admit at first it took me a moment to realize when the game switched from one character to another, I thought at first I was merely transferred in time or seeing the past. Well once the reality of what was going on set in and my dumb moment was over I moved on.

The overall gameplay as mentioned was focused on interactions but after a few hours in-game it does seem to switch focus to a more of a First-person Shooter. This of course for me was easy to overlook as story-driven games often need to include various elements to keep things going. The controls were tested both with a traditional keyboard and mouse as well as the use of a wired USB Xbox controller. Both were fairly easy to adjust to and play with no input lag.

GameSpace aims to be a one-stop shop for all your gaming news, reviews, videos, streams, opinions, and forums. We aim to cover not only the games and the people who make them, but also the culture and trends around the industry. If there's a hot topic in gaming, chances are we're all here writing about it.

The Beast WithinEpisode Number035Broadcast Number035Season03Original AirdateOctober 30, 2004Production Code257-489Guest CharactersAdonisWritten byDavid SlackDirected byAlex SotoChronologyPrevious"Wavelength"Next"Can I Keep Him?"

After a battle with Adonis, Beast Boy has a dramatic change where he is rude, eats meat and has a major temper that could burst at any moment. This causes the Titans to worry but soon things become worse when Raven and Beast Boy go missing and find Raven in the jaws of a werewolf-like beast. The creature is soon revealed to be Beast Boy and the Titans believe he is the one who attacked Raven. Will the team be forced to send Beast Boy to prison or is there something else lurking in the shadows?

Inside an animal testing laboratory, the Teen Titans fight Adonis. The battle-suited villain easily defeats four of the Titans, but enrages Beast Boy to the point where the latter literally cuts loose and attacks Adonis furiously. During their fight, they accidentally puncture a tank containing strange chemicals and get drenched by them. After Adonis is beaten, Beast Boy exits the lab in an extremely aggressive mood, telling the other Titans that he got sick of being pushed around, leaving the other Titans bewildered.

The next morning, Beast Boy begins to display very untypical behavior, even for him: He suddenly develops an appetite for meat, becomes downright rude, meaner, and both more aggressive and hostile, and under stress even turns into his animal forms more frequently. When he finally feels unjustly provoked by Raven, he attempts to fight her, but is stopped by the others, who are put off by his manners lately. Beast Boy walks away to his quarters, destroying his furniture while ranting, and suddenly transforms into a huge hulking monster. Raven, passing by his room, hears a strange sound, but as she attempts to see what is going on, a monster comes out and attacks her.

Upon hearing Raven's cry, Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg rally, but they find Beast Boy and Raven missing and Beast Boy's quarters devastated by claw marks. Following Raven's tracer, they find her in the sewers hanging unconscious and injured from the fangs of a big green werewolf monster. The creature proves to be a very tough opponent to fight, and only with the greatest effort do the Titans manage to subdue it - to find out to their immense surprise that the creature was none other than Beast Boy; dazed, confused, and unaware of where he is.

In the Tower's sickbay, Cyborg notices upon analysis that a strange genetic compound has mingled with Beast Boy's DNA. Cyborg explains that because of Beast Boy morphing abilities, his genetic code has always been unstable. He assumes that Beast Boy may be finally falling apart. Robin starts to interrogate Beast Boy about what happened, but he firmly states that he cannot remember. When Robin pushes Beast Boy too hard, the latter looses control and once again transforms into the werebeast, and immediately goes after Raven. The Titans drive him away and back into the city; Robin and Cyborg take up pursuit, while Starfire stays behind to guard Raven. Robin ends up shooting an exploding Birdarang at the werebeast, which causes it to cry out loudly. Some time later, Raven wakes up, but she testifies that Beast Boy had not attacked, but saved her.

Looking at our debug printouts, we only get to the "DEBUG: Set host field printout." When running the code outside of the container environment on the physical host machines, it runs fine and is able to successfully communicate across the network.

3a8082e126