I Am Your Beast review – like Rambo on fast-forward

PC; Strange Scaffold
Deep in the woods, hardbitten spec ops soldiers are having a proper falling out in this gleeful piece of pulp brilliance

Harding and Burkin might sound like a law firm, but these two go way back on the battlefield. Harding was the brilliant spec ops guy who could get anything done, no matter how bloody. Burkin was Harding’s handler, and now he wants him back for one last job. Harding’s long since retreated to the woods to start a new life, so can Burkin flush him out at gunpoint? How far will each man go? And, lost in the wilderness together, who’s really hunting whom?

This is the deliriously pulpy premise of Strange Scaffold’s latest action game, I Am Your Beast. What follows is not Rambo so much as an exploration of the way that Rambo has settled in the memory, all trees and traps and body counts. Strange Scaffold is known for making hectic, relentless games at a hectic, relentless pace. I Am Your Beast is another masterwork of briskness and efficiency. Binged in three hours, it’s a first-person shooter in which you’re always outgunned but endlessly resourceful. Even the longest of the game’s “micro-sandbox” missions is over in 90 seconds, been and gone before you’ve had time to register the fact that the level names all sound like Jack Reacher novels: Late Shift, Breakdown, On Your Six.