Beowulf The Game Hands-on Preview

November looks like being one of the greatest months ever. Call of Duty 4, Assassin’s Creed, Crysis, Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, Unreal Tournament III and Ratchet and Clank are all hitting store shelves in a matter of weeks. They’re all games that their publishers expect to sell at least a million copies, but imagine buying them all. That’s a lot of gaming right there. And a lot of money to fork out, too. Which is why, having spent a solid few hours with Ubisoft’s movie tie-in Beowulf, which is also coming out in November to coincide with the computer generated film’s release, we think that it’s going to feel a bit like the little guy struggling to be seen in the big boy crowd.

Which is ironic, since Bewoulf himself, voiced by Cockney hard-nut Ray Winstone, is a huge pre-Viking era Scandinavian warrior hero with the strength of 30 men. Unfortunately for him, and his lovely looking in-game character model, size may not be enough to save Beowulf from drowning in November’s spectacular release schedule.

Disclaimer first – we’ve played through a preview build of the game on an Xbox 360, which is still very much a work in progress. As such, we encountered numerous bugs while soldiering through the four chapters available. We suffered engine crashes, AI bugs, strange moments where orange light flashed across the screed, dialogue stuttering and the odd instance where the camera threw down its shackles and decided to have an epileptic fit. We wouldn’t normally be worried about this sort of thing if there was still plenty of time till release. But Beowulf is slated for a November release to cash in on the presumed excitement surrounding the film. Let’s hope Tiwak, the French developer behind GRAW, has enough time to stamp out the bugs before the men in suits get itchy feet.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time to give Beowulf a chance. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s the first video game ever to be based on a poem (correct me in the comments section below if I’m wrong). Beowulf is a 1000-year old English poem which tells the story of a legendary Norse warrior who travelled to Denmark to destroy the fearsome monster Grendel. Once he dispatches the beast he takes on Grendel’s mother (Angelina Jolie in the movie) before claiming the Danish throne. In what is a bit of an anti-climax, he gets mortally wounded by a dragon and dies. While the movie pretty much follows the timeline of the poem, the game veers off course, showing how Beowulf turns from an arrogant, head strong youth into a manipulating, power-mad king. You start with Beowulf trying to prove himself to his fellow thanes by racing his arch rival Brecca to a race on the high seas. The game follows the movie up to the scene where Beowulf meets Grendel’s mother. After she gets her hooks into Beowulf the movie and the poem skips 30 years ahead, to where Beowulf’s destiny comes crashing down around him. But the game stays right there and asks ‘what happened during that period?’. It puts you in the position of deciding whether to bring Beowulf’s kingdom out of darkness or live for glory and carnal pleasures. The decision, as they say, is yours.

At its core, Beowulf is a typical hack n slash that immediately brings to mind PS2 classic God of War. It’s super violent, with blood constantly spraying the screen, limbs flying into the air and bones crunching with sickeningly meaty sound effects. Beowulf is the main harbinger of destruction, using swords, pole arms and often times his bare fists to crush enemies ranging from skeletons, baddie human warriors and giant trolls. Like Kratos, Beowulf is somewhat of an anti-hero. And like God of War you’ll be spending much of your time stringing combos together to down wave upon wave of nasties until there’s nothing left.

The controls are pretty bog standard. Y is your heavy attack, X your light. B is grab and A is roll. You move Beowulf with the left analogue and the camera with the right, with left trigger used for blocking. Holding right trigger brings out your Carnal Fury, which turns you invincible and the screen a chaotic red. This is great for when things become overwhelming. But Carnal Fury comes with a price – you can’t distinguish your enemies from your fellow thanes (Norse warriors who you lead into battle) and other friendly NPCs, like naked virgins (yes there’s full-frontal nudity in the game). In the levels we played, we ended up doing more damage to our thanes than the bad guys, smashing them up with ill-thought out slo-mo sword swipes. It is during carnal mode that Beowulf gets most violent – grabbing an enemy leads on to all sorts of nasty, bone-crunching moves. In Episode 7: Ritual Temptation, a level that sees you battling to save naked virgins, you go head to head with a giant troll, a fight which pretty much demands carnal mode to win. You grab it, mash B, climb up on its shoulders then snap its jaw into oblivion. Delicious.

Carnal Fury is at the heart of what Ubisoft hope will help Beowulf raise its head above the typical hack n slash fare. Whenever you use Carnal powers you succumb more and more to Grendel’s mother, and endear yourself less and less to your thanes. There is an alternative. You can forget about the Carnal side of things and go Heroic if you want, using X+Y combos to defeat enemies and inspire your men with special morale boosting moves. But you’ll move through the game much slower and have a lot less fun too. While we’re a bit sceptical about the whole morality system and its supposed effect on the gamer, your play style will make a difference to the game. As Beowulf gets older he changes. His hair grows, his armour develops (along with his thanes) and his appearance alters in line with your play style. NPCs will react to you differently too, and we’re told there will be different endings based on how you tackled the game. Here’s hoping they’re better than BioShock’s anti-climactic play-style based endings. We reckon most gamers won’t be affected too much by this morality test. Those who want to play the game heroically will probably only do so to earn more achievement points once they’ve finished the game.

Tied in with the heroic aspect of Beowulf is the curious rhythm action mini-game, called Thanes Booster, which is used to inspire your thanes into rowing boats better or moving great boulders to reveal hidden pathways. By holding LB you’ll bring up your command interface and from there you can trigger a heave-ho rhythm game which involves pressing X and Y in time to gladiatorial music. It’s fiddly at first, but once you suss out the timing it’s decent fun, although we can’t imagine it will hold interest throughout the entire game. In one sequence, we inspired three of our thanes to move a boulder while the rest fended off creatures that reminded us of the wretches in Gears of War. Not bad.

The camera looks like it might be a major sticking point. It’s up close and personal, which is supposed to make things feel more in your face, but in practice it’s a bit of a struggle to control, and because Beowulf is such a huge on screen presence, you’ll find it hard to see what’s happening elsewhere in the battle area.

So back to that killer November schedule. While Beowulf’s graphics are indeed impressive (we particularly like the character models), and the game has this overall next-gen sheen about it, it looks like being a bit too generic to stand out this Christmas. While there are over 50 combos to discover, and tonnes of weapons, the combat doesn’t feel like it has depth, nor take particular skill to master. We’ve got some reservations about the environments too. Although we only played four levels, two of those were pretty much the same (overcast weather along wind-swept cliffs and giant-crab infested shores) and the others weren’t particularly inspiring either. The enemies too didn’t get us excited. We’ve button-bashed our way through scores of giant crabs, hordes of sword-wielding skeletons and waves of little beasties more times than we care to remember. Then there’s the technical difficulties we mentioned, which we can’t pass judgement on now, but are cause for concern. What will be interesting is how the PS3 and 360 versions of the game compare when it’s released next month.

Excitement level? Warm at the moment. Would we have seen a Beowulf game if there hadn’t been a movie to tie in with? Probably not. But here it is, and we have to consider it on its own merits. Odin’s balls will tell all soon enough.