Vivisector: Beast Within

"Confusing game that is neither here nor there"

Vivisector: Beast Within is a first-person shooter from Brigades. Though the game was visually good, especially the fur on some of the enemies that you'll face in the game, a major problem of the game was the story. It was very disjointed, there was no rudimentary explanation of the main character, Kurt, and the island, and the player is just propelled into the game in about 2 minutes.

To give you an example of the low quality of the story, there's a love interest but she dies in about a few minutes into the game. Then, there's no mention of her whatsoever until the final scene of the game where suddenly she's an integral part of the story. I kept playing the game, thinking that there'd be greater explanation as to what the heck is going on, but the explanation never came. About halfway through the game, the player is suddenly informed via a short fmv that Kurt had actually been to the island before as an infant. But information such as that came fast and loose, really. There are annoying things such as the fact that you meet other humans but most of the time their trying to kill you. Even when you're helping THEIR leader, the lamest excuse ever pops up and they still treat you as a hostile. And even then, you have no idea who the humans are. And not in a those-black-ops-guys-in-half-life kind of way, either. Same goes for the Hybrid Animal side. You help them, lame excuse about war. I seriously wonder what the story people were thinking.

Gameplay: The game is such that you'll be looking for green beacons throughout that will lead you to where you want to go. I thought that was pretty good as this way, you'll know where to go as the maps are actually rather big. Also, in the beginning of the game, these beacons also serve as drop off points for health and ammo. After about 15 minutes or so, you'll pick up this electronic device that acts like a HUD. It gives you a radar, and also shows the amount of points you have. You accumulate points mostly by killing hostiles, but also for exploring secret areas or by killing hostiles quickly or at the same time. These points are then exchanged at those green beacons for upgrades. There are 4 upgrades: Speed, Resilience, Accuracy and Health. There's also a system where you can increase the accuracy or carrying capacity of the weapons that you carry, but I'm not really sure how it works, and I never even got to increase any by more than 10% by the end of the game.

Speaking about weapons, there are actually a large number of weapons in the game. Knives, pistols, shotguns, rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and energy weapons to be specific. But oddly enough, you never reload. All weapons continue firing until you run out of ammo. I played the game on the default difficulty and I never had any problems with not having enough ammo except for early in the game. I found that some weapons lacked punch, like the M16.

Graphics: The enemies were well designed, I'll have to admit. Be it humans or the Hybrid animals. The fur was really something else. However, I found that they overdid the damage displayed on the models. You'll find that even with just literally the skull on his head, the enemy could still soldier on. Other parts of their body were also reduced to just the skeleton but they still soldiered on. So in this case, you'd wonder how much more you'd have to pump into him to make him stay down for the count. Speaking which, I found that sometimes a headshot would do the trick, but other times, the enemy still kept coming. Some problem with damage detection or something, I guess. The environment was also well designed, with interesting stuff such as super huge trains, fallen windmills and large domes.

Sound: The sound was ok. Guns sounded like they should, and there was rock music to be heard when a major altercation was to be had. There was also ambient music to "spook" up the atmosphere but it was bland.

In conclusion, I think that Vivisector: Beast Within suffered mostly from a horrible story. Yes, sometimes the story doesn't matter(i.e Doom). But in this case, the story was really integral to the story as you have no idea what's going on and how 2 of the major characters relate to each other and to you and why things are happening the way they are, or why the island is so well built with large immense superstructures and who built them, etc. I could go on and on and on. So, if you were thinking of getting this game, don't. Rent it at the very most, but it's not worth the time and money.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/26/07