Vivisector: Beast Inside

The super-soldier. A mainstay in military horror and sci-fi, the theory of the perfect warrior, either bred and trained or laboratory-created as an unrelenting, emotionless, efficient and unstoppable killing machine under the employ of the government has chilled readers to the bone with its look into the future of military warfare, on how far the government would go to ensure total victory in any armed conflicts. With genetic engineering and chimerical hybridization experiments on the rise, it isn't uncommon to see one or more of these ubermechs as freakish, Island of Doctor Moreau-inspired constructs of man and the most vicious of nature's animal predators.Usually disposable soldiers with no ties to the world outside their barracks, these merciless brutes become even more dangerous if and usually when they eventually gain some sense of right and wrong, some form of morality that ends up causing them to rebel against their superiors. When the creation turns on their creators, no force on Earth can stop their rampage, and heaven help us all if they refuse to stop there. Naturally, the military will try to contain or destroy their own warriors, in that instance, but what if the soldiers they send to take care of the threat of their own making become sympathetic towards their enemy's plight? That's the theory behind Ukraine-based PC game Vivisector: Beast Within. Think of it as Counter-Strike meets Dog Soldiers...though not quite as good.

     You are Kurt, a soldier sent to the small island of Soreo on a simple extraction mission, but it soon becomes apparent that things aren't nearly what they seem: the mission is a farce, with your real objective to clean up the bio-hazard mess that your superior officer and exiled geneticist Dr. Morhead unwittingly unleashed in their attempts to create said super-soldiers. However, once your XO betrays you, you're hired by the leader of the opposing forces, Lion, to help take out the sergeant and run his coup off the island. Right here, you hit your first snag with the game: no matter which side you're on, BOTH sides will be firing on you without question. There's some flimsy excuse for this (the sergeant failed to authorize your presence on the island, and up until you switch sides, his soldiers will nail you just for that; while the HumAnimals, as Lion's group is called, are bred and trained to see humans as the enemy regardless), but really, once your former XO brings out his brand of Morhead's soldiers, the Overbrutes, in the game's third segment, and the lines between enemy beast and enemy human blur, it doesn't really matter. There's also not much to make of the storyline itself; a lot of the revelations come out of left field, and characters that seem really insignificant in the beginning (like Kurt's former love interest who dies in the opening cinematic) suddenly become really important near the end.

    But hey, this game is about the gunplay and death, and boy does it have those in excess! The title actually comes from a graphical and gameplay mechanic known as the 'vivisection point', where you can blast off huge chunks of the enemy with each shot, and can actually disarm them by vaporizing their gun hand. Some soldiers (like the vulture-like Helixes) can be downed just by nuking ones specific part of their body or armor, even if it doesn't kill them immediately. Unfortunately, since this game isn't yet released in America, and I was only able to get the German version of the game, this nifty feature does not apply to the human characters without a patch. Of course, while cool, this poses a huge problem when you consider that damage is inconsistent in this game; you could flay the flesh off of a Black Wolf Overbrute's skull, rip its chest wide open, and strip the meat from its extremities like a Christmas goose, and it'll still come after you. Or, just by swinging a knife or scalpel, tear a Ram HumAnimal to literal meaty chunks in seconds. Sniper rifles are almost always one-hit-wonders, while bazookas and grenades might only stun the enemy. You get the idea.

    Speaking of enemies, they are varied, plentiful, and MEAN. Depending on which enemy you face, they can either be dumb as rocks to almost mediocre in intelligence, though some of the tougher enemies use some strategies correctly (like using cover). Mostly, however, they try to overwhelm you with sheer numbers, and with the aforementioned imprecise damage counter, this poses a huge problem. And don't get me started on Vivisector's answer to Metroid's SA-X and Resident Evil's Nemesis, the Panther; that walking hairball can give anyone nightmares in its unstoppability and casual way of killing someone (cloak, reappear in front of the target, slap a nuke to their chest like a "kick me" sign, and wait for the boom). Sadly, the HUMANS seem less intelligent than the ANIMALS; I've had far less trouble with them than with the anthropomorphic baddies here. Still, they ARE gorgeous to look at, with some of the best fur texture you'll ever see in a game, and they sound very realistic in regards to the animals they're based on (though why in the hell do the human commandos snarl and roar like wild animals, themselves? And why do they not talk, whereas the majority of the Overbrutes do?). They also slump realistically, as well, when killed, whch is a nice feature.

   The rest of the game is not all that great, sadly: the area graphics are your standard Half-Life fare, with plenty of outdoors shots and semi-destroyable environments (most barrels and crates you can pick up and throw, and the crates can be shot open to reveal health and ammo for easy refueling); clipping and slowdown issues are a huge problem, here, with dead enemies suddenly dropping through the floor or you being blown through a solid wall; the guns sound as they should, and the music, while sparse, is a nice blend ot creepy rock and techno that gives the feel of a genetic nightmare come to life. It took me a while to get used to the controls, as all of the text is in German (and can't be changed without another patch, I'm assuming), and I didn't know how to remap them. I'm not one of those hard-core FPS gamers who were born with the innate knowledge of using keyboard and mouse in conjunction to achieve fragfest nirvana, but after a while, they became second nature to me. There's a minimal of puzzle-solving that you have to do to progress, which is a bit of a pain when the switches you need to pull blend into the background, and the voice acting is meh (I could hardly tell the difference between the XO and Lion, honestly). Oh, there's no multiplayer, either; something to do with focusing on the single player and the guns being too powerful for multiplay, anyway. Finally, there's a pointless little RPG element thrown in that lets you trade in points given by killing enemies in certain ways under certain conditions and finding secret areas for more life, faster running, etc., but except for the life and maybe speed, it's more or less an arcade score for bragging rights.

Overall, it's a flawed game, but still very solid. I've become addicted to it, and can't wait to see what it has in store for me. It's a shame that it's unlikely this game will ever get a sequel; the concept is very sound and opens up a ton of creative outlets for further exploration. If they tightened up the story a little bit, fixed the clipping problems, drew out the lines between "friend" and "foe", and tweaked the damage problems and gun overpoweredness to allow for a more balanced game and multiplayer, I can see Vivisector becoming a contender for one of the best FPS' in the genre. As it is now, however, it doesn't innovate, but it's still mindless fun. Perhaps, in this case, walking on four legs is slightly more preferable than walking on 2.

Final Score: Blue-Green

Concept: Drag the beasts from the Island of Dr. Moreau out of their orgy scenes, suit them up and slap a Gauss rifle in their paws, then send them out to go ape-slag on their so-called "god".

Graphics: The critters look downright awesome, though the rest of the graphics don't look as good, especially the outdoors areas.

Sound: They walk with the animals, so why shouldn't they talk like the animals? Oh, wait, they ARE animals. Silly me. As for the humans, "Cut the chatter, Red 2".

Controls: Get a little getting used to if you dunno how to synch mouse with keystrokes, but veteran FPS fraggers shouldn't be too frustrated.

Playability: No multiplayer and a painfully linear story hurts the replayability, but the areas are BIG, and exploration is rewarding, so it's a toss-up.

Replay Value: Medium

Buy or Rent: Since it's not out in America yet, you're pretty much stuck ordering it overseas or downloading it from emule or something. If you got the cash, though, it's a somewhat worthy prey to add to your trophy room.

Note: All pictures on this review are not mine and are used without permission from various online sources. I would have provided my own pics, but I dunno how to do an in-game screen capture. I also would have linked to these pictures, but the site I'm using to make this doesn't allow picture linking as thumbnails. So if any of the owners of these pics gets pissed at me, please understand that I didn't mean to steal...and that, since they ARE on your site for all to see, they're technically public domain.