YOU ARE THE MONSTER Review (PC)

It feels awfully good to be the harbinger of all evil—a Kraken, of all mythical creatures, in a world where you feel no sympathy, no fear, and no desire to act on morally righteous obligations. It also feels great to act on impulse and obliterate with free will, which in itself is a treat that only arises every once in a blue moon. And I guess that’s all that YOU ARE THE MONSTER wants to spoon feed you: a chance for you to let your hair down and simply act on your own selfish desires.

Heroes are yesterday’s news—an eye sore that, quite frankly, nobody could care less about. But monsters, on the other hand, are all the rage, and the beings that have the power to enlighten as well as annihilate. It just so happens that you, of all beings in existence, are the treacherous Antichrist in disguise in this situation. A tentacled monstrosity; a crimson-tongued beast; a towering stack of matted fur and protein-fueled angst. I could go on — but you get the point. YOU ARE THE MONSTER shovels it all into its title, and it doesn’t exactly beat around the bush, either.

Think Plague Inc., only, instead of tampering with the core DNA of a deadly disease, you’re fabricating the blood of a monolithic beast to create an almighty foe that can eradicate humanity. To some extent, it’s a bit like Maneater, in that your sole purpose is to evolve, adapt, and ultimately obliterate the human species, chunk by chunk, vessel by vessel. That, in short, is all that you’re doing here: incubating a beast, and using the power of evolution to transform it into a prolific force that can wreak havoc on the food chain.

It starts out simple, with one of several beasts, a skill tree, and an opportunity to shape and harness various nodes on the evolution path. You smash, slaughter, and destroy, and then make small but seemingly effective upgrades to help further flaunt your power and propel your evil agenda. With enough power, you unlock additional upgrades, offensive abilities, and game modes, and so on and so forth.

If you’re wondering whether or not there’s a point to any of this, or even a plot — there isn’t. See, YOU ARE THE MONSTER isn’t one for weaving storylines out of the fabric of a movie-like action blueprint. Instead, it opts to keep it simple and to the point, with a highly destructible sandbox environment, a host of beasts, and an open-ended structure that allows you to build, manage, and elevate your own character. And to be honest, that’s about as far as it takes it. You grow in size, earn passive abilities, and then use said abilities to cause more chaos in the world. But, honestly, that’s about as deep as it goes.

While the game does feature a handful of monsters and just enough abilities to satisfy your thirst for pure and unadulterated sandbox mayhem, it also falls short on some crucial aspects. Given that there isn’t a lot for you to do outside of mindlessly destroying sandcastle dioramas, you do have something of a brick wall here that, once encountered, begins to bleed mediocrity. The process of knocking down paper thin worlds soon begins to feel weightless, and the act of developing a monster eventually becomes a little predictable and unsatisfying. Not that this comes as much of a shock to the system, mind you.

Of course, if you enjoy destruction games that harbor light rogue-like elements and sandbox features, then you’ll probably enjoy romping and stomping around YOU ARE THE MONSTER’s rubble-dusted world. The thing is, there is only so much that you can do here before the procedure begins to grate on the fingertips. You unlock a new monster to fool around with, and then spend a solid portion of time fleshing out core nodes on a evolution tree. But after that rolling gust of wind settles, it becomes something of a rudimental excursion that, frankly, doesn’t get a lot better.

To give credit where credit is rightfully due, YOU ARE THE MONSTER is a fun game to play on the go. As you have little to learn, let alone master, you can quite easily slip behind the eyes of your favorite beast and wreak a little havoc without thinking twice about the details or the consequences. That said, the mileage is evidently short here, therefore the odds of it keeping you fully engaged for dozens of hours are pretty slim, sadly.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of great bits and pieces to grate your knuckles on here. Destroying the world is as fun as it sounds on paper, as is using your newfound abilities to clobber and pulverize innocent bystanders, naturally. Granted, it might not always play well, or even look that great, for that matter. Though, there is an oddly enjoyable third-person monster romper stomper experience here that’s surprisingly satisfying to wade through. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t have a great shelf life to counter its potential as a creature comfort.

Verdict

YOU ARE THE MONSTER channels its inner Godzilla-like persona to conceive a creative sandbox in which you can unleash your monstrous imagination  and play the antagonist in a way that can feel both thrilling and carnivorously satisfying. While it might not offer much more outside of its destructive heart, it does provide a short-term solution for waxing those comically fragile violent tendencies. To that end, I’d say that it makes for a great substitute for the likes of Maneater and, for argument’s sake, Stubbs the Zombie: A Rebel Without a Pulse.

Suffice it to say that, if you are able to stomp into YOU ARE THE MONSTER with relatively low or mixed expectations, then you should be able to enjoy the game for the brief bouts of joy that it brings to the table. That being said, I wouldn’t expect a perfect game here. A brief spell of satisfaction, sure, but not a great deal more. Sorry, Kraken.