Watching someone either pull themselves out of a meat grinder or dangle below a moving truck reflects panic and desperation on both sides of the equation. Inevitably, said opponent always comes to life at the last second and clings to life in a mad scramble. This creates a small window of time to pick an opponent up and use your momentum to hurl them out of the arena and win the match. Either a properly cocked punch or a fierce head-butt can knock an opponent out cold. The absence of a normal control model does not preclude the development and application of skill. It’s a bunch of goofy blob people fighting each other, a post-modern version of Bum Fights where nobody actually gets hurt and empathy isn’t sacrificed in the agreement. It’s sloppy by design and stupid by necessity, creating a volatile mixture of artistry and luck perfected to match Gang Beasts’ maniac aesthetic. Of equal certainty is the negative impact it would have had on Gang Beasts’ performance. These are the primitive instruments in which Gang Beasts allows its players to orchestrate comic pandemonium.Ĭertainly, a more intuitive control system could have been developed. For some reason, double-tapping B deploys a vicious head-butt. Y lifts a held object (almost always another player) above your head.

X and B are responsible for ducking and a half-assed kick, respectively.

Pushing the A button jumps, but only when the button is released. Holding down the same shoulder button turns your arm into glue. Tapping the left and right shoulder button issues a left or right punch. Gang Beasts, which was first released to early access in 2014 at the peak of this phenomenon, seeks to apply this principle to an arena-based fighting game. Surgeon Simulator, Octodad, and Job Simulatorpleased a remote audience as well as they entertained a local player, but this trend felt stale by the time the wrapping came off in I am Bread. Obfuscating control in the pursuit of creative anarchy is a proven, if not rapidly decaying, approach to game design. The eventual product is Gang Beasts, a multiplayer brawler more interested in coddling chaos than honing control. Inspire it with the will to live and the instinct to destroy. Insert it into a dangerous arena with three companion abominations. Shape the wreckage into an anthropomorphic body, and somehow keep the limited points of articulation. Melt down an action figure to its primordial goo.

Play gang beasts on xbox one