Beneath review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

It’s kind of weird to see the trailers on Beneath’s Steam page, and compare them to the experience of actually playing the game. In those trailers, the game looks like a fast-paced boomer shooter where you’re constantly blowing away lurching horrors. Needless to say, the reality is pretty different.

I mean, there are lurching horrors. They take about half an hour to show up, but they’re there. Mind you, “horrors” may be overstating things a little – they generally look like refugees from a PS2-era horror game. That said, the game is going for a Lovecraft vibe, and some of the creatures are identifiably Lovecraftian, so points for that. Besides, seeing as Beneath is the work of a small indie studio, it’s hard to begrudge them too much for a game that looks kind of bargain basement.

Where it’s much easier to criticize them, however, is in how the game plays. Your character has pretty much zero mobility. At first – by which I mean for the first ten minutes or so – this seems understandable, seeing as your character is walking underwater. But then he makes it to dry land, and you discover: nope, that’s just how he moves. Any time you need to turn another direction, everything slows to a crawl as you slowly swivel in a different direction. Likewise, forget being able to jump, or even climb over things – if literally anything is on the ground in front of you, you’re stuck. This terrible movement is a major issue, seeing as you’re almost constantly being pursued by some pretty relentless monsters.

It also doesn’t help that Beneath really wants to make you suffer and scrounge for every bullet. I know it’s a survival horror game, but it doesn’t take long for it to start feeling incredibly unfair. Not only is your ammunition limited, the enemies are also bullet sponges. It’s a weird combination, and it means that, far from the fast-paced shooter promised in the trailers, you’ll spend a lot of time running away – or, I guess, trying to run away, since we’ve already established that movement in Beneath is pretty terrible.

Perhaps none of this should’ve come as a surprise. After all, Beneath was developed by Camel 101, whose last game was Those Who Remain, which also suffered from the similar problem of being spooky to look at but awful to play. If nothing else, I guess, Camel 101 are consistent?

Wired Productions provided us with a Beneath PC code for review purposes.