The monstrous power of gaming’s beasts

If there’s one thing that video games are not short of, it’s hulking monsters. From the bulbous mutated monstrosities of the Resident Evil franchise through to the gothic nightmares that haunt the dungeons of Dark Souls, video games have always found a way to creatively portray beastly threats that lurk in the shadowy recesses – both internal and external. As the werewolf Father Gascoigne warns in Bloodborne (2015), “Beasts all over the shop. You’ll be one of them… Sooner or later.”

The darkness of space has long been fertile ground for the beastly horrors that lurk beyond human imagination. In 2014 Alien: Isolation launched from Creative Assembly and perfectly captured the dread that drips from every frame of Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror classic.

Players step into the space boots of Amanda Ripley as she explores the vast crumbling Sevastopol space station in search of the flight recorder from her mother’s disastrous voyage upon the original film’s Nostromo. Played from a claustrophobic first-person point of view, the game constructs a suffocating atmosphere that can be almost unbearable at points. The space station is dark and run down – graffiti litters the walls, power is in short supply, and the surviving inhabitants have all turned on each other as they desperately war over scraps of supplies. Groups of these survivors roam the halls, nervously firing pistols at any sounds they hear. The blank faced terrifying service androids are even more dangerous. Malfunctioning but still all too deadly, they will try to throttle or bludgeon Amanda if she is spotted. Bullets are in short supply and do little to slow down the relentless march of the androids – white fluid pulses from entry wounds but they still continue on, garbling AI phrases as their red eyes pierce the gloom and darkness of the space station. Corpses of their victims lie strewn around the station, but these humanoid threats are nothing compared to the monstrous galactic threat that is the source of all the death and panic on the Sevastopol.

Ripley faces three main threats on the doomed craft: the frenzied humans, the haywire androids and mostly deadly of all, the towering omnipresent Xenomorph. Featuring cutting-edge AI, the game is a masterclass in how to conjure the illusion of an intelligent creature stalking the player through the flickering blood-splattered hallways. Playing with headphones ramps up the immersion to even greater heights and is highly recommended for gaming masochists who revel in sheer terror.

The alien is a constant threat that must be monitored at all times – either through the relentless pinging of the motion detector or by listening carefully for the creature as it scrambles through air ducts and behind walls. Weapons are useless against the relentless beast so it must be avoided, distracted or scared off at all costs. This intelligent monster isn’t just another mindless video game enemy, this threat is capable of learning habits and will punish players who try to constantly scare it away or distract it with flares. “You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility”, the android Ash states in the original film. Alien: Isolation captures the hopeless feeling of trying to survive against this perfect organism in a disturbing location that players won’t soon forget.

From the moment Mario grew to double his size after eating a runaway mushroom, transformation has been a key component of video games. Whether it’s changing into giant robots in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022) or Pokemon evolving into their next form, metamorphosis has been a core game mechanic since the earliest days of the form. Horror films such as The Beast Within (1982) or The Fly (1986) have shown us that transformation isn’t always safe or pretty – sometimes the beast that emerges is beyond all control. Even Sonic the Hedgehog has had this beastly moment of dangerous transformation in Sonic Unleashed (2008), gifting the world the bizarre vision of Sonic the Werehog.

In 2018, an enigmatic Japanese indie developer gave us Black Bird, a stylish tale of monstrous revenge against an uncaring society all wrapped up a surreal yet addictive side-scrolling shooter. Previously known for oddball yet addictive titles such as Dandy Dungeon and Million Onion hotel, Onion Studios produce quirky games which almost defy description.

The game opens on the sepia-hued streets of a European looking city. A frail young girl walks among the crowds before collapsing to the ground. Nobody stops to help. A man in a top hat prods at her lifeless body with his cane before walking away. Time passes and the girl’s corpse mysteriously transforms into an egg before she emerges as a gargantuan monstrous blackbird. The beast of resentment, inequality and repression made flesh. This game is for everyone who wished Han Christian Anderson’s The Little Match Girl ended with her transforming into a gigantic monster to rain death and vengeance upon the uncharitable citizens of Copenhagen.

The game plays very similarly to Sega’s arcade classic Fantasy Zone from 1986, but instead of waves of cutesy enemies to mow down, there are screaming citizens, hastily scrambled military units and giant steampunk bosses. The entire game has a comical slapstick atmosphere with a chaotic soundtrack that sounds like The Muppets performing an opera in a nonsensical made-up language. Following on from classic horror films like Carrie (1976) or 976-EVIL (1988), Black Bird examines what happens when an uncaring and hostile society pushes vulnerable people to the edge, transforming them into vengeance fuelled monsters. This is the return of the repressed all wrapped up in a satisfying and wholly original shooter from one of the most unique Japanese indie studios currently working in the industry. 

Solemnly said in a crackly digitised voice, “Rise from your grave” has become an instantly recognisable soundbite from the golden era of arcades. Released in 1988, Sega’s Altered Beast introduced players to an early example of lycanthropy in the form of a side-scrolling platform beat-‘em-up that puts transformation at the heart of the experience. The player takes control of a reanimated ancient Roman soldier who is brought back by Zeus to rescue his daughter from an evil sorcerer. Clearly influenced by Ray Harryhausen’s work in films such as Clash of the Titans (1981), the character can be powered-up from a feeble undead human to a raging werewolf in a spectacular transformation scene that caught the eyes of curious passers-by and caused the game to become a short-lived sensation. The game is a curious mix of ancient Roman myth, Japanese anime and contemporary arcade game trends, and although it hasn’t aged particularly well, it’s still a fascinating early glimpse at video games flirting with European werewolf myths while funnelling key elements of the lore into gameplay.

In 1987, the year before Altered Beast, home computers such as the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 were treated to darker tales of lycanthropy in Werewolves of London. Taking on the role of a vengeful werewolf, the player stalks the members of an aristocratic family who are responsible for the curse that turns them into a feral beast every night at midnight. Interestingly the game features an adaptive police force who will become more aggressive the more mayhem you cause – a feature that would later become common in games like Grand Theft Auto.

Werewolves of London expands on the beastly transformation experience of Altered Beast, and embraces the uncontrollability of the lycanthrope condition as an unpredictable gameplay and narrative element as opposed to just a video game power-up. The parallels with the 1981 film An American Werewolf in London aren’t exactly subtle and the game is exceptionally clunky, but there is fun to be had in rampaging through tube stations and Hyde Park as a killer wolf when the clock strikes midnight. Although the game wasn’t particularly well received at the time, it has aged better than many games of the period due to its unique premise, day and night system, open world and adaptive gameplay features. The Museum of London has even preserved a copy of the game in their archives as an important work representing London in game form.

From the monster that lurks in all of us just waiting to be unleashed to threats from beyond the stars, there is a rich history of video-gaming monstrosities out there to be explored. Games will never be short of beasts and players will continue to confront them – wherever they may dwell.