Vivisector: The Beast Within / Vivisector: Beast Within (2005) PC | RePack by R.G. Mechanics

If a textbook on the history of game development in the post-Soviet space is ever published, Vivisector: The Beast Inside will become a textbook example of how we worked on games. A colossal potential project that lacked either talent, or time, or the banal diligence of developers.

Serious Sam at the zoo

The promises of Action Forms before the release of the game were so large-scale that it was much easier to perceive them as dreams. We were promised:

1. A completely open world with a simulation of life on the island.
2. Realistic graphics with meticulous study of the physics of animal fur.
3. Destructibility of objects according to physical laws.
4. Horror in open spaces.

The wide PR of the project in all well-known CIS video game magazines so fueled interest in the project that every negative news from the developers' camp literally blew up the forums. And these news were – they cut out this, removed that, slightly adjusted the development time, moving the game for six months…

Not surprisingly, by the time Vivisector: The Beast inside had changed beyond recognition. We really traveled around the island – that's just linear and within the framework of the plot. The fur on the animals was really stunningly beautiful – that's just the technology conflicted with DirectX and caused the most terrible brakes without disabling itself in the settings. The objects were really destroyed – but somehow cardboard and unnatural.

As an action game, however, the game was a success, but there is no trace of horror left here. Local enemies – mutated animals of different colors, attacked the player as in Serious Sam, that is, a huge crowd and without much logic. And that's why the shooter has become meat and driving. But the best story here was an unusual one, with a touch of Belyaev and Strugatsky, with a second bottom and an interesting main story. The script is the main thing on which the Vivisector was held: The Beast inside. And this, alas, is not a co