Gang Beasts – The Good, the Bad and the Insane

A while back, Gang Beasts left Early Access and became an officially released game on Steam. There were lots of changes, but not everyone seems to think they were all good. As for me? Well, it’s good and bad. As a casual player who only plays with fellow casual morons who can barely work an XBOX controller, it’s worth pointing out what some of these good and bad things are.

The Good

There are a fuck ton of costumes now, as well as the ability to completely customize your little drunk idiot of a character. A lot of them have dangly bits that can be dragged as well. You can save your own character with a variety of different looks. If you’re playing somewhat competitively, watch out though because people can and will grab capes and things like that.

This is important because there’s now ONLINE MULTIPLAYER! It’s never something I’ve been interested in, but it’s actually pretty fun and chaotic. The huge number of costumes makes this even better. It doesn’t seem too laggy, even with 8 players. You can play with complete randoms or play with just whoever you invite, which is nice.

The looks of the game have improved too. Everything feels like it has a Gang beasts style now rather than having a lot of blank, flat textures.

Changes have been made to a lot of the maps, with more breakable things and random objects scattered about. The two new maps, Roof and Lighthouse, are also quite fun.

There are also new game modes too. Some genius added a football mode, while the Waves game mode is slightly more robust. There’s also a ‘Gangs’ mode which I think is just melee but with teams but I’ve never had enough people or controllers to try it.

The new music is actually pretty damn good and catchy too.

Finally, a lot of bugs have been fixed, and for me at least, performance has improved by quite a bit. Sure, things can get laggy if there’s a lot of… things going on, but most of the time the game runs alright.

The Bad

There’s some things that aren’t great about Gang Beasts too. Most notably there’s been a change in controls. Most notably in jumping, which seems to do what it wants. Part of this is because sprinting is tied to the same key jumping is. This makes running and jumping somewhat awkward since you need to jump twice. Wall climbing as well is also a bit hit and miss, and half the time you might not actually grab what you want to grab.

Another weird change is that punching seems less strong than it used to be, while headbutts always seem to be really strong, knocking people out in a couple of hits.

Some of the maps have also been changed for the worse. While Chutes is less laggy and Trucks is more accessible to players with far better camera controls, the new Wheel map is nowhere near as fun as the older one, since fighting is limited to a very small area and straying from what little playable space there is will almost certainly make you lose. The same goes for Vents, which has very little space and takes too long to actually start venting.

The Insane

There’s also some insane stuff. The insane stuff is actually why I’m writing this article. It turns out, in Local Mode, some of the buttons on the keyboard do… weird things…

The 1-9 keys on the keyboard do things. Well, except for the 8 key. That doesn’t seem to do anything.

The 3-9 keys all spawn things. Random items. The 3 and 4 keys spawn small and big balls. The 5 key spawns boxes. The 7 key spawns cartoon meats (based on the logo of the company behind the game) and the 9 key spawns orange confetti. The 6 key is the best key as it spawns massive dumpsters, capable of knocking people out and unbalancing or even breaking maps.

Using these, you can break the Wheel map. Which really is all I ever wanted.

The 1 and 2 keys, though, they seem to… alter gravity. The 1 key pulls people in a random direction and will most of the time just knock everyone out of the map. The 2 key though? You know when you lift into the air in the Vents map? That’s what the 2 key does. Whenever you want.

Just be careful though. These really fuck up your frame rate if you spawn too much stuff.

At the end of the day though, I stand by my original review of the game. Making a bunch of drunk, brightly coloured things beat the shit out of each other in a faux wrestling style is absolutely hilarious, making Gang Beasts an amazing party game. Playing from your couch gives the best results, and online multiplayer is fun too, if incredibly chaotic. But if you’re looking for an actually competitive fighting game, there’s probably better options out there.