The PlayStation 4 Shadow of the Beast remake remains a brawler, but with a lot of modern touches to it, as revealed in the latest trailer.
The original Shadow of the Beast is a Commodore Amiga side scroller, published by Psygnosis and developed by Reflections. It was notable for its time for the quality of its graphics, as well as its high quality soundtrack from David Whittaker. It received two sequels and ports to multiple platforms, including the Genesis, FM Towns, PC Engine TurboCD, and even an unreleased SNES build.
This remake is being produced by Sony and developed by Heavy Spectrum Entertainment Labs. While they retained Whittake for the soundtrack, as well as Roger Dean, the original cover artist, the original developer is not involved in any way. Of course, Reflections is now known as a support studio for Ubisoft, as well as developer for the Just Dance and Driver series. Their upcoming games include Tom Clancy’s The Division and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands.
In 1989, it was customary for side scrolling games to have a rudimentary attack and jump. Today, Shadow of the Beast boasts a combo system, counter attacks, and executions.
The story is largely the same, but punched up to God Of War levels of grimdark. You are Aarbron, kidnapped as a child and transformed into a manbeast. Aarbron suddenly retains memories of himself as a human, and turns on his betters.
Shadow of the Beast will be released on the PlayStation 4 in 2016.You can check out the trailer above and some additional images below.