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Swarm 2

Developer / Publisher – Greensky Games
Price – US $24.99 / CAN 29.99 / EU €24.99 / UK £19.99
Release Date – March 7th, 2024
Input – 2 x Motion Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing, Roomscale
Store Links – Meta
Reviewed on – Quest 3

I really enjoyed the 1st Swarm game for the simple fact that it combined gunplay with aerial acrobatics like no other game had really done before. It wasn’t perfect but offered up an enjoyable story and action-packed campaign. With this sequel, gone is the stage-by-stage campaign as in its place is now a Roguelike series of randomly generated stages (18 in total) that take you to various locales around the world. For those into the genre, the game structure here is very similar to Until You Fall with all those Roguelike elements at play to ensure that no matter how good or bad you are at the game, play enough and you’ll have the upgrades needed to blast through the story.

Soar through a variety of locales!

As the last surviving Grapple Commando, it’s up to you head back down to Earth to take on the invading machines. I’m not sure if the story explained how you can respawn upon death, but regardless, you do and upon each go you collect shards found in each map or left by enemies that can be spent on permanent upgrades in between attempts. Each stage completed also gives you a choice of buffs for that run and the more you play the more additional weapon and power-up options unlock ensuring that each new run isn’t quite the same as the last. It’s a traditional roguelike in every sense of the term with the added bonus of a story that unfolds the further you get though if that’s what excites you, I’d temper that a bit as the tale told is fairly bare bones…just like the 1st game.

So, as I tend to go into games I review blind, I was initially surprised and a little let down by this sequels direction as I typically don’t enjoy the roguelike grind and for my 1st few runs, I struggled with not just the games loop, but the gameplay itself as I found the controls to quite awkward. An opening tutorial teaches you the basics before your off with you being able to latch onto any part of the environment or the foes you face. Momentum and speed are key and slowing down for even a few seconds is a recipe for disaster as enemies will home in and take you out quickly should you move too slow. It’s not just Spider-man swinging and pulling as you can also dash in any direction to help build or slow momentum or even use a dash attack on any foe that has you quickly bash into them. It’s the chaining of all those abilities that allowed me to naturally keep moving and once I started focusing on using my direction and tethering to its fullest did I begin to enjoy the game. Basically, the learning curve isn’t too steep but does make those first runs quite frustrating, especially in combination with the lack up upgrades, but if you stick with it, things should improve…at least until some of the later levels which are less tall and more crowded creating plenty of obstacles to careen into if you aren’t careful.

Never stop moving!

I think my 4th or maybe 5th attempt is where I started to find my groove and the game started to open up thanks to not just progressing through each stage but also collecting those shards. That allowed for permanent increases in health, shields, retries, rerolls for run upgrades along with additional abilities like backstab (extra damage from behind), slow motion and a jet boost. As you level these powers up, they’ll need more shards to do so requiring a fair bit of replay though it’s not quite as repetitive as it could be. The game is broken up into 3 worlds, each with 6 thematically similar stages that ends in a massive boss battle against a large humanoid machine. These stages will occur in a random order with differing enemies, powerups and where everything spawns so things don’t always feel quite the same. 1 of the stages is also just a timed obstacle course for lack of a better term where the only goal is to collect as many shards as possible before time runs out.

Each level beaten rewards you with new buffs.

Each enemy behaves in a different manor so memorizing how they can attack you is key to victory as some will just chase you down and explode in your face (I hate those guys the most) while other will take you out from afar with a variety of missiles, lasers and beam weapons. Some may require you to destroy weak points on their frames before you can deliver significant damage with bosses behaving in the same fashion but with the bonus of having a game ending attack you need to interrupt regardless of your shields or health. After getting more comfortable with the controls and a few upgrades did all the pieces fall into place and I began to appreciate the game loop though admittedly fatigue was beginning to set in as despite the mix-ups in stages, enemies and powerups things did start to feel a little samey. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a ton of fun when you find your groove and are swinging at top speeds while blasting foes all around you. It just gets a little stale if, like me, you take awhile to get into the groove and are forced to play the same opening stages more than a few times.

There are a few additional modes you can tackle as well with the 1st being Arcade that tasks you with getting a high score within a set limit on any stage in the game and can be played on 3 different difficulties. I found this mode to be very challenging on ‘normal’ though it is a good way to hone those skills and get familiar with stages and should you care, there are various online leaderboards so you can compare your efforts with others who’ve attempted the same. The last mode is free roam which removes enemies and power ups, places you in a city and just lets you swing around to your hearts content or take on racing challenges, making for a more chill experience for those looking for some zen in this often-chaotic game.

There is a lot of variety in the stages.

The 3D cel shaded art style from the 1^st Swarm is back making for a game that really pops in the Quest 3 thanks to its 25% resolution bump over the Quest 2 as well as having no foveated rendering, an issue that has plagued many Quest built titles. What that all means is that while the game can lack in finer details thanks to that cartoon art style, it looks super crisp and clean. It’s not all great with the still image backgrounds looking a little blurry but given that you’ll be moving almost all the time and focused on the arena, it’s easy to avoid looking at them. The stages vary in size with some being outdoors and much larger to smaller ones that require a little more finesse, like the narrow subway station. Each stage is its own enclosed arena with some being in an endless desert or ocean though other could be in a section of a city with each arena keeping you in bounds by an invisible barrier and, should you hit it, you’ll get bounced back toward the action. Bottom line is that it’s good at what it does, just don’t expect anything to crazy.

The boss battles are no joke!

Now as far audio design goes, it’s solid thanks to the cacophony of attacks and the array at which they can come. Whizzing through the air sounds as it should and your grapple guns sound great with a notable stretching sound happening when you pull them down. Bullets, explosions and enemy noises all sound fantastic with the 3D audio being present, but hard to hear at times given just how fast you can be moving and how many enemies are trying to take you down. I will say the soundtrack did sound a tad…generic with some tracks honestly sounding like placeholder music instead of a more action-oriented selections though once the action starts, the music gets drowned out anyways.

I like Swarm 2 and while I’m not the biggest fan of the Roguelike direction, I still had a lot of fun with this once I figured out what the game wanted from me. Repetition is the name of the game here and while there are a couple of other modes, it’s really just more of the same, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The overall package is a solid one and worth the asking price as fans of the 1^st game or roguelikes should pull a lot out of this thanks to the non-stop action and ridiculous aerial acrobatics at play.

Greensky Games provided The VR Grid with a press code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

March 7, 2024
Operation Serpens

Developer / Publisher – GINRA-TECH
Price – US $7.99 / CA $8.99 / EU €7.99 / UK £6.99 / AU $10.95
Release date – March 22, 2021
Input Method – 2 x Tracked Game Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing, Roomscale
Store Links – Playstation, Steam, Meta
Reviewed On – PSVR 2

Operation Serpens has been around for awhile with its original iteration being a stationary and on-the-rails affair though recent updates have added locomotion turning this into a sort-of hybrid light-gun and traditional shooter. As a member of an elite task force, it’s up to you to vanquish the terrorist group known as the Snakes by taking out it’s leadership and the army of soldiers protecting them. An opening tutorial teaches you the basics of gunfire, locomotion and grenades before you head to that 1^st stage. Once that’s completed you head back to your base of operations where you can choose from a few other game modes or the next level.

Sniping in VR is always a treat.

It’s quite obvious that a bulk of the stages in here were designed without locomotion in mind as the areas in which you can travel can be fairly limiting. The 1^st stage has you in an apartment building in a singular room, while another has you in the back of a parked truck and a 3^rd in an elevator as you travel from floor to floor. In those smaller stages, the only real benefit from moving using thumbsticks is that you could more easily dodge the incoming bullets without having to juke and jive to get out of there way. In the larger stages that require you to walk or climb, things can get weird as I found myself hitting invisible walls everywhere or clipping into geometry forcing some awkward corrections.

Besides the 7-stage campaign, which you can tackle on 3 different difficulties, you can play in zombies mode which pits you against waves of armed and unarmed undead while you try and defend your position in a singular map. It’s alright I guess though I found it got fairly repetitive quite quickly and moved on. The next mode gives you 3 tries to kill as many animated dolls that pop up all over a bar and once you’ve made your 3 attempts, you’ll have to come back another day to try again. Ultimately, if you don’t care about leaderboard chasing, there’s not too much to keep you going in either of these modes.

Each stage has a boss you need to defeat or capture.

Lastly would be the multiplayer mode which lets you and up to 3 other friends take on soldiers in a mall setting where defeating each wave opens up more avenues from where they can spawn. Unlike every other mode available, ammo isn’t infinite so you’ll have to pay attention to your surroundings as the guns can be scarce and spawn in seemingly random locations. Crossplay is enabled and I played a round with a Quest user though neither of us could hear each other so I’m not sure if mic support is available in this mode. Once again, it’s alright and you can play this mode solo should you choose, but it’s nothing special adding to the overall value for the game, but unless you organize a match with friends, it doesn’t look like too many are playing online.

The driving mission is over the top chaos.

Now, as far as gunplay goes, the pistols feel good but every other weapon is little more than spray and pray and whether I handled machine guns or shotguns single or 2-handed, the bullets seemed to want hit everything but my target. They are almost all unusable so unless the game forced me to use a specific gun, I always opted for a pistol. Sniper Rifles are a nice surprise and are fun to use but I found the zoom to be too close making it quite the challenge to line up my targets. Ironically, in that same stage where sniping is required you can control an armed drone which was more fun than sniping save for the fact that it flies incredibly slow. To keep all the action fast-paced, reloading is handled by lowering your gun to your waist or just by pressing a face button which might disappoint some, but most of the stages throw so many enemies at you and so many bullets that I couldn’t fire and dodge fast enough, let alone fathom having to manually reload.

On your left wrist is your health and right has your percentage of progress with each stage supplying you with the starting weapons. Beyond your various guns are health pick-ups, riot shields, explosive grenades, & flashbangs, with the latter 2 being armed by pulling the pin with your off hand or pressing the A button. Sorry, no pin pulling with your teeth, though you can store small arms in your mouth which is hilariously odd but sometimes necessary. Flashbangs provide you with 10 seconds of slowed down time, allowing for some Matrix moments where you take out your near helpless foes and does a great job at evening out the odds during hectic sections.

Many of the stages limit your movements to a very small area.

It all makes for a game that is fun but can be quite frustrating at times thanks to that locomotion and the issues it brings up. Failure in any mission results in a forced restart of that stage which is mostly fine though one stage is setup to not kill your allies but as the game had taught me to shoot 1^st and ask questions never, I shot and killed every ally that popped up until I had memorized where and when they all show up. The final stage forces A LOT of climbing while in combat and I encountered numerous issues where I fell through the environment, enemies shot me through geometry, and I even got stuck once forcing a restart as I couldn’t move to kill the last remaining foe. As I said…fun at times, but frustrating to a point of irritation.

Times like this, a flash bang would be really handy.

Operation Serpens won’t impress anyone with its stripped back visuals either so for those looking for intense realism, you’ll be disappointed. What is here though still has a ton of charm thanks to its smaller roots as it still aims to be a larger game than I expected. NPC models move stiffly and only carry a few animations with their blocky models looking more like cheap child’s toys than actual soldiers. Lighting effects are non-existent with the overall presentation in here reminding me very much of the 1st Crisis VRigade, both in presentation and gameplay. You’ll face hordes of foes in a variety of locales as they pour out of windows and around corners, sometimes even appearing right in front of you, which did feel quite bit cheap. One of the stages does have you in the back of a moving truck while foes drive and fly up on you and is absolutely ridiculous late 80’s arcade fun. I can’t call this a good-looking game, but the overall vibe had me more forgiving of its presentation in favor of trying to enjoy the over the top action. As far as I could tell the game wasn’t using any reprojection and ran at a stable frame rate, I’m assuming 120Hz.

3D audio is present but with the amount of chaos in any given stage or when enemies are just appearing before you, it became much easier just to look around than try and hear where guys may be coming from. The soundtrack is only a couple of selections, 1 playing when you get the level briefing from your commander and the other that plays during the shooting sections, but as the gunplay overrides pretty much everything else in the game, it’s easy to forget there is even a song playing at all with said guns sounding perfectly fine.

There’s not much to say regarding haptics as every gun pretty felt the same with the controllers giving off a little rumble when each round was fired or when a reload action was performed. No adaptive triggers in this one.

Shooting while climbing is a challenge.

It’s funny, but I think I enjoyed this game more when I didn’t have to contend with shoddy locomotion mechanics and just focused on shooting and dodging. It’s fine enough and the additional modes will offer some replay value with the multiplayer option being welcome though with only 1 stage to play in, I doubt I’ll be coming back to that either. That leaves me with an old school shooter that let me turn my brain off and just shoot at dumb NPC’s which would be fine if I wasn’t fighting with games locomotion issues which makes the $20 price tag on this feel quite steep…I’d say by about double.

Ginra-tech provided The VR Grid with a press code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

March 1, 2024
Border Bots VR

Developer / Publisher – Pawprint Games / Team 17
Price – US $19.99 / CAN $24.49 / EU €19.99 / UK £17.99
Release Date – February 8th, 2024
Input – 2 x Motion Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing, Roomscale
Store Links – Meta, Steam, PlayStation
Reviewed on – Quest 3, PSVR 2

If you’ve followed my content for awhile, you would that, in general, I now avoid job sim type games as I have performed countless occupations in VR and am honestly just tired of the genre. So, when Border Bots was announced you would think I would have dismissed it outright but for some reason, being a border control officer for Robots seemed somewhat appealing so here we are and while it can be a little frustrating at times, it’s a fair bit of fun!

A robot can be denied for any number of reasons.

You play as a human, but not just any human as you are the 1st in a long time (over 2 decades in fact) to have an actual job (yay!?) thanks to your AI overlords deciding that your skills are required to manage a border stop. Some comical shenanigans ensue thanks to some newscasts that shed some light on the world your living in as well as your own robot servants who often require your aid as they find themselves in trouble in your new, fancy living quarters. The between job stuff I found to be a little tiresome as the comedy didn’t quite land for me but given the lighthearted nature of just about everything in here, and just how brief some of these interactions can be, they never offended. It’s in your apartment where you can purchase a variety of gloves, apartment cosmetics like posters and plants, a basketball hoop and a few upgrades for your workstation, which is where the rest of the game takes place.

Everyday you wake up, smack the alarm (aka your robot assistant), check out the goings on in your home before hailing a flying cab to take you to work. It’s here where your boss (via hologram) will let you know what you need to get your job done that day. This starts off easy enough with just making sure the robot type and manufacturer symbol match the info sheets they provide though each day will offer new stuff to look out for and/or extra criteria for that day. Soon enough you’ll have to detain robots smuggling contraband, test the flammability of specific robot types, check to see if their modifications match their description, ensure the zone they are from isn’t banned, scan bar-codes and a host more obstacles that make each day its own challenge. If I had the time to thoroughly go through each bots files, no worries, but each day only offers you somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6 to 12 minutes to get through the queue of robots. Of course, you are scored based upon your success rate so every time you mess up, your points for that day get penalized as does your ranking against your fellow human co-workers.

Welcome to your new apartment.

It’s the stress of that time limit that makes this so challenging and the further you get in the game, the harder it gets thanks to the more unscrupulous robots disguising their flaws quite well or just forgetting to check one of the many rules that could be the difference between a pass or fail. When contending with so many options, I often found myself forgetting to check the scale, which indicates when a robot is smuggling contraband, and every time I missed that, I cursed out loud at my own lapse in judgment. Sometimes robots will have their manufacturer logo hidden in weird places on their frame forcing a waste of precious seconds to find it and even more time to remove or replace it if it’s a counterfeit one. Additionally, some NPC’s may ask you for favours that typically go against doing your job properly but could benefit you in the long run adding some replayability thanks to differing narrative paths and multiple endings. It is a little unfortunate that there isn’t an endless mode where you could hone those skills as the challenge factor is fairly high once you unlock all the tools and checkpoint options but with that said, my 1st run through the campaign took me a surprising 5 hours to get through and I had fun all the way too the games conclusion.

Always be on the lookout for contraband!

That’s not to say the gameplay is perfect and while nothing in here is broken, I would have loved the ability to customize my workspace without risking items respawning back to their storage slots. There’s also a grab option that lets you point at an item and bring it to your hand, but I found this to be incredibly finicky and sensitive on the PSVR 2, to a point where I just gave up using it unless necessary, while on the Quest, that function worked much better. One of the games tasks is to show a specific image on your tablet to some robots in the hopes a reaction BUT if any image was selected and within a robot’s view, their heads would lock on to it, causing some issues when I was rotating them in the scanner. I have a few other minor quibbles but for the most part I just navigated around these shortcomings as none of them broke the game, just messed with it until I learned how to avoid them.

You need to pay very close attention to these info sheets

As far as presentation goes, it’s a good-looking game with fantastic NPC models and some great looking environments though you’ll only be visiting 4 different locations so don’t get too excited. The stars of the show are the robots as they come in a variety of model from little R2D2 type units to much larger ‘heavy’ robots that tower above your head with an array of models and classes in between. They’ll wait patiently in line until they hear the ding of the ‘next in line’ button and when they approach your station, they may just be polite and pass over their ID or do something a little more unexpected. Everything is very cartoonish and the complexity of each robot’s design made them fun to watch and scan for those inconsistencies that may prevent them entry. The environments aren’t anything special, but they do the job of carrying the narrative along though I will admit that I was quite impressed by the view from your apartment as it features not only a very high-resolution background, but enough 3D elements into and on top of it that it made it look like an authentic and busy futuristic city. You’ll chat with a couple human NPCs via hologram and they animate well enough though there were a few moments when their mouths didn’t match what they were saying or didn’t move at all which was immersion breaking, though this was a minor issue at worst. With regard to the Quest vs PSVR 2, both versions look nearly identical save for the aliasing issues on the Quest which caused a fair bit of “shimmer” while the Sony headset looked much smoother (120 Hz without reprojection for those wondering) though outside of that, and the resolution bump on the Quest 3, they look pretty much the same.

Your apartment offers a fantastic view!

The audio design here is, for the most part, solid with some decent voice acting from everyone involved and while I did care less for some performances compared to others, many of these interactions are all to brief so it’s easy to move on. The jokes run rampant in here and while I did enjoy the news broadcasts, most of the jokes fell flat (especially the ones with your own robots) but there was still enough charm with each of the NPCs to have me forgive the failed attempts at humor and I’m sure others may chuckle at the stuff I rolled my eyes at. Wherever you find yourself, there will always be a radio nearby playing some kind of music with a bulk of the options annoying me to a point where my 1st action in any room was to turn the radio off. Spatial audio is on point, which is always appreciated, especially in a game that doesn’t really need it, making for a quality audio package despite my few misgivings.

It’s never a good sign when the robot mafia show up.

It’s not a perfect game, but it is a fun one and I was surprised at just how well this kept my attention thanks to constantly changing criteria for bots crossing the border and additional tasks like shooting down drones trying to sneak past you or navigating the various NPC’s and their additional challenges. If, like myself, you are tired of the comical job sim genre, I get it, but this was a nice dip back into the sub-genre that does right by VR and despite being quite repetitious by design, never really felt that way which is always a good thing. There’s a fair bit of bang for your buck here and it’s easily worth the asking price regardless of the headset you want to play this on!

Meta & Team 17 provided The VR Grid with press codes for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

February 7, 2024
Bulletstorm VR

Developer / Publisher – Incuvo / People Can Fly
Price – US $39.99 / CAN $53.49 / EU €39.99 / UK £29.99
Release Date – January 18th, 2024
Input – 2 x Motion Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing
Store Links – Meta, Steam, PlayStation
Reviewed on – Quest 3, PSVR 2

First off, I never played Bulletstorm before this release as the original dropped at a time when some big games (like Skyrim & Arkham City) already had my full attention so I was looking forward to diving into this VR version as it felt like a way to check out a ‘classic’ game I missed while seeing just how much VR can make it better. Sadly, what’s on offer here has me questioning why this game got any praise in the 1st place.

It’s all about tethering foes…whether you like it or not!

Right off the hop you are treated to a few cut-scenes that break down the story about revenge as you, in the role of a space mercenary (not a regular one, a space one) named Grayson, who has been betrayed by your commander (not a space commander, just a regular one) and so your quest begins to blah blah blah… it doesn’t really matter as the plot is largely nonsensical. My issues with the lacking story are the least of this game’s seemingly endless problems with one of the main ones being that quite literally every character in here is an unlikable asshole. I’ll touch on this more in a bit but when you don’t care at all about your hero’s plight, it tends to make for a tedious journey.

Regardless, once you get to enemies, things should just get better as even a mindless shooter can still be fun but this…this is anything but. Before you get your incredibly over-powered tether you are stuck with just your machine gun which was my first true sign that I was in for a slog of a game. Enemies just straight up don’t react to your bullets and behave in 1 of 2 ways, running toward you for melee attacks or taking cover and shooting from a distance. There is an option to toggle gore in the settings but even with it turned out the only real gore I saw was when heads disappeared, or bodies were dismembered with nary a blood splatter in sight. Said tether should make things a bit better and, maybe for the 1st few minutes it did, as with it you can grab at foes and yank them toward you, causing them to float helplessly in the air as you shoot at them or kick them into the various environmental hazards that reward you points you can spend on upgrading your weapons. You can kick them off cliffs, into cacti, bug swarms, pits, electric cables, grinders and so on and while that sounds fun on paper, in practice it gets quite old, quite fast. The range in the tether is large and regardless of what’s in there way, once you grab someone, they fly toward you travelling through objects in the environment and making it feel incredibly cheap, but necessary as the combat is clearly designed around the tether. Most of the weapons have a charge mode that let’s you unleash intense bursts of firepower, but the game rarely requires it thanks to just how easy almost every encounter is.

Trishka’s blades are waaaaayyyy overpowered

2 new levels were added to this VR version where you play as Trishka who is armed with what are essentially wrist mounted light sabers that are even more overpowered than the tether as they are able to kill almost any foe in one swipe. While I played through the 1st stage with her taking my time, my second turn with the character had me sprinting through the stage waving my hands as foes ran into them. In fact, I played through the latter half of the game this way, just with guns, as I just wanted to get through this 5-hour story as fast I could.

Immersion is arguably the most important factor when making a VR game so why the developer decided to display controller prompts over almost every interactable item is kind of insane. I get in the opening stage when the game teaches you to kick or tether obstacles in your way, but when I’m 4 hours deep into a story and still seeing huge floating controller icons telling me to pull a lever I’ve seen 30 times before that point, it just feels like the devs have no faith in their game design. Sniping is a mixed bag as bringing the rifle too your face turns your entire vision into a scope, which I dislike, but as your bullet approaches a target you can steer it with your head, which I did like, for a more accurate shot which is necessary as for some reason enemies will ALWAYS see your bullet coming and try and jump out of the way. Throw in some climbing sections where the hands don’t actually grab what they are holding, some on-the-rails mini gun sections where, thanks to impact physics on the weapons, had my gun flailing in all directions but my targets, constant fade to black load screens that seem quite unnecessary and you are left with a VR game with some weak bones that aren’t made any better by the actual presentation.

Oftentimes enemies will not react to your weapon fire.

I dabbled with this on the Quest 3 and it looks like gen 1 quest game with dialed back textures on nearly everything that make it look quite unappealing. I foolishly expected a substantial upgrade on the PSVR 2 version and while it is improved compared to the stand-alone headset, that bar really couldn’t be much lower. With a resolution only slightly better than the PSVR 1, nearly everything is muddy looking with enemy and environment textures looking at best serviceable and at worst…missing. I get that this is a 13-year-old game, but there’s no excuse for this to look this bad in the headset. Pop-in is rampant and not just on far away stuff but on items right next to you. Nearly everything is a shade of brown or grey making the entirety of the game look bland and unappealing. There are hints of dynamic lighting during some sections of the game but for most of it, shadows are static and blend in so well with your surroundings that even they look missing. Reprojection on the PSVR 2 makes everything look even worse making for an overall ugly experience. There are a few visually fun moments like the opening stage where you are walking down the side of the building or those rail shooter sections but for the most part, this just isn’t a good-looking game.

Sniping turns your entire vision into a scope

Where it’s visuals falter, the audio design outright fails both intentionally and not. I get the bro-homie mentality and it works in some cases but here, it just makes every character unrelatable irritating and not very heroic. Every person in this game is unlikable and feels like they were written by 10-year-old boys who just discovered the urban dictionary 1980’s edition giving this some of the poorest dialogue I have heard in all of my gaming life which is sad as it features some solid actors. The most relatable person in here is a soldier being taken over by an AI program and that’s only because he’s struggling with something, the rest are just angry for angers sake. Spatial audio is here, but not implemented well and I often heard enemies yelling (they always yell) from left or right, but it was never easy to pinpoint exactly where they were coming from. Whenever the next encounter was triggered, a generic rock track would abruptly kick in and just as quickly cut out when all the baddies were killed only to have it kick in and out again as one or 2 more savages showed making it laughable at times.

There a re couple visually slick stages in here.

I’m trying to keep this relatively short as I could honestly rant about just how much is wrong with this for probably a good hour. Even if all the technical foibles were addressed (I forgot to mention the menu options that don’t work) that still leaves a VR game that doesn’t look good, is way to easy, incredibly monotonous, immature with an irrelevant story and unlikable characters. If this was $20 I’d still be hard pressed to recommend this to anyone but considering it’s double that has me warning all of you to stay far, far away from this broken and boring game.

People Can Fly provided The VR Grid with a press code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

January 23, 2024
Vertigo 2 (PSVR 2)

Developer / Publisher – Zulobo Productions / Perp Games
Price – US $29.99 / CAN 39.99 / EU €29.99 / UK £24.99
Release Date – January 15th, 2024
Input – 2 x Motion Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing
Store Links – PlayStation
Reviewed on – PSVR 2

I’m assuming that more than a few PSVR 2 owners may have missed out on the 1^st Vertigo Game (available on Steam via a remastered version) which is a shame as it’s an indie gem. So to quickly catch you up, you played a Sonja, a human trying to escape an Alien reactor whom, at the games grand finale, is sent plummeting back down into the facilities depths. That backstory is briefly touched on at Vertigo 2’s onset, but it’s almost irrelevant as your essentially doing the same thing in this sequel. Story aside, it’s a little unfortunate that the 1^st game isn’t available to PSVR 2 users as there are more than a few references to the 1^st game that will just go over people’s heads, but these are inconsequential to the story which is both epic and action-packed!

The opening few stages can be a little disorienting.

Standard FPS controls are in effect here with weapons and items being stored on either hand, the former of which can be accessed by turning your off-hand over displaying your holographic inventory while latter can be summoned by using a weapon wheel. Ammo is infinite for any weapon you pick up though the more powerful the gun, the longer it takes for that ammo to respawn. Weapon upgrade suitcases are hidden throughout the campaign which can add additional ammo, sights, increase damage and a few more perks to help you out, especially when you face the bigger bad guys. It’s a system I came to enjoy as the game forced me to switch up which weapons I was using during larger encounters and never let me solely rely on my favorite guns.

If not using full locomotion, you can also teleport which will be needed for some of the platforming sections and the longer you hold the teleport button, the further you’ll travel. While I typically don’t enjoy teleportation, even when it’s used as a gaming element, in Vertigo 2 it’s much needed as some enemies can run you down quick and deliver massive damage so if you don’t get out of the way, you could be dead in seconds. To avoid that outcome, health injectors can be found through the game as can health stations which require you to take the injector and plug it into your chest to restore your health, as indicated on your smart watch. As teleportation is linked to your off-hand thumbstick, I did find myself on occasion accidentally teleporting, which can be confusing as I often did this during battles, leaving me to quickly try and catch my bearings. Not the end of the world, but it did cause an unfortunate death or 2 though thankfully the auto-save system always had me restarting at whichever encounter I had died upon and if the game is ever too easy or challenging, the difficulty can be changed on the fly which is an option I really appreciated during some of the harder encounters. The only other issue with the controls that I had is that the duck button is mapped to your main hand thumbstick being aimed downward and is just too sensitive and I often found myself ducking when I meant to just turn. This was just more annoying than anything else, but it did occur quite a bit during my time in the game.

Seeking out upgrade containers will be pivotal to your success.

Encounters can be harrowing as enemies of all shapes in sizes attack you in various ways with each one always keeping you on your toes. There are slower moving zombie-like aliens with hands for heads that shamble toward you or robots of various sizes will try and pick you off with their various weapons, floating eyeball creatures continuously vomit black orbs at you while vicious dinosaur-like creatures appear out of thin air and charge at you with reckless abandon. It’s key to learn each enemies’ strengths and weakness and as you run into each new foe, their bio is added to an encyclopedia you can reference should you need a refresher. Each stage seems to introduce a new enemy type or 2 and while some can be a little more mindless than others, they can come in such high numbers that getting overwhelmed can be all to easy. There are also various environmental puzzles to solve with some being as simple as finding a needed item (like a hard hat) to bypassing a barrier while others will have you using cranes to move containers or nearby consoles and holograms to gain access to new areas. Throw on some very epic boss battles and you get an action-packed sci-fi title that should make anyone looking for a fleshed-out campaign quite happy. All of these elements come together to make this game feel very much like Half-Life and while the first game came off as more a light version of that lauded franchise, Vertigo 2’s grandiose scale makes it feel much in line with what we expect from the Half-Life series. So much so in fact that the developer has called this game Half-like, although this takes itself way less serious seriously and injects tons of sarcastic humour throughout the 10-to-12-hour story.

In small numbers, almost every enemy is easy to dispatch.

While everything in here is fairly refined, it did take me a few stages before I fell into the game’s groove with the first few opening levels being very disorienting thanks to pace at which things happen. It wasn’t until just before the halfway point where the plot points began to fall into place a little more clearly and motivations were made a little clearer so if the story doesn’t grab you right away, don’t worry, it will. The difficulty does spike quickly and more than a few moments had me feeling very overwhelmed but I once I began to find enemy weakness, learn where my weapons and items were best used and played with a bit more caution, I began to once again feel like a badass dispatching every weird creature that got in my way. I did suffer a few glitches throughout my play that forced to either reload my last save or figure out a solution on my own which included Brian disappearing into the ceiling as an elevator lowered and the only solution that worked was to shoot him as he started to lift off the ground. Another incident wouldn’t let me select any other weapon until that encounter was over and unfortunately, I had my revolver armed which has a very slow ammo regeneration rate. Enemies sometimes got caught up in geometry or my arms might have as well but those issues were never game breaking with all my technical issues being few and far between and once I moved past a problem, I soon forgot about it in favor of what I was going to experience next.

Some of the stages are truly massive!

Vertigo’s 2 presentation is fantastic, though for those expecting Alyx levels of visuals, I’d temper those expectations as what’s here can look much more cartoonish at time, and honestly felt more in line with the older Half-life games. That’s not to say it looks bad, far from it as, outside of a few character models, everything in here looks fantastic, especially when you factor in the scope and variety in the stage design. You’ll start off in a complex, escape on a helicopter type vehicle while cruising through mountainsides before visiting more areas of the Quantum Reactor and plenty more alien settings that sometimes feel ripped right from movies, but never once to these areas feel like knockoffs, but homages that still carry a unique flare unlike any other game. I will note that some larger areas can suffer a fair bit of pop-in and while it’s not immersion breaking during most of the game, it’s distracting as all hell during that helicopter ride. On that note, reprojection is apparently absent from this release with the game running at a native 90 Hz though I found using the thumbstick to turn caused some frame rate issues with the screen seemingly struggling to keep up with those turns though outside of that, I didn’t experience any other notable frame drops. Dynamic lighting effects are top notch with reflections all looking pristine and while some surfaces may have a lower texture quality when viewed up close, for the most part this exudes a thoughtful care. Even when walking through sort stock corridors, the addition of comedic signage or stumbling across some nutty scenarios just gives Vertigo 2 a ton of personality and from beginning to end, I was looking forward to what I was going to see next as it was always something I had never seen before in a game…well, outside of the first game I suppose. I also appreciated the cut-scenes which are cinematically boxed in as if you are viewing a flat cutscene as they are still rendered in 3D thus keeping immersion at the forefront of the story telling. Vertigo 2 really does highlight the power of consoles and PC’s alike, showcasing that with some huge draw distances, wonderfully rendered environments and an attention to details that we will hopefully being seeing more of now that AAA VR experiences are back in demand.

A few sections (like this ride is an sci-fi chopper) mix up the action nicely.

Where’s there’s excellent presentation, there is typically awesome sound design and Vertigo 2 delivers on that front with an excellent soundtrack that makes almost every moment in this bizarre world feel undeniably epic. There will be many moments where you may be wandering in silence; exploring caverns, recycling plants, alien landscapes and many more locales but when the music kicks in, I knew I was in for a fight or something totally unexpected as the very 80’s synth/sci-fi soundtrack is a genre I really dig. Performances are also, for the most part, great though some of the characters can come off as a little wooden or even hard to understand and I had to listen very carefully during the cut-scenes to try and piece together what some of them were saying. Once again, nothing game breaking here and the voice work does fit the surrealness of it all, it can just be a little underwhelming or confusing at times which is counter to all the comedy happening. It’s not Trover’s Saves the Universe levels of non-stop jokes but when the funny stuff pops up, I almost always laughed out loud.

PSVR 2’s Haptics are in use, though do feel a little underutilized, like everything is turned up to a 7 in the controllers at the most so while every gun feels slightly different when being shot, none quite have the punch that we’ve seen in games like Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge. Whenever I took damage, my headset vibrated which I always appreciate in an action packed title where projectiles are constantly headed my way.

The boss fights are always epic!

In this current age of the PSVR 2 and a look toward more premium VR titles, Vertigo 2 is unique as almost no recent campaign-based VR shooter matches its scope in regard to not just visuals, but variety in gameplay. What’s here just feels like a giant breath of fresh air thanks to some incredibly refined gunplay, plenty of secrets to find, a bizarre but epic story and humorous charm that never overstays it’s welcome while still delivering some intense action. PSVR 2 players should rejoice as this really is one of the best uses of the medium released in the last few years.

Perp Games provided The VR Grid with a press code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

January 8, 2024
Asgard’s Wrath 2

Developer / Publisher – Sanzaru Games / Oculus Studios
Price – US $49.99 / CAN 64.99 / EU €49.99 / UK £39.99
Release Date – December 15th, 2023
Input – 2 x Motion Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing
Store Links – Meta
Reviewed on – Quest 3

I’m gonna try and keep this review on the shorter side and not dive as deep into the mechanics as I tend too as there is honestly so much in Asgards Wrath 2 to talk about that covering it all would make for an insanely long video. So, for those that haven’t played the 1st one (and I’m sure that’s many of you), you can catch up thanks to an optional “previously on Asgard’s Wrath” cinematic which summarizes the events of the 1st game and explains why you appear to be stuck in a Norse tavern. Naturally, you escape from your makeshift prison and begin your quest to seek out revenge against the trickster god Loki as you traverse locations from around the world, inhabiting lesser beings and meeting other gods from different mythos.

You are gonna see these lizard men A LOT!

The word I keep coming back to when it comes to AW2 is ‘grandiose’. This is easily the biggest game to ever release on the Quest platform and it’s quite clear that the developers were trying to bring the AAA when it comes to scope and scale. It’s a semi-open world affair that offers up a lengthy main story (apparently 60 hours worth of content) and plenty of bonus missions and side quests should you want for that sort of thing. It very much reminds me of the Assassins Creed or Red Dead series when it comes to basic structure in that you are relatively free to do what you want but can head back to the main story whenever you feel like it…more or less. As your powers, weapons & companions are tied directly to the story, the more you focus your efforts there, the more of the game becomes available for you to play and while I appreciate just how much game is here, I quickly began to ignore anything besides the main story.

The god puzzles can be very challenging.

The combat is visceral and fairly in-depth, bringing back the parry and attack system from the 1st game, but making it much more organic by letting you move freely during these sections. Enemies have a variety of attacks, some that can be blocked or parried while others need to be evaded while you, inhabiting a mortal, have a few weapons and powers at your own disposal. Proper parries may reveal weak spots that cause much more damage when you whack at them and overall, it’s a solid combat system that only gets more involved the longer you play thanks to additional abilities, companions and the various foes who mix up attack strategies. The thing is, as much I appreciate all the fighting, after around the 8-hour mark, I ended up dumbing down the difficulty to story mode just so I could breeze through the standard encounters as they began to feel quite samey. I am specifically talking about those regular foes as the mini-boss battles typically added new dynamics thanks to their specific weaknesses and any encounters with actual Gods were always harrowing experiences.

The mini-boss battles provide some of the most fun and challenge in the game!

Surprisingly, as much combat as there is to be found here, there is just as much puzzling, if not more and I am pleasantly surprised by just how much variety there is in all these obstacles. Puzzles can be a simple as just figuring out how to climb, wall walk, pull a lever or yank on a chain but as the game progresses, they get more and more complex, requiring you to use and chain together not just your abilities but those of your companions as well. Don’t forget that you are a god and there are sections where you can assume your godly form, looking upon the environment your host finds him or herself in, allowing you to move huge sections of the stage and adding yet another layer to all the puzzling in the game. Every time a new mechanic is introduced, you can bet your ass that it’s going to be needed to solve a plethora of puzzles down the line and I appreciated just how little hand holding there was during some of these sections though I need to say, despite the game constantly trying new things, the game loop of exploration, combat, puzzles and god puzzles did get a little tiresome at times. I think it’s just the nature of the beast when it comes to games promising this much content and I will give the devs credit here as they do a great job of constantly adding new elements to contend with, it can just feel a little formulaic at times or during longer play sessions.

Each of your companions can aid you in combat and travel.

If it’s not puzzles or combat, it’s exploration, crafting, upgrading and delving into the various other elements that make this feel like a fully realized semi-open world game and just like it’s flat counterparts, if I could avoid any of these elements, I did. Almost every system feels quite robust, minus the crafting, giving plenty of other things to do but unless it was a necessity, I tended to ignore them. You can collect random items throughout your travels which can be traded or used at vendors though the only time I ever used these were when I was in desperate need of health or revival potions after a failed encounter. Exploration will of course yield more loot though on more than a few occasions, entering a random cave brought me to an identical cave I had just visited, hampering immersion and with these smaller areas typically not having great loot in the first place, I soon stopped visiting them altogether. There’s a decent perk system at play that lets you spend points gained from experience (or specific items) that unlock or upgrade yours or your companions’ abilities. Every time you encounter something new, an entry is added to your codex should you wish to read more about said foe, friend or location. In the menu, you can customize your minions with items and purchased armor, view all your active quests, check out the mini-maps and host more things to keep yourself busy though navigating through all these options can be a tad tedious as there are plenty of options to wade through. Lastly would be optional missions where you need enter tears in reality and dispatch bad guys to seal them up. What makes these special is that some of these will play in mixed reality as minions come at you in the real world and while this did feel a little tacked on, it’s a unique and clever use of the headsets passthrough features.

Speaking of keeping busy, there is a passive online component to this as well that tasks you with completing daily objectives for extra loot. There’s also the ability to leave avatars of yourself throughout the land which I found to be nothing short of annoying as it seemed like every few steps I took led me to yet another ghost with a username above it performing some stupid dance or pose, though thankfully there is an option to disable this feature and keep things less messy looking.

You’ll face a variety of foes, but the combat starts to feel the same regardless of the opponent.

Now, as far as presentation goes, Asgard’s Wrath 2 sets the bar when it comes to scope in regard to standalone headsets. I’m not going to lie, I’m disappointed there is no PC version available as the 1st game was a marvel to behold offering up some of the highest quality visuals we had seen up to that point. Amazingly, the scope of that 1st game has carried over here offering up massive stages that let you view them from human or god size. The texture quality of almost everything and everyone isn’t great, but it almost doesn’t matter considering just how much game is here. Despite those less than impressive textures are wonderfully animated NPC’s and an attention to detail that, from a distance, had me in awe of just how much gaming world I could see. There’s some minor pop-in throughout, but I found most of that to be well within acceptable save for when traversing the larger areas where wild animals would seemingly appear out of nowhere as I was travelling on the backs on my companions. There are some lighting effects at play beyond just the static ones found in each stage which add some realism to each world. The scale of some gods and creatures is nothing short of mesmerizing and when the game is working to impress, it usually does. On the Quest 3 I did encounter some moments when frames dropped a bit, but for the most part, this performed near flawlessly and despite some of my misgivings, is still one the most impressive titles to come to stand alone headsets.

As far as audio goes, it’s a complete package with tons of voice work, spatial audio, an epic soundtrack and sound effects that match everything happening around you and I have no complaints in this department…it sounds fantastic!

Messing with the Gods is a dangerous game!

So, as I wrap this review, I am blown away by what’s been achieved on the Quest with AW2 easily the most ‘complete” AAA type experience available for the platform. The puzzles are engaging, the combat is solid and there’s plenty else to do besides that, but it can all get fatiguing after awhile. In no way is it bad and in no way am I done with this, I just think I’m gonna take it easy and play this at a slower pace then I have been up to this point, picking away at the game until my next face-off with a god, which is where the game shows its strengths.

Meta provided The VR Grid with a press code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

January 7, 2024
Not For Broadcast VR

Developer / Publisher –NotGames, Babaroga, tinyBUILD Games
Price – US $24.99 / CA $34.99 / EU €24.99 / UK £22.99
Release Date – December 14th, 2023
Input – 2 x Sense Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing
Store Links – PlayStation
Reviewed on – PS5/PSVR 2

Not For Broadcast above anything else is one of the more unique games I have played in recent memory offering up a mix of stock job sim type interactions along with an interesting political narrative rife with some dark comedy interspersed with some very serious overtones. The bulk of the game has you at the producers booth, messing with various buttons, dials and switches to ensure the “best” quality news show hits TV sets. Each live broadcast takes roughly 30 minutes more or less and not only tasks you with doing a good job, but offers you choices to steer the news in the direction you want by choosing camera angles, ads and even exposing the various persona featured on the broadcast for whom they truly are or protecting them by keeping their facade intact.

Ahead of a broadcast, it’s best to have everything in order.

It’s that control over the final product and how it affects the current political climate or how the audience perceives featured public figures that makes for the most interesting aspects of the game, none of which would land if it wasn’t for the seemingly endless hours of recorded footage featuring a variety of actors. Like any news show, you’ll have to shift focus on the anchors, on field reporters as well the interviewees with many of the segments full of satire and bizarre humor. In one instance, my least favorite in the game actually, I had to keep the cameras on an acting troupe as they performed a way too long skit about bullying, jumping from camera to camera as each danced or spoke. It’s awkward to a point of painful but counter to that was a sports broadcast where 2 competitors were trying to not throw a ball in a can while the on-site reporter provided ridiculous commentary and if bouncing the camera between all of the people here wasn’t already hard enough, nude protesters show up forcing me to avoid capturing their nakedness on camera. On more than few occasions, guests may drop swears that that need to be bleeped out or interference may force you to mess with a dial and slider to keep the broadcast from losing reception. It all works surprisingly well save for that interference as I found the dial to be unresponsive at times causing frustration as my viewership dropped through no fault of my own.

You’ll have to contend with this frequency mechanic way too often.

The better you do, the more money you’ll make which applies to the text based choices in between broadcasts where you learn about your personal life and make decisions that add another layer to the story. It’s here where you’ll have to choose between work and spending a weekend with your wife, keep your kids on the “right” path and manage expenses which are once again directly tied to how well you do your job. These bits can feel chaotic as their may be some large time jumps in between each scenario, but they do serve in explaining not just your family dynamic, but the ramifications of the current political structure and how you’re being directly affected by the results of your broadcast. It’s ultimately that dynamic which will drive the choices you make throughout this roughly 10 hour story and don’t worry, should you miss what was said during a broadcast, you can rewatch what you made and listen in on what you may have missed so you can go into the next show ready to steer the news the way you want.

It can be amusing at times, frustrating at others and with each section lasting half-hour, it can also be draining as while each broadcast does change things up a little, they all play out in similar fashion with you just trying to put out a successful show. Not so bad if the news is entertaining but as I said, not all of the segments land and when they don’t, the pace seems to slow down and I found myself watching the studio clock more than the broadcast as I just wanted these sections to end. There’s more good than bad here, but what ultimately happened is I found myself playing through one broadcast during a game session and putting the game down for that day as I had enough whether it was a good show or a bad one.

In between each broadcast, you’ll have to make some life altering decisions.

Part of the reason why I kept this to shorter sessions is the presentation, which isn’t bad, especially when you consider just how much video was recorded for this and that those vids are the star of the show…it’s just not that immersive. The quality of those vids is very hit and miss with many looking extremely low resolution, and not in like an 80’s CRT kind of way but in a compressed to much kind of way. This affected the on-site reporting more than the studio stuff but when it popped up, it wasn’t fun to watch and ruined whatever was happening. Your studio isn’t anything special but does a decent enough job of making me feel like a producer…at least until I looked outside to the poorly rendered cityscape with matching weather effects. It’s the shortcomings here that are noticeable as most VR games that take place in a singular space tend to look much better than what’s on display here. The gameplay does win out and when I was focused on the broadcast, multiple monitors and tech in front of me, I forgot about the presentation and focused on all my tasks, but whenever I had a little respite, I looked around my little room and wished it looked a little better.

Some of the videos are much lower quality then others.

Confined to your studio, it’s all on the actors to sell the overarching narrative and, for the most part they do a great job of hamming it up and while it can be a little to tongue-in-cheek or just over the top, the light-hearted nature of it all, despite the more serious undertones, makes it quite amusing. When the cameras stop rolling and the anchors start bickering, guests make insane demands before they are live or you continue to see the aftermath of an on location incident, it’s all quite entertaining. Thankfully spatial audio is here and while it’s not really needed, it does add to the immersion and occasionally helped out when I was screwing up, directing my attention to what I was missing making overall solid audio package.

PSVR 2 haptics are in use though as much of the game is just pressing buttons, I honestly didn’t notice the sense controllers too much BUT during a storm, when thunder boomed, my headset rumbled ever so softly which I thought was a wonderful inclusion that did add to the less then realistic storm happening outside my window.

It’s all about keeping that viewership meter full!

It can be funny, overwhelming, engaging and fatiguing and even though I enjoyed my time keeping the news flowing, after I got to around the halfway point of the game, I was more than done with the game loop. I’m sure some will find this much more entertaining then myself but I think for many, sitting at a producers booth while directing and sometimes re-watching broadcast can feel more like a job then a game. The asking price is fair for the amount of content and even replay factor should you find yourself invested in the narrative, I just think the audience for this will be fairly niche.

tinyBUILD provided The VR Grid with a press code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

December 14, 2023
CookieRun: The Darkest Night – Chapter 1

Developer / Publisher – Studio FreshDoh! / Devsisters Corp
Price – US $24.99 / CAN 34.99 / EU €24.99 / UK £19.99
Release Date – November 30th, 2023
Input – 2 x Motion Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing, Roomscale
Store Links – Meta
Reviewed on – Quest 3

Alright, to my recollection I have never heard of the Cookierun franchise as it’s been largely a free-to-play collection of mobile games covering a few different genres dating all the way back to 2009. While those mobile games don’t look like anything to intriguing for myself, this VR title does as it’s a fully realized action-adventure game with some light RPG elements and puzzling thrown in for good fun. Without spoiling too much, you as Gingerbrave, have woken up in an oven and must escape not just that but the house you find yourself in, aiding the various beings you find along the way and unravelling a rather epic story.

Step 1….escape the oven!

Like most games, the opening stage acts as your intro to the story and controls, having you escape that oven by walking, climbing ladders & attacking some stationary spores with your candy cane. While you can free roam any of the stages, your max walking speed is isn’t very fast and the smooth turn option, even set to max, is brutally slow forcing me to turn IRL so I didn’t feel like I was a walking tank. Climbing is also a little too finicky and my hands often got caught on geometry or would randomly lose grip causing some frustrations. Most of the stages are relatively linear and come in smaller sizes like skinny bookshelves to larger areas like a laboratory with each have some hidden sections and items to find, adding a nice layer of exploration for those looking to find everything the game offers. In fact, hidden in every stage are some very simple stone puzzles that require you to spin a block to complete a carving or other areas that require various rescued lifeforms to unblock them. Treasure chests are littered everywhere with some simply needing to be opened to grab the loot while others require keys that can be found throughout the game. Those lifeforms will also be found in various stages, trapped in a glass container that contains a mini world from which they need to be rescued. These worlds have those piranha plant-like spores and other monsters that need to be killed off before rescuing said creature and defeating a large boss that’s preventing your exit. Once you rescue the little guy, their abilities can be used at specific markers to find collectibles or snag some more loot.

You’ll meet a few whacky characters on your journey.

Standing in your way are various minions that serve the Darkest Lord and can be dispatched using the various melee and slingshot weapons you can find or buy though the combat leaves much to be desired. There’s actually some depth to the combat as your strikes will cause enemies to react to your blows and you can block projectile attacks with your melee weapon. When enemies get low in health, a line appears before them indicating which direction to swing for maximum damage adding a layer of strategy to the combat that is all but rendered moot by the fact that it just devolves into a waggle fest. With many blow flinching foes, the faster you attack the more damage you’ll deal throwing any sort of strategy out of the way in favor of just beating the enemies to the punch. Some of the larger baddies can inflict some heavy damage which is where your slingshot comes into play and that works well enough I suppose, but once I learned to craft magical weapons, I only ever used my slingshot on flying enemies that were out of range of my sword. The combat is the most disappointing aspect of this and while it’s not awful, once I was just exploiting enemies and not actually battling them, fighting became mundane and got in the way of the rest of the game.

The combat isn’t great in here.

Those magical weapons can be made in the Gnome village, which acts as your hub area between stages. It’s here where you can purchase items, ammo and weapons for your journey, all of which are stored in a clunky backpack. All the loot you collect can be spent or used here and once I made my 1st magical sword, one that uses lightning, the combat fell apart as that magic seemed to stun enemies meaning they would never get an attack out once I started swinging. Your backpack can be accessed by pulling at the right side of your chest while your quest book is stored on your left. There are multiple slots for the types of stuff you’ll find (ranged weapons, melee weapons, Quest items and other items) and once any particular section is full, you can’t drop anything else in there until you free up a slot, which can be a pain in the butt as I found myself dumping healing items in favor of keys to open chests on many occasions. That almost doesn’t matter though as I rarely took much damage which is good thing as the healing meat jelly (essentially a drumstick) would almost never heal me as I tried to bring it to my mouth, practically shoving my controller into my face in the hopes the game registering what I was trying to do. Eventually I got it to work, but it seemed completely random when it did, so something here needs to be fixed. Like I said though, I rarely took damage, which is indicated on a cartoonish smart watch on your left wrist which might also direct you to your next goal.

The big guys offer a little more challenge.

I know I’ve complained a bit up to this point, and while I will stand behind my issues, there’s still a much higher level of VR game here then I expected. I think it’s the quality of the world design, the charm of the characters and story along with the undeniable fact that despite my issues, it’s clear that efforts were made that make this more than your average VR title thanks to a fair bit of VR interactions and full use of the medium. There are moments in the game when the controls change up and you may have to control Gingerbrave from a 3rd person point of view while enemies launch fireballs his way or during a few sections that may require you to swing your controllers in a specific direction to help your hero swing in place or pull at something he’s grasping like a mine cart pump. Add on a few simple puzzles and you get a game that despite only being the 1st chapter feels quite in-depth despite the 3-hour playtime. You can continue playing after the credits roll and extend that play time and take on a few side quests for some extra rewards which mostly involve revisiting areas of the house and dispatching bad guys.

The game will often to 3rd person when there’s a reason to celebrate

I love when VR games utilize scale in their world building and this shines in that department thanks to the simple fact that you are a Gingerbread cookie in a large house that mixes cartoon and fantasy. The attention to detail is fairly high here and the draw distance is impressive making some of these rooms look incredibly massive. The narrative of evil and good cookies is bizarre for sure, but it allows for a magical mini world where all these little beings have found ways to interact with it and move around via teleportation crystals, tunnels & elevators. Some puzzles will unlock new paths allowing you to continue your quests throughout the Witches home. The different NPC’s you stumble across all look great and animate wonderfully, really bringing life to what is an already lively world and supplying a lot of additional character.

The impressive presentation is somewhat hampered by the audio as many environmental and NPC noises appear to be missing or glitched out, causing some awkward moments of silence when it’s clear there should be some noises to take in. Opposite of that is a soundtrack that’s fits the tones of whatever is happening in that moment. While the stakes may be high, The Darkest Night never takes itself to seriously and is rife with some light humor that largely lands thanks to the whacky characters you meet throughout the 3-hour story. Spatial audio is used though this is a little more hit and miss as it can be hard to tell where enemies are as their steps can be quite loud and if they are above or me, I couldn’t tell. Outside of that though is a game that surprised me with just how much care and quality has gone into the world design, it just needs a little TLC here and there.

The gnome village is fairly lively.

I’m not going to say this is a great game, it’s not, but it has some solid bones and is a surprising and addictive adventure despite the lacklustre combat and other minor shortcomings. It might be a little on the kiddie side when it comes to any individual aspect of the game, but the overall package is a surprisingly solid one. It is a little unfortunate than that it took me around 3 hours to get through the main story making the asking price on this a tough pill to swallow, even with the additional post game side quests. With the 2nd and 3rd chapters coming next summer and winter for “less than half the cost of Chapter 1” it might be in your best interest to wait until you pick this up on sale or perhaps in a complete bundle.

The publisher provided a press code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

December 8, 2023
Arizona Sunshine 2

Developer / Publisher – Vertigo Games
Price – US $49.99 / CA $65.99 / EU €49.99 / UK £39.99
Release Date – December 7th, 2023
Control Method – 2 x Tracked Motion Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing, Room Scale
Reviewed on – PSVR 2
Store Links – Meta, Steam, PlayStation

The first Arizona Sunshine game holds a special place in my heart for a variety of reasons, but as I didn’t play the game until it’s PSVR release, it’s not because it’s a great game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad game, it’s just a very formulaic shooter that took little risk but delivered a satisfying campaign thanks to it’s use of comedy and solid gunplay. Fast forward 7 years and the studio behind that, Vertigo Games, has become a big name in both VR publishing and development so expectations are high when they release a new title, especially when it’s their 1st sequel.

A crashing chopper lets you know you aren’t alone!

When we last saw our smarmy protagonist, he was taking off in a helicopter, evading the zombie horde and finally finding another survivor. While I won’t spoil what happened after those events, but he has once gain found himself alone in the apocalypse. The opening events establish that there is someone else out there and so begins your quest to find anyone to share the end of days with, but thankfully this time, you aren’t surviving solo.

Along for the ride is your new rescued dog, Buddy, who might just be the best trained dog ever. You still have all the skills (and weapons) needed to survive on your own and can store single handed weapons at your waist, one per side, as well as 1 2-handed weapon over your right shoulder. All your ammo is stored on your chest and grabbing at it will grab whatever ammo you need for the gun in hand. Weapons behave in realistic fashion having to eject clips or magazines, open up barrels or remove fuel containers and replace and reload them…the fuel cartridges are needed for the flame thrower in case you were wondering. I honestly love the gunplay here as I found the aiming to be near perfect with any weapon and aiming down my sights almost always shot a zombie exactly where I intended, which was the head like 99% of the time. Each one also feels somewhat weighty which I appreciated, especially the larger assault rifles which pack a punch, but go through ammo surprisingly fast. That dog adds to the equation by not only being a very efficient killing machine but can also store additional smaller weapons on his vest. You can command him to attack individual zombies or retrieve items out of reach making him one of my favourite companions in any game and don’t’ worry, you can feed him, play fetch, make him sit and even take him to the vet, which is a fairly traumatizing experience.

Yes, you can play fetch with Buddy!

Outside all that zombie killing and pet care is a more in-depth game than the original, but some choices here really take away from the way I want to enjoy the game. For starters, you can only carry 3 guns and even if you wanted to just hold a 4th one, nope, as the moment you pick up any weapon, it will automatically replace whichever weapon is in hand or your larger weapon. It’s quite irritating as it felt like I was constantly giving up weapons I wanted in favour of untested weapons that I didn’t like as much. I stumbled across an array of armaments, but the fact that I can carry so few and never knew when I’d be able to find a weapon I liked again had me very hesitant to just grab a new weapon as some can be less effective than others. One notable omission is the lack of scoped rifles, which were in the 1st game and when I was given a rifle without a scope, I never bothered to use it as my other weapons were just as effective, if not more. Supplementing your guns are explosives which can be created at portable stations throughout the campaign. You can make grenades, mines, molotov cocktails or sticky bombs with each being a very effective way of dispatching foes…it’s just too bad you can only carry 2 of them at the most.

Buddy is just as good at killing zombies as you are.

The game really wants you to explore each stage, opening every drawer, car door, trunk or whatever in the search of ammo and ingredients for your explosives. The thing is, you only have 2 storage slots (1 on each wrist) and with a melee weapon being somewhat of a necessity, that leaves only 1 slot for explosives making all that scavenging somewhat pointless. Of course, you’ll need ammo, but as for all those ingredients, it ended up for me being a useless game mechanic that I rarely used. I threw a grenade every now and then, but beyond that, crafting and carrying a mine or sticky grenade seemed like a waste as placing these explosives was a guessing game anyways depending upon how a horde may have been approaching me. It’s just odd that the game would promote all this crafting and not let me carry more than 2 of the crafted items, while giving me plenty more resources than I could ever use.

When you face a horde, things can get hectic.

This wasn’t a game breaker or anything, I just ended up not relying on any explosive to get me through an encounter, instead learning to use my guns and blades efficiently as well as Buddy’s relentless attacks. Once I started to ignore the mechanics that annoyed me did I truly enjoy the game, and there is a lot too enjoy despite my misgivings. From the beginning to very end of the game you’ll be dispatching the undead horde with relative ease as while they come in a variety of forms, most can be dispatched with a single head shot. The 1st game played with that a bit, but this sequel ups the challenge with many zombies having headgear or growths that require a few shots to dislodge or “bigger boned” zombies which can absorb a lot more damage. I was expecting this sequel to expand upon that with more challenging foes and while 1 or 2 did mix things up, you almost always face “normal” zombies. Not a bad thing, but for those that may be expecting gameplay change ups, outside of the melee and the dog, there really isn’t any with almost every encounter being overcome buy unleashing as many rounds as possible.

The melee is a very welcome addition as you can now lop off limbs and heads with near reckless abandon thanks to the various bladed weapons you’ll find scattered throughout each stage. These come in many forms from butcher knives, spades, machete’s, pick axes and a host more with each delivering satisfyingly visceral results. Every melee weapon will degrade quite quickly so while these can be one of the most efficient ways to dispatch many foes, be careful as once they break, they are useless. There are also a few sections in the game when you need to outrun the horde and, in these sections, I’m assuming because of the number of zombies on display, your melee weapons will not register on the zombies chasing you which is nothing short of immersion breaking, though I learned quite quickly not to bother with attacking when the game asked me to run. On similar note, you can’t push or grab zombies so if they get close, you’re probably in trouble.

It’s always best to carry a melee weapon on you…just in case the undead get to close.

Outside of the combat are some climbing sections, some that are fairly harrowing, a little exploration if you want to find all the collectible masks and loot as well as some mini-fetch quests to find buttons, switches or keys. This leads me to the co-op portion of this review and the game is better when playing with a pal though very little changes outside of the fact that the game is easier with 2 guns instead of 1. The 1 to 4-player horde mode only has 1 map at release, Canyon, which to my recollection is the same map from the first game and isn’t really anything to exciting. You are confined to a relatively small area and must defend against waves of the undead and as you advance, you’ll receive loot that can be spent on creating those explosives but there aren’t any melee weapons to be found. It’s fine enough but I got bored fairly quick playing alone and outside of just having friends to talk too, the mode doesn’t scale or anything leaving us with a fairly bare bones affair.

That leads me to the presentation which is pretty damned good. Arizona feels fully realized with levels changing up quite often as you navigate neighborhoods, sewers, a mall, train stations and host more locales that look great thanks to a high attention to detail. Dynamic lighting effects are beautiful and a testament to just how much realism they can add to any game with darker sections automatically turning on a flashlight on your chest to help you see. Those darker areas can be quite unsettling thanks to how hidden zombies can be as their silhouettes blend into the background with a few moments even having the horde banging on foggy windows from the outside, seemingly mere moments from breaking in. It’s impressive to see dozens of zombies on screen with those horde sections really putting the pressure on when they showed up. Explosions looks ‘dynamite’ (get it?) and depending on where they go off they can have some effects on your surrounding like blowing out glass or swaying nearby trees. The gore factor has been increased as well with some zombies looking quite disgusting but it’s when you start dismembering them that things get gruesome. Headshots cause all manor of ichor to go flying with chunks of the zombies being scattered around should you decide to lop of limbs or blow them to bits and thankfully, all that carnage doesn’t disappear so whenever I fought back against a horde, it was always nice to take in the disgusting aftermath. This really is a good-looking game so it’s a little unfortunate at just how much pop-in is present and while smaller areas suffer much less from this, there are enough larger zones in here that showcase those disappearing and reappearing assets and textures. This also happened to zombies and items closer to me, enough to distract me for a second or 2 before moving on. I know this sort of thing happens in games all the time, but in VR, it’s a lot more noticeable. Outside of that is a very clean looking game and despite how repetitious this can look and feel at times, I still enjoyed taking in all the post apocalyptic sights and settings.

The crafting seems almost pointless with how few explosive you can actually carry.

Accompanying that solid presentation is an equally solid audio package that continues the exact same tones from the 1st. Most of the time you’ll be wandering each stage in silence save your footsteps, Buddy, the roaming undead and your own less then internal dialogue. The protagonist loves to talk to himself and essentially narrates the campaign though this time he does direct much more of his quips towards the dog. His comedy is hit and miss and while I found his chatting to be more amusing then cringe, I think some may get sick of his shenanigans. Spatial audio is fantastic and used to great effect with weapons and really every other effect sounding like they should.

Don’t let ’em get to close

I’ll quickly touch on the PSVR 2 haptics in here which I think work just fine with each gun feeling a little different in hand as you fire them and should you take any damage, your headset will give a little rumble.

Ultimately, Arizona Sunshine 2 is a bigger and better sequel in ALMOST every way, delivering essentially exactly what I expected from this 2nd chapter. Like the first game though, this doesn’t really take any risks and I can’t help but feel like more could’ve been done here to make things a little more engaging. The action from the beginning of the game to the end is largely consistent with most encounters not offering much in the way of challenge unless the zombie’s came in excessive numbers. With the campaign clocking in at roughly 7 hours or so, there’s a decent amount of game here and the co-op option is a welcome addition I just don’t know if I’m full behind the asking price here as it does seem a tad high for what is still a fairly generic zombie shooter.

Vertigo Games provided The VR Grid with a press code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

December 5, 2023
Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR

Developer / Publisher – Ubisoft
Price – US $39.99 / CAN 49.99 / EU €39.99 / UK £34.99
Release Date – November 16th, 2023
Input – 2 x Motion Controllers
Play Area – Seated, Standing
Store Links – Meta
Reviewed on – Quest 3

I’m not the biggest AC fan and while I did enjoy the 1st 2 games in the series, I lost interest and never really dabbled in the franchise after those initial outings. So when Ubisoft announced Nexus, I was excited to dive back into the series, but leery given the lesser powered standalone headsets as I thought there was a good chance that this would be more of a sampling of the flat games and not another fleshed out chapter in this franchise. I’m happy to report, that this is indeed a fully realized Assassins Creed game built for VR and while it might not be perfect, what’s here is something that still impressed me.

Killing from above is always satisfying.

You play as a nameless character (you can choose a masculine or feminine voice) tasked with infiltrating Abstergo by earning their trust through the collection of artifacts found in the virtual past known as The Animus. You have been hired by The Brotherhood of Assassins to do so and so begins your quest to figure out what Abstergo is up too and to try and stop their diabolical plans. As the story unfolds, new wrinkles are introduced that add a few layers to the plot, giving the somewhat lengthy 15 – 20-hour game some decent story telling value.

Unlike other AC titles, this plays in 1st person with you controlling 3 different assassins at various times throughout history. No matter which killer you play as, they play nearly identical save for any time period specific weapons they may have access to or some other very minor differences. As far as walking, running and climbing goes, that’s all VR standard with combat being a mix Asgard’s Wrath’s wait to block or parry before striking mechanics mixed with a little free form striking thanks to a dash attack or if you can catch an opponent unawares. The combat is arguably the weakest aspect of Nexus as I found it to be either dull thanks to waiting for the AI foes to strike, frustrating as battles can be quite challenging if I faced any more than 2 foes or irritating as tougher boss fights played more like a guessing game between striking and dodging. I might sound a little dramatic as the combat isn’t broken, it just annoyed me more than anything else and while I know it is true to the flat games, in VR, it felt a little too much like a game…I know that doesn’t really make sense, but that’s what I’m going with. Besides your one-handed blade, you of course have retractable knives at your wrist, throwing knives, bow and arrow and a few more items and weapons that can be used to kill from a distance or in secrecy.

There’s plenty of fun parkour action in here.

My dislike for the combat probably benefited my game as this is really all about stealth and not being seen, something the game will constantly remind you of as you are given new objectives and missions. You can stay out of sight or hide in bushes and behind objects, but whenever possible, it’s best to stay above the soldiers on lookout meaning you’ll have to climb and parkour your way around each city. Every building has some sort of grab point be it windowsills or bricks but really anything with a hard edge can be grabbed giving me a wonderful sense of freedom and choice when I went about climbing. Hopping across the rooftops has been streamlined when compared to games like ‘Stride’ in that to parkour all you need to do is run and hold down the ‘A’ button while you look where you want to go. With this method you can cruise across the cities without much effort or thought and considering how finicky platforming and grabbing can be in VR, this is probably the best solution to avoid what could be some massive frustrations. It’s not a perfect solution as grabbing anything in Nexus can be janky and oftentimes I had my hands clipping or just letting go of ledges if I found myself in geometry or grabbed stuff at a funny angle but I never typically fell too far so trying again or a searching out a different path never took more than few more seconds.

There are a lot of mini game challenges to be found.

Besides the main story, there are plenty of bonus objectives in each stage including various hidden items and locations that could reveal a little history surrounding the city and time you find yourself in or some collectibles. Each town also has challenge stations which may task you with parkouring through holograms as you jump around a small section of the city or some target practice with your bow or knives. Ranged weapons are a little to easy to use as your arrows when nocked and released will go wherever you are looking, making for next to zero challenge when it comes to using these weapons. You can also you view the entire city as if were a live miniature (once again, not unlike Asgard’s Wrath) and when you find a specific high point in each city, it will reveal the location of all those bonus objectives so you can easily hunt them down. Oh, and to get down from those higher areas, the leap of faith is present and allows you to dive from some breathtaking heights to a well-placed pile of hay below you. I’m sure I’m missing some finer details, but the bottom line here is that this is a true Assassins Creed Game in VR and fans of the series or newbies should be impressed by just how much game is here.

The combat is the weakest part of the game…but it’s not terrible by any measure.

That leads me to the presentation which is both impressive and disappointing. Nexus is one of, if not the, physically largest game I have ever seen on the Quest. Seeing these cities fully rendered in VR is an absolute treat with the care for history from previous titles making its way to Nexus as well. Whether I was in 1700’s America, 1500’s Italy or -500 BCE Greece, each of these locations is fully realized and littered with authentic details from their respective era’s. On display is also the largest amount of NPC’s that I have ever seen in VR (outside of Hitman 3) with many walking around, talking, selling wares or performing some sort of task. It’s unfortunate that there are so few character models used that you’ll see the same ones again and again, but that’s easy to forgive considering just how much is happening at any given time. I’m sure this is also why mouths don’t often move in sync with people talking, something that occurs throughout the game. Up close, textures suffer, and the lack of dynamic lighting really has me longing for this to get a PC or console release and while the outdoor sections look just fine, I found some of the indoor stages (like houses and catacombs) to be to dark and lacking in contrast making details hard to see and making everything look dull. That combined with what can at times be rampant pop-in and fade-in (especially when running) tells me that this is pushing the Quest 3 to the limit though I am hoping an update down the line could smooth out some of these visual kinks. I don’t like being ‘that guy’ as what’s on display here I really didn’t think was possible on mobile chipsets so while I do have grievances with the presentation, Nexus sets the bar for scope and scale when it comes to VR games.

Viewing the entire city is quite impressive.

Unsurprisingly, sound design is on point thanks to some great 3D audio, solid voice acting and an epic and timely soundtrack befitting the series. My one complaint about the audio is that people can sound like they are right beside you, even if I was very far away, even on a rooftop which just sounds wrong when other NPC’s are much closer. Sometimes audio queues and conversations can be important, but when some guy is just yelling at me to check his stuff out, and he’s much further away from me than 2 dudes arguing right beside me, it can be little immersion breaking. Outside of that is amazing audio package…minus the Connor, the American assassin who sounds so bored with everything happening around him, I kinda wished he wouldn’t talk at all…but maybe that’s just me.

So, when it’s all said and done, Assassins Creed Nexus is a must-buy title for anyone looking to see what standalone VR can do. It’s not perfect and if you want, you could easily pick apart the various gameplay aspects and point out how they could be improved, but when looked it as whole, each of these elements makes for a fast paced and intense stealth game on a scale we have yet to see on any Quest headset. This is the kind of game us VR veterans have been clamouring for a very long time and it’s awesome to see a huge franchise come to VR and deliver a top-quality experience that is ultimately a ton of fun for great price!

November 19, 2023