Taking to the skies as a mighty superhero or wandering through an apocalyptic wasteland killing zombies with your best good boy, for example. Hell, even fishing in an idyllic setting or cooking up a storm in a demanding fast-food restaurant can fulfill otherwise unachievable fantasies.

Within the boundless possibilities available through the wonders of VR, it’s never occurred to me that I might want to don my escapist goggles to role-play as a mid-level bureaucrat. Could it be possible that Border Bots VR has found a way to make professional purgatory a viable recreational pursuit?

Go stand in that queue, and I’ll have the answer with you in 5-7 working days… 

ROBO RED TAPE

Border Bots VR sees the player embody the first human to re-enter a previously automated workforce to help regulate an influx of erratically behaving robots. There is enough of a narrative set up to justify why you have been granted the honour of manning the robotic equivalent of a customs booth, but it is rudimentary at best. Nonetheless, the plot unfolds as you progress through your career, offering occasional narrative devices that will have you navigating hostile colleagues and mechanised mobsters along the way.

In between work days, players retire to an apartment with various interactive components and house bots with which to engage. These sections are doubtlessly designed to add character depth to the game, similar to those found in the fantastic Startenders. However, Border Bots’ implementation of these activities misses the mark as there is little reason to engage with them. Sadly, in the end they prove to be utterly pointless.

In fact, after about an hour or so the story and home settings become less of a vague distraction and settle into annoyance. There are a few minutes of mandatory time-wasting between the levels that separate you from playing the game. Dialogue scenes are unskippable which compounds the frustration, and eventually, the well-intentioned world-building that the developers set out to deliver just ends up detracting from the core gaming experience.

ACCESS DENIED!

The core gameplay loop of Border Bots VR sits somewhere between a time management and a job sim-style game. Each day, the player returns to work to find a line-up of robots trying to enter the city. Your job is to check that they are eligible for entry by checking several criteria before dutifully stamping their documents. 

Initially, you will just be checking simple things like the expiry date on their passport or their designated classes, but as you progress further the checks become more numerous and time-consuming. From removing counterfeit badges and testing for fire resistance to searching for contraband hidden in secret compartments – there is a broad range of ways for rascally robots to evade detection. 

New requirements are continuously added, and rules will change daily, keeping you on your toes and keeping the gameplay relatively fresh. By the time you hit about day 15 of your career, there is so much going on that trying to move quickly requires some fervent concentration. For gamers who enjoy games like Traffic Jam, Startenders or Job Simulator, there is some good, clean casual fun to be had with Border Bots VR, especially when played in smaller doses. 

JOBSWORTH SIMULATOR

Where Border Bots really trips over itself is in some fundamental design choices that effectively rob the game of tension and create strangely apt “art imitates life” scenarios. 

Seven minutes are allotted to each level, during which the player attempts to correctly process as many robots as possible. Points are rewarded for correct assessments and compounded for streaks of accurate work. At the end of each day, a score is determined and a place on that level’s leader board assigned, but herein lies the game’s undoing.

After a several hours in the game, I have yet to find any way to return to these missions to either check my place on the leaderboard or try the level again to compete for a higher score. What this does is effectively remove any impetus for you to work swiftly.

Work fast and achieve great results? Who cares!?!?!

Without the chance of meaningful recognition for being successful, I quickly found myself going through the motions, riding out the clock until my shift was done. Pedantically luxuriating over each detail with no care for how that impacted my queue of patiently waiting robots. Soon enough I actually felt like a jaded frontline bureaucrat, effectively becoming what they call in the UK, a Jobsworth.

And what reward awaited me at the end of my day? Token appreciation before returning to my small apartment with nothing exciting to do but take a nap, shower, and go back to do it all again the next day. Sorry, but even with cute mechanics and zany bots, a few hours of this cycle had me walking right up to the edge of a virtual mid-life crisis.

COLORFUL CAPERS

Border Bots VR is a bright colourful affair that uses a vibrant cartoonish style that is an excellent match for the game’s tone. The art direction and overall design of the game world are thankfully clear and distinct, a necessity for the attention to detail required for the gameplay. The futuristic cityscape that adorns the game is compelling despite being pure window dressing. 

The audio is solid, offering a satisfactory range of bleeps and bloops to sell the futuristic setting. The voice work is well delivered, with a tone and delivery akin to a Saturday morning cartoon. This all works well in the context of the game’s character and despite not offering anything exceptional the game’s audio-visual components are resoundingly adequate.

COMPUTER SAYS NO

Border Bots VR is a unique twist on the Job sim/Time management genre that offers a casual, `fun for the whole family’ experience. From a technical standpoint, Border Bots VR achieves what it sets out to do, delivering a light-hearted gamification of frontline bureaucracy. Despite a variety of novel mechanics that do their best to add some frivolity into the proceedings the reality is that even in a colourful, whacky, robot-filled setting, being a low-level civil servant is just not that much fun.

Click here for our video review of Border Bots VR.

Priced at only $14.99, but at the time of recording, being sold for a discounted $11.99, Iron Gate, sorry, Iron Guard is a great little sci-fi themed tower defence game that’s as easy on the eyes as it is on the wallet.

Towers Ahoy

If you’re a tower defence fan, there aren’t really that many choices on Quest. I’m sure some of you will correct me and mention one or two games on App Lab or SideQuest that I don’t know about – and please do – but I’ve only seen the far more creatively titled Captain Toonhead VS The Punks from Outer Space, which tried to mix up the third person tower defence thing with some first-person shooting by having you occupy the towers you build.

In any case, Iron Giant, sorry, Iron Guard, tells the story of a band of people whose ship crashlands on a distant planet; their terraforming robots go crazy, start replicating like mad, and continuously try to destroy their owners. Along the way, the story is told through thankfully concise exchanges that happen at the beginning of every level, and some philosophical points are scored about the dangers of trusting machines too much and implanting potentially hackable neural circuits in our brains.

Sure, There’s a Story..

So that’s all the story you need, and off you are, tower defending. You can build various turrets, use road blockers to diverge and complicate the machines’ path, and in a nod to the Command and Conquer games, you mine coloured crystals to increase your income. You can also upgrade all your buildable towers, so pretty soon, your regular turrets, your laser turrets, your rocket turrets, and your electrical turrets can turn into terraforming terminators.

Like Captain Toohhead, Metal Guard, sorry, Iron Guard – does allow for some first-person pew pew, in the sense that your right controller also pilots a small spaceship that you can use to fire away at enemies as they approach your headquarters.

Iron Gear, sorry, Iron Guard, has 30 levels and can be pretty addictive while it lasts, although the difficulty ramping is a bit inconsistent. I had more trouble with some infuriating mid-game levels than I did towards the end, but that could also be attributed to the fact that, by the end, I had unlocked all kinds of upgrades for my turrets and superweapons.

Pretty Places, Good Riffs

The graphics in Iron…okay, okay…Iron Guard are crisp and clear; most enemy units are easily distinguishable, the environments are varied and colourful, and atmospheric effects lend a visual flair to the action.

The music is nostalgic, but in a good way, absolutely sounding like it was heavily inspired by the military marchy heavy electronic guitar riffing of Red Alert 2. It’s perfect for this kind of game, and the tracks are good enough and varied enough that they continue to motivate you throughout the game’s run.

Last Legs

Iron Guard is a great game and one that’s very easy to recommend for Quest owners who enjoy Tower Defence games, and it’s being sold at a perfect price point for a game that’ll keep you engaged for a good few hours while you fend off evil terraforming robots.

And no, it’s not particularly innovative, and it may not revolutionize gaming by some unique use of VR, but…does it have to?

And with that marketing in mind, and before the review proper begins, I want to get something off my chest, and I’ll start by saying this: I’m not in good shape.

About two years ago, I was in pretty decent shape because I was making an effort to look good in my wedding photos. But 4 months of furlough followed by 20 months of working from my sofa has put me in the worst shape of my life, and I’m very keen to find an enjoyable way to put that right.

As with so many other health, wellbeing, and so-called body positivity products, the marketing materials for Les Mills exclusively feature healthy, skinny, beautiful people who probably don’t have a resting heart rate as high as 27bpm between them. 

Please don’t mistake this for bitterness. I get that the imagery is supposed to be aspirational. Still, when every single person pictured on a poster, TV sting, or trailer for Les Mills BodyCombat (in all its various iterations) appear to have about 2% body fat and flawless skin, it doesn’t really endear the ‘Les Mills’ brand to those of us who don’t get up at 5 am for a quick triathlon before enjoying a breakfast of kale juice and onion powder. The people behind the Les Mills brand claim to champion “A Fitter Planet” yet seem to think this can be achieved by targeting their range of products at people who are already painfully fit.

All that notwithstanding, Les Mills BodyCombat is a fitness app that can be enjoyed by people of all health levels. Workouts range from 5 minutes to half an hour and come in one of three intensities. A total of 30 programmes come with this ‘one-time-purchase’ version of the product. Although a subscription model is, predictably, on the way, the publishers promise that this standalone version will always be available and will receive free updates.

Concept

You begin Les Mills BodyCombat by entering your personal details; your height, weight, age, etc. This is apparently so that the app can tailor recommendations and track targets. I, however, saw no real indication of how this might be working during my time with it. 

With the admin out of the way, you are greeted first by the painfully enthusiastic Rachael, then the slightly less irritating Dan. Both instructors demonstrate the basic foot positions and boxing motions required to get you started with a lot of enthusiasm and personality. However, as a cynical Brit, I have a violently allergic reaction to being patronised. So getting told I’m “awesome” because I can tell left from right and throw a jab makes me break out in hives.

The basics of the app will come as no surprise to anyone who has played Beat Saber, Box VR, or even Ring Fit Adventure on the Nintendo Switch. You jab, hook and uppercut various targets as they scroll towards you. Barriers to squat under or lean away from are soon added to the mix, along with various other types of target designed to keep things interesting.

There are Sky Punches that let you unleash your inner Emilio Esteves and Battle Rope Punches that let you thrash out at the ground like a stroppy toddler. There’s even a tricky move that has you imagine grabbing someone you’re not very fond of by the ears and smashing their face into your kneecap. This is the only move in the experience that is ‘technically’ difficult; I couldn’t get a knee hit to register at all until I accidentally smacked a controller into my thigh. Even now, I continue to complete this move by kneeing the base of my hand (which is slightly less delicate than a Quest controller). Even though I’m unsure this is the correct technique, it works. When there’s a combo count and high score table in view the whole time, I don’t care that I’m getting the same workout, whether it registers or not, because I want to win!

These score and combo features are by no means unique to BodyCombat, but they are one of its biggest successes.

As you wait for your workout to load, six other torturees appear around Rach or Dan as they encourage you to stretch, shake it out, or otherwise prepare for the rigours ahead. These other players aren’t actually ‘live’. They aren’t enjoying the same class simultaneously, but the presentation does a good job of making it feel that way, and during play, their scores are updated as if they were playing along with you. The little beep that sounds when you drop down a place on the scoreboard genuinely serves to refocus your attention on maintaining a combo and hitting hard to get the maximum points. It’s a small touch, but it works well as motivation.

Interface

It’s audio queues like this that Les Mills BodyCombat does exceptionally well. You always know when you whiffed an uppercut, dropped a combo or bumped into a wall. Little things like this are hugely important in any experience, but when the tempo picks up, and the targets are coming thick and fast, it’s imperative that you don’t have to break focus to see what else is going on. Visual queues are well used too. The targets are a kind of conical drum shape, so it’s always clear how you need to punch them. I particularly like that you can see your shadow on the incoming walls, allowing you to accurately position your body to avoid it. The different effects used to illustrate how well a punch landed are also instantly recognisable and easy to interpret. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking here, but the quality of the execution should be applauded.

Music obviously plays a big part in the experience, and it’s all fairly unremarkable but entirely appropriate high energy workout music. Would I prefer to have been sweating it up to The Clash? Of course, I would. Does that actually matter? I honestly don’t think so. With this type of activity, it’s more important that the accompanying music guide your tempo and rhythm, and the music in Les Mills does that very well.

Dan or Rachael, and usually both, in turns, guide you through each workout in a way that only seasoned fitness instructors can: With enthusiasm, knowledge, gusto, and not one iota of self-awareness. To their credit, for every time this is unintentionally hilarious, it’s twice as often genuinely helpful. 

You are prepped for each new sequence before it arrives and always made aware of any stance changes. Dan, in particular, is very good at imparting tips on maintaining good form to get the best results.

The biggest problem with the instructors is their complete lack of interactivity or branching feedback. This is a shortcoming the Les Mills instructors have in common with those of the subscription-based Supernatural. The sessions themselves are entirely scripted, so they will continue to tell you how completely you’re ‘smashing it’ even if you stand stock still, miss every punch, and let every barrier smack you in the face.

Of course, if you do that, you won’t score well, and that’s when you will get a remark actually tailored to your performance – a ‘You’ll do better next time!’ or ‘So close!’

Functionality

Like those in Supernatural, the fully-scripted instructions are a genuine frustration. Not only do they completely ruin immersion when you’re struggling, but, even more importantly, they don’t capture failure during initial tutorials – and after these have played out, they cannot be repeated. This has left me in the previously described ‘kneeing my hand’ situation when a more interactive lesson or the simple ability to review the tutorial might have helped me understand the correct method. I think it’s safe to assume that slowly giving yourself a dead leg isn’t the proper method.

The menus in Les Mills BodyCombat are another area that could use some fine-tuning. Each of the thirty sessions is available to play at any time. They’re subdivided into groups, and you select the workout you want within that group by moving left and right on the controller thumbstick. This all works fine. However, vertical movement is achieved with the usually reliable ‘grab’ technique of clicking and holding a trigger before moving up and down to scroll. Here the execution is flakey. There is a scroll bar on the right side, but it doesn’t appear to be interactive, so you’re left-clicking and pulling at various parts of the menu in the hope that it will ‘catch’, and you’ll be able to scroll to a different part of the menu.

Other interactions are minimal but functional and easy to use. Clicking a workout will show you its specific moves and advise how you did the last time you completed it. A progress panel details calories burned and where you stand on a self-defined workout goal for the week. There’s also a ‘Level’ here that seems tied to your total score, but it’s not really made clear what this is for or if it has any impact outside comparing yourself to other users.

Frustratingly, there is no ‘recently played’ section. With every workout having a similar, cliched title, this is a sorely missed feature. You can, however, favourite a workout to make it easier to find, and this is very welcome.

Value

The amount of value you will get from this ‘one-time-purchase’ version of Les Mills BodyCombat will greatly depend on how often you feel the need to change up your workout and your tolerance for the same music and instructor’s patter each time you play. The latter is an issue for me, and I would welcome the option to shut them up once I had the hang of a workout I enjoyed and wanted to repeat often.

In terms of content alone, there’s no doubt that you’ll get more for your $30 here than you would for the equivalent value of in-the-flesh BodyCombat classes or Gym membership. The ‘gamification’ of this concept is definitely more engaging than a Youtube video could ever hope to be.

Conclusion

During a session, when things are going well, and you’re in the moment (our friend Dan calls it ‘The Flow’), Les Mills BodyCombat is as good a workout as you could hope to find anywhere in VR. As is the case for many others, it’s vital that I’m distracted from the fact that I’m exercising. Ask me to kick a football around, and I’ll still be playing when the sun goes down, ask me to jog two laps of a track, and you’ll get a very blunt and very negative response. With Les Mills, the activities themselves may not be anything new; the punch squat, combo, repeat loops have been seen many times before, but Les Mills BodyCombat does a good job of providing an entertaining distraction from the effort it requires you to make.

In their presentation, BodyCombat‘s workouts feel very gamey. Still, both games and workouts require you to fail, learn, and build from your mistakes – and that is this product’s weakest area by far.

In the VR world of Les Mills, failure is literally not an option. Because your failures are not registered during the workouts, they are not corrected. This makes it very difficult to learn and improve.

I’ve enjoyed the workouts Les Mills BodyCombat provides, and I will keep using it. I appreciate the lack of a subscription model and how utterly exhausted a thirty-minute session makes me. Still, there is a lot of room for improvement, and it will be interesting to see what, if any, updates are made post-release.

AFTERLIFE: ALYX

Starting off, you will be callously informed of your death and then guided down a simple path, following along with the tutorial steps until emerging at Barclay Mansion, where the game is set. This expansive manor will become your prison, in the great beyond, as you navigate an essentially linear path in search of answers. Utilising object interaction much like the gravity gloves from Half-Life: Alyx, you can grab items at a distance or lean down to pick them up manually. As well as the haptic feedback used on doors, drawers and handles when physically reaching for them, these specific objects will glow to indicate the ranged grab functionality. Unfortunately, this haptic feedback is also triggered by an invisible line extending from your hands to these objects, excessively vibrating as you walk through any room filled with random things.

Movement generally has its own challenges, seemingly based on flatscreen logic rather than a real-world with peripheral vision. Players are unable to move quickly in any direction other than where their head is facing. Looking around while moving is clunky and off-putting, as your speed will change dramatically by turning slightly to look at a door as you pass by. 

If you can overcome these frustrations, the gameplay does a good job immersing you in the world, encouraging physical interaction with doorknobs and turning keys to access new areas. To proceed, you will need to investigate and solve puzzles by scavenging requirements hidden throughout the mansion. These include keycodes and character-specific story items, making the linear storyline a little less straightforward if you are repeatedly backtracking or looking for clues.

Additional powers and controls are granted as you advance, with instruction on their usage varying in quality. Still, a staple throughout the game is that you have no fighting chance against the otherworldly entities roaming the halls. You will often find yourself implementing stealth and guile to bypass or distract those that see you as an obstacle to their vengeance. 

AM I HEARING THINGS

Past events will often be presented to you through re-enactments seen from beyond the veil of mortal eyes, allowing you to feel appropriately unnerved by the actions and consequences of the story’s characters. Early on, these story segments act as mild jump scares, usually triggered by passing by their location only to hear a conversation spring up behind you. Likewise, the wraith guiding you through the world is prone to narrate in many scenes. However, the wraith’s ghostly cacophony of layered voices is impossible to spatially pinpoint as it seems located inside your head even when he chooses to be visible.

Ghoulish whispers and a relentless sighing, as if the last breaths of the dead, carry through the halls. Eery echoes and creepy creaking embellish the already ominous ambience. A realistic graphical style further immerses you in this supernatural world. Although the visual style alone isn’t what brings life to the dilapidated mansion. The world is credibly cluttered, and you see deterioration all around you. Discarded furniture litters the locations, and mould accumulations abound. Paranormal plant life and inky black portals that shift and distort when you approach them help build a fantastical atmosphere. 

WRAITH: THE OBLIVIOUS

Spend enough time in the game, though, and you’ll find several grievances that don’t require posthumous investigation from beyond the grave. Several fundamental game mechanics are, at best, loosely explained, causing players to rely on either the respawn mechanic or knowledge of other, similar stealth games. For instance, your ‘corpus’ is never presented, with players having to just figure out they have a health meter after dying multiple times. You are given numerous refills for your ‘corpus’ before you even have the chance to take damage, leaving players with no natural way to connect the dots. When encountering enemies, a subtle icon appears on the screen, indicating your presence is being detected, and immediate action is required. Again, this detection meter is something players must either be familiar with through other games or somehow figure out through dying and making the arduous journey back through the storyline.

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife doesn’t let you skip dialogue, regardless of how many times you’ve repeated a section, or even if there is already dialogue being played. You are forced to endure it as you seek out a Save Point. Subtitles don’t always match the dialogue you’re hearing and aren’t even always visible, including during the pitch-black death screen.

Despite the insistence on revising information at every stage, crucial information gathered during your journey cannot be recalled from its storage location until immediately required. This results in situations where you will have to knowingly stand in a dangerous place to reacquire information the game expects you to have remembered. Conversely, providing the required information often makes puzzles immediately predictable or removes any challenge they may have otherwise posed. A different method of accessing gathered clues and important notes would go a long way towards reducing these frustrations.

SHORT-LIVED AFTERLIFE

Similarly, non-essential items containing lore and story material are sent directly to a memory palace separate from your person. Items sent to the memory palace are inaccessible until you reach a save point. Until the tutorial occurs, you’ll only know it exists if you maybe, possibly, happen to notice the extra orb that appears. These collectable tidbits of information grant deeper understanding and insight about the characters and even clues for dealing with the various spectres.

DEAD ON ARRIVAL

While progressing through Wraith, I felt that I was struggling for the wrong reasons. Instead of fearing the nightmarish creatures or feeling uncertainty regarding a complex puzzle, I felt frustrated at the control schemes and gameplay mechanics. While the story and world-building are amazingly well done, playing the game itself didn’t deliver the satisfaction I expected. Admittedly, the story improves as you get further into it, so if you’re a fan of horror titles or like the World of Darkness series, you’ll likely enjoy Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife. 

Still, a few more game patches couldn’t hurt.

I hadn’t ever heard of Racket Fury, and when I found it on the Oculus store, it was on a whim. Boy, was I surprised! I initially bought my Oculus Quest because of Beat Saber. I’d been playing the game a lot on PSVR, and the game was helping me burn around 500 calories a game. It just so happens that Racket Fury: Table Tennis was my second purchase, and it was a very pleasant surprise!

Gameplay

The game feels like Table Tennis. It’s not just another video game ‘adaptation’ of Table Tennis, it pretty much is, miraculously enough, Table Tennis. At least to some guy like me who’s played some Table Tennis across the years, but would never claim to be a pro.

Your dominant hand is the racket hand, and the other hand gives you gameplay options and, more importantly, is your omnipresent ball dispenser.

Here’s the official trailer by Pixel Edge Games:

In ‘arcade’ mode, the physics are realistic but forgiving, but the game allows you to up the realism with the ‘Simulation’ mode. Here you can unleash the ping pong hero that you irresponsibly bragged that you were!

It’s worth noting that I’m aware of Eleven Table Tennis VR, but it’s not out on Quest yet and I haven’t played it. Eleven looks like it leans harder towards realistic simulation – so if you’re only getting one, you might want to wait for that to come out.

If you can’t wait, I assure you Racket Fury is a blast.

The graphics are pretty good, they’re simple, somewhat cartoony, but you can customize your own in-game avatar (seen by others in online multiplayer) with robot parts that you can buy with in-game credits that you earn in the single-player championship mode which serves as the game’s campaign.

LAST WORDS

Even without considering the relatively meager library the Quest still has, Racket Fury is a must-have title (at least until Eleven Table Tennis VR comes out) and will provide you, and any other casual players in the family, with a fantastic time.

This is really why the Quest is a perfect platform for this kind of game. This game isn’t so much a game’s game as it is like having your own portable table tennis..table (sorry, it was unavoidable!) that you can pop open and enjoy anytime.

Update: Racket Fury just got a major new physics update, making it far more realistic and providing a better multiplayer experience. Check out our news post for details!