Gameplay and Features
In Mythic Realms, players embark on procedurally generated expeditions, gathering resources, fighting enemies, and expanding their kingdom after each run. The game offers:

• Room-Scale Mixed Reality Combat – Enemies can move around furniture and emerge from walls, while boss fights take over the player’s space, including battles against a fire-breathing dragon.
• Kingdom Building – Players return from expeditions with resources to improve their kingdom and develop new gear.
• Multiple Playstyles – Three classes—Knight, Ranger, and Mage—each wield a variety of weapons, including swords, bows, staves, and shuriken.
• Dynamic Expeditions – Players choose how to approach each adventure, whether through combat, exploration, or gathering.

Mythic Realms is available for pre-order now on the Meta Store for $17.99 with a 10% discount.

About the Developer
Petricore, an independent studio founded in 2015, specializes in immersive experiences across VR and AR platforms. The team has worked on projects for Meta, Apple Vision Pro, and Pico, in addition to creating original IPs.

When Joy Way announced Dead Hook, our ears dutifully perked up in attention. Ever since we played Stride, it’s been hard to shake the conviction that Joy Way have their finger on the pulse when it comes to fantastic VR traversal. This was further cemented when we played the somewhat ill-fated Outlier on PCVR, a game that had great promise but eventually disappeared. An early beta of it was briefly made available on Quest, and from the ashes of that project, Dead Hook rose, much like a phoenix, if that phoenix was dual-wielding futuristic sci-fi weapons and blades and was drenched in the blood of its demonic enemies.

You’ve Got Me Hooked

The star of the show here, as with most Joy Way titles, is the fantastically fluid traversal system. You have two grapple hooks, one per hand, which you can shoot out with the A and X buttons. You can use both together or one at a time, and the physics work as you’d expect, making the swinging and the movement remarkably intuitive. You’ll get the hang of it straight away, pulling on the chains to propel yourself forward, relaxing them to swing, and anchoring one while letting go of the other to arc through the arenas. The movement is glorious.

Call Me Akimbo

Whereas the grapple hooks help give Dead Hook some of its uniqueness, the game is a shooter through and through. I can almost say, knowing full well that Doc hates these genre-describing shortcuts, that Dead Hook feels like somebody put Swarm and Doom into a blender, set it to ‘roguelike’, and watched as Dead Hook rose to its feet, powered by metal and vengeance. Dead Hook offers a decent variety of weapons, including semi-automatic pistols, rocket launchers, shotguns, and plasma guns, to name a few, all of which are upgradeable. Although they don’t have any alternative fire options and the upgrades mostly make them more powerful but not inherently different, the weapon models are good, the gunplay is satisfying, and the weapons each pack their own distinct punch.

Upon completing a level, you unlock a chest at its center containing either a weapon, a perk, or a buff. Here, Dead Hook is a bit sadistic since some levels contain only buffs, and you’re forced to pick whichever you think will be the least damaging. 

Devil’s in the Details

The killing mechanics in Dead Hook have been tweaked to provide a magnificent murderous flow to the combat. Once you’ve weakened an enemy sufficiently, they glow white, showing their vulnerability. This is your chance to grapple straight into them, shredding them to pieces. This also happens in slow motion, giving you the chance to re-target your weapons onto the next victim, set them glowing to grapple into them, building up a chain of shoot, grapple, shatter, shoot, grapple, shoot, grapple, destroy when you can dash around the arena like a madman, leaving disembodied enemies in your wake.

You also have blades that are set into your arms, and once you’ve built up enough kills, those can be unleashed, allowing you to cross your arms while targeting enemies and sending you flying and slashing into them. Again, this allows for a chain of kills and always feels rewarding.

Dressed for Death

Dead Hook‘s visuals aren’t mind-blowing, but they are appealing. It boasts a graphical style that suits the theme, works well for Quest, and, more importantly, allows the game to operate at a breakneck pace, never once stuttering or juddering during the intense action. The environments are good-looking, and they get better as you get farther in, but their design does more for the game than their looks, allowing for real three-dimensional maneuvering, traversal, and combat. 

Bang Your Head

Had the review copy of Dead Hook that we got before launch not included a glitch that stopped the audio at some point during a certain level, I might not have appreciated just how much of a role the game’s music played in driving the action and the player forward. Don’t worry; I was told by Joy Way that they’re aware of the glitch and that it’ll be fixed in a day-one patch. So chances are, you’ll never encounter it. The sound design of the game is generally great, but it’s the pumping soundtrack accompanying the action that sets the mood of the game and keeps you swinging and shredding. 

Trouble in Hell

Okay, now for the gripes. 

Despite the incredible attention paid to the core mechanics, Dead Hook has some minor UI and UX issues that make it feel a bit unpolished. A typo here and there that I’m assured will be fixed, poor weapon upgrade animations, and text that sometimes overflows past the box it’s set in. None of these issues impact the gameplay at all, and all of them can easily be patched if they haven’t been already by the time you see this review.

The greatest weaknesses of the game are twofold: a lack of enemy variety and poor boss fights. The enemies are mostly the same across the first ten levels, and the enemies you meet, after you defeat the first boss, are mostly the same, with a couple of additions, except they’re stronger and colored differently. I wish it had more enemies, but again, although the variety is weak, you’ll be too busy shooting and slashing through to mind too much. 

But the first boss battle, for example, is simply dull. The first boss isn’t nimble and has no real moves, and although the game describes them as having ‘multiple phases’, the phases don’t amount to much. The first boss is a huge bullet sponge, tedious but not exciting to fight, and hardly rewarding to witness or satisfying to fight or defeat.

Hell Blast

Still, despite my desire for far better boss battles, a greater variety of enemies, and finer UI polish, Dead Hook is easy to recommend for action fans with robust VR legs who want some good old-fashioned mayhem with unique traversal and a few twists. It’s packed to the brim with adrenaline and is being offered at a very fair price. If this is your kind of game, you’ll have an absolute blast.

Budget games from the eighties were £1.99 each, whereas Rogue Ascent retails at a pretty standard £15 (or $19.99 if you’re paying in USD). This is a good chunk less than you might pay for a top tier Quest game, but it’s still a step outside the impulse-purchase territory.

So, rather than taking a blind punt based on screenshots and marketing, let me help you decide whether Rogue Ascent is worth your pocket money.

Kiss Kiss Finger Bang

Rogue Ascent‘s unique selling point is that you can play it without controllers. 

Using the Quest’s Hand Tracking, this rogue-like shooter has you blasting at bad guys by making your fingers into a gun and navigating using various other gestures. You can play with controllers if you prefer, but it seems a little reductive to jump into an experience like this without the central gimmick, so I’ve chosen not to for this review.

That word – ‘gimmick’ – has become unfairly synonymous with pointlessness, and this is both linguistically incorrect and completely unfair. There was a time when stereo sound, analogue thumbsticks, and even video games were all considered ‘gimmicks’. Let’s not forget that many would happily throw VR into that category.

Hand Tracking has the potential for endless possibilities if people are open to giving it a try. It’s exciting when developers attempt to make the technology work with games even though the underlying tech is obviously still a work in progress. On that point, although the Hand Tracking 2.0 update is rolling out currently, it’s worth noting that I’ve yet to receive it – so this review was conducted entirely using the original version.

These caveats aside, this central gameplay gimmick makes for a unique and interesting experience.

The game recognises your finger guns and materialises any equipped weapon in place of the hand. Since there’s no trigger with this setup, your guns automatically fire when aimed at an adversary. While I think there was a missed opportunity to implement voice commands that shoot when you shout Pew! Pew! Pew! into the mic, this autofire work-around is a slick solution. 

Reloading is done by pointing your fingers straight up, causing the in-game weapons to twirl flamboyantly as the ammo is replenished. A shield can be generated by holding both fists up, a scanner can be accessed on the back of your left wrist, and info about weapons can be brought up by looking at their sides for a second.

With no thumbstick, another solution had to be found for movement. Each procedurally generated floor is arranged in a grid with a node at the centre of each square. Reaching out with an open palm covering the node teleports you to it. The same gesture is used to activate switches and pick up objects.

I must admit I’ve lost track of all the various subcategories of the Rogue genre, but I’m pretty sure we’re in ‘Rogue-lite’ territory here as although it won’t be long before you come across some more impressive firepower and pick up enough cash to buy some helpful perks from in-game vending machines (both of which put me in mind of the Borderlands franchise) these are all lost when you die. However, your efforts will permanently level up whichever of the four classes you choose at the outset, making them stronger from the get-go next time around. These classes are impressively varied and serve as a great way to get extra mileage from what is, essentially, the same game structure.

The Android class, for example, has a massive shield and weapons with a large capacity that reload almost instantly. Medics add toxicity to their firepower, leech health from enemies, and can generate a health zone as their ‘special power’. ‘Travellers’ use silenced weapons and are therefore less often set upon by hordes of baddies. As you might imagine, the standard Rogue class sits somewhere in the middle ground of all the others.

Whatever class you choose, your objective is simple: “Ascend. Save your homeworld!”

For better or worse, these 4 words and the opening image of a planet-sized spacecraft attacking the earth are all the story you get.

Vapour-wave goodbye to your eardrums

Rogue Ascent lavishes in the kind of vaporwave aesthetic that has shown up all over the videogame landscape in the past few years. Usually reserved for arcade racers or similar experiences, the bright palette of blues, pinks, and glowing neon is an excellent fit for the game’s broadly cell-shaded and low polygon stylings. Although falling into just a handful of basic types, there are several versions of enemies, and they’re distinguished by effects and colours that make them easily identifiable in a crowded firefight.

There’s a very subtle brilliance to the soundscape created in the game. Each level is preceded by a short elevator ride, complete with lounge jazz muzak until you arrive with a ping and the doors open to near silence. You might pick out some footsteps, the hum of a sentry turret, or the buzz of a nearby hover drone… but step out into the corridor, and it won’t be long until the peace of the elevator is a distant memory. When the action kicks off, Rogue Ascent becomes a beautiful cacophony of laser blasts, sirens, ricochets, and gunfire – all punctuated by the maraca-rattle of your weapons as they reload.  

All the sound effects have more than the usual amount of legwork to do in Rogue Ascent. Without haptics or even the simple physicality of pulling a trigger to provide feedback, it’s down to the game’s audio to pick up the slack – and generally, it does a really great job.

The music that accompanies your efforts is fantastic throughout. It’s a great listen, from that catchy ditty that plays in the lift between levels to the bombastic power-synth tunes spurring you on during the frantic action. The sound really does wonders for the frenetic atmosphere of the game while never drowning out those all-important audio cues.

Everything in the audio, visual, and gameplay package combines into a heady mix. It’s the kind of experience where a quick 5-minute game will have you blinking back to reality an hour later.

It’s a shame then, that due to inconsistencies with the Hand Tracking, you’ll often remove your headset at the end of a session, feeling like that last death really wasn’t your fault.

The tracking of my tears

As much as the graphics and sound are confidently delivered in their style, there’s no hiding that Rogue Ascent has room to improve on the performance and polish front.

The Hand Tracking in Rogue Ascent is successful about 70 per cent of the time, and while it can be improved by more clearly defined actions on the part of the player, there are other problems, such as inconsistency when picking up weapons, or the game incorrectly registering a movement request, that are outside your control and cause regular frustration.

I’m also not sure that the animation is as smooth as possible. This isn’t a framerate issue but rather a choppiness that’s clearly noticeable in the movement of humanoid foes. This could be a design choice, but I don’t think so, as it’s at odds with the rest of the design.

Fail better

The game is currently just one mode. There is a greyed-out option on the menu that promises more, but for now, ‘Ascend’ is all there is to offer.

Furthermore, I can’t tell you how long it takes to ‘ascend’ to the top of whatever you’re ascending because Rogue Ascent constantly kicked my arse back to the ground floor on every occasion in the four or five hours I was playing it. But I should be clear, without meaning to get kinky, that I genuinely enjoyed it and will certainly be going back for more.

Rogueish charm

Rogue Ascent is a scruffy little underdog of a thing. It has a central concept that many will write off before they ever play it. It’s launched into the App Lab, where only a fraction of consumers ever go, and both it and its foundation technology are, unashamedly, works in progress.

There are fundamental issues caused by the game’s USP and graphical and performance areas that could use more than a little extra polish. When it works, however, when the stars align and you put together a run unfettered by technical issues – Good Lord is Rogue Ascent ever a great time!

It’s frustrating that the root cause of many of Rogue Ascent‘s irritants is that Hand Tracking (1.0) loses contact when one hand passes even partially in front of the other. When you’re doing your best Chow Yun Fat impersonation, barrelling around corners dual-wielding shotguns and gunning down wave upon wave of bad guys, this glitch crops up far too regularly for what is an in-game life or death issue. It’s further exacerbated because, on top of your weapon disappearing, it can also cause those unintentional movements when the tracking is regained. 

The developers of Rogue Ascent have promised that specific Hand Tracking 2.0 updates are on the way along with many other tweaks, bug fixes, and additions. If you have the 2.0 upgrade already or have seen videos of it in action (it’s been added to Cubism to great benefit), you’ll know that the issues mentioned above should soon be a thing of the past. Unfortunately, I can’t evaluate a game on what it might become, only what it is right now. In short, Rogue Ascent is a lot of fun when it works and quite frustrating when it doesn’t.