With the game’s initial launch in English, Joy Way plans to extend its reach by adding text localization in seven languages, including Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Spanish, and Italian, aiming for a broader global engagement by February 23.

The game distinguishes itself with dynamic mechanics such as grapple hooks for advanced movement, strategic combat enriched with ragdoll physics, and randomly generated biomes offering unique trials and rewards. It promises a versatile gameplay experience through over 80 buffs and numerous player builds, anchored by a narrative that delves into themes of love, sacrifice, and the duality of AI.

The introduction to new platforms comes with tailored enhancements, leveraging the specific capabilities of each device. The version for Pico headsets mirrors the Meta Quest build, operating at 72Hz, while the PlayStation VR 2 and Steam VR versions are optimized to deliver a more immersive experience at 90Hz. This decision follows a revision from the initially proposed 120Hz due to unforeseen technical challenges.

Joy Way invites players and media representatives to explore Dead Hook further through the provided press kit links and encourages communication through email or Twitter for additional information or inquiries.

Have you dived into the world of Dead Hook on any of the VR platforms, or are you intrigued by the upcoming language options? Your experiences and anticipations are welcome in the comments below.

Dead Hook, a game that combines elements of rogue-like adventures with the fast-paced action of FPS, draws inspiration from classic arena shooters such as Doom Eternal and Unreal Tournament. Players assume the role of Adam Stone, a multifaceted character navigating the perilous planet Resaract, embroiled in challenges of love, sacrifice, and the duality of AI.

The game distinguishes itself with unique features, including grapple hooks for dynamic movement, a combat system enriched by ragdoll physics, and procedurally generated biomes that promise a fresh experience with every playthrough. With over 80 buffs leading to numerous player builds and a progression system rooted in permanent upgrades, Dead Hook offers a deep and engaging gameplay experience.

For those on Pico platforms, the game will maintain its original Meta Quest build quality, operating at 72Hz. Meanwhile, enhancements for Steam VR and PlayStation VR 2 users will leverage the power of wired VR to deliver superior visual fidelity, including higher resolutions, advanced lighting, and improved post-processing effects, with frame rates at 90Hz and 120Hz respectively.

Set at a launch price of $19.99 USD, with regional pricing considerations, Dead Hook aims to deliver a consistent and immersive experience across all supported VR platforms, including all updates since its original debut.

Have you had a chance to dive into the world of Dead Hook on any platform? Or perhaps, have you checked out our in-depth review of the game? We’re eager to hear your thoughts and experiences with this rogue-like adventure. Comment below and let us know!

But wait! JoyWay said, what about we have an actual narrative-driven campaign using Stride mechanics? Wouldn’t that be cool?

Yes, that would be fantastic, said the fan base!

And lo, Stride: Fates was announced, and things quickly got messy. I won’t get into the complex timeline, but JoyWay are better at making games than they are at communicating, and a mixup ensued. Would it be a free update to Stride? A DLC? Would it be a separate game? Confusion! After a poorly received one-hour campaign, JoyWay decided to go back to the drawing board, and flesh out Fates into a separate single-player campaign game. 

So, finally, Stride: Fates is here. How is it? Was it worth the wait? Is the new and improved game engine kicking butt? Let’s find out!

Taking it in Stride

Fates casts you as a slum dog in the dystopian Airon City. You’ve been recruited as a chaser by the elite forces of SkyChase, the blurb claims that your ‘fate’ is bound to various other characters, but that’s not really true. The only character you have any kind of actual connection to is your handler, who shows up a few times as a hologram to guide you, but mainly screams quite painfully whenever you die. 

The narrative, well, the narrative..exists, but it’s not about to win any prizes. It’s mostly there to act as glue between the levels, giving them some sort of context, but it’s not something you’ll get emotional about one way or the other.

But that doesn’t really matter, right? I mean, we’re all here for the parkour and the Shooty Shooty, right?

So let’s talk about the gameplay.

The action in Stride: Fates takes place across 12 levels, and it’ll take you about 7-9 hours to complete. You start off with a pistol, and you’ll soon acquire a shotgun, and finally, a machine gun. All your weapons are upgradable. 

The levels, commendably, offer a good variety of gameplay styles, some are straight-up action shooters, some lean more towards the parkour origins of Stride, and a couple lean more towards stealth gameplay.

The shooter levels are a mixed bag, the early ones are annoying because the starting pistol without upgrades lacks a satisfying punch and the levels aren’t designed in a way that only intermittently encourages parkour, so you end up feeling like you got a middling shooter at the expense of what made Stride so much fun in the first place.

To be fair, though, the action shooter levels towards the later half of the game play, and feel much better. Partly because, by then, you’ve got much better weapons, partly because their design is better at providing flowing traversal, and partly because, by then, you’ve learned how to get around some of the annoyances Stride: Fates comes with, but more on those issues later. 

The stealth levels feel undercooked and out of place, I don’t put on Stride, Fates, or otherwise, to crawl through air vents, dodge security cameras, and sneak up on baddies, especially when I seem to be a disembodied head inside the vents, with my eyes almost level to the bottom of the vents. Remember hand in the Adams Family? Hand, meet Head. Head, meet Hand. Splinter Cell VR, this ain’t.

Then there are the parkour levels, and unsurprisingly, these are the levels that shine, this is what Stride does best, and it shows. You have the parkour flow, shooting people while you jump, duck and weave, wall running, grabbing ledges, and climbing non-stop. These levels can be exhilarating. 

In terms of enemies, there’s a decent, if not impressive variety; regular dudes. Dudes with shields. Long-range sniper-ish dudes, dudes with chain guns, drones, and one final boss. As I write this, I just realized, all the baddies are dudes. Is this sexism or misandry? Who knows, better yet, who cares? Save the city, and ask questions later. 

Airon Aesthetics 

For a dystopian city, Airon looks pretty good and oddly clean. It lacks a distinct style, so it would fare very poorly if compared to Mirror’s Edge, which had a visual signature so distinctive that anybody who’s played it is seeing it in their mind’s eye right now just because I mentioned it, but that’s not to say the reworked Stride doesn’t look good, it does. You have puddles on the floor, reflections on some surfaces, and a decent amount of detail, and the game can throw quite a few enemies on screen for you to face off against when it wants to overwhelm you. 

Airon-Phonics

The audio in Stride: Fates is a mixed bag. The voice acting of your handler is generally alright, but the scream she makes on the radio when you die is so overacted as to be painful, making me wish she just said a tragic, “Oh, No..” If you’re anything like me, the first time you hear it, you’ll laugh, but by the third, you’ll hate it. Hey, if that motivates you to stay alive, that’s a good thing, right?

The sound design is somewhat lacking. The weapons don’t pack much of a sonic punch, not with the shooting, and certainly not with the reloading. The game could use a fuller soundscape, I want the guns to sound powerful I want the reloading to be satisfying, I want to hear my steps a little more, I want to feel my heart pounding along to the action. It’s not quite there. The music, along the same lines, is action-packed, keeping you going and setting the right mood, but it’s repetitive and cliche-ridden. This should be better by release since JoyWay said the next patch would add more music variety.

But the patches have a few more problems to fix. Let’s talk about those.

Chasing Chasers

In some respects, especially during the first half of the campaign, it almost feels like JoyWay have bitten off a little more than they can comfortably chew. The earlier levels, as mentioned feel like they’ve sacrificed what Stride is good at for a second-rate shooter. For a game with parkour in its DNA, you start and stop too much, you pause, you turn around, you spend time looking at nooks and crannies to find upgrade packs for your weapons, the remote grab, and the grab controls often get mixed up, so you find yourself grabbing a table instead of quickly picking up the health syringe that’s on it, all these things nibble away at the flow of the game, making it feel like the Parkour-Shooter is, if you’ll pardon the inevitable pun, shooting itself in the foot. 

One of these is just an example of poor game design. Upgrade packs should be along your path or along alternate paths, not hidden away from your path. Or, more fluidly, should be rewarded for parkour skills and achievements or run completion times.

There are also some mechanical inconsistencies, especially with the Yakuza level clearly inspired by JoyWay’s own Red Flowers, where sometimes you can’t simply run up steps, you have to jump over them, only to sometimes find yourself sliding back down and then have to hop hop to get to their end. This shouldn’t happen, at all. Maybe the assets were ported over from Red Flowers into Fates and not quite adapted properly? I don’t know. 

I also run into some bugs, but I’ll avoid harping on those since one patch has already been released and another should be out by the time you watch this, so hopefully those should have been resolved. One particularly annoying bug made it impossible to continue a level on dying, which meant I had to finish that level in one uninterrupted run. Git Gud, as they say.

Violent Endings

Stride: Fates is the closest you’ll get to Mirror’s Edge on standalone VR, but it’s nowhere near as polished and perhaps should have stayed in the oven just a little bit longer. It needs to be tweaked to make sure that the shooter elements are either much improved, especially in the early levels, or that they don’t impede the parkour elements. Nobody will convince me that the stealth levels belong, and although the narrative promise is fulfilled, the story fails to engage players and does little more than justify the level progression.

Having said that, some levels truly work; the shooting and the traversal and the design all mesh together and it feels like you’re a parkour-gifted demon who’s wall running, grappling, and sprinting as you mow down enemies. In those moments, it rises above its issues and makes you forget all the issues you have with it, and when THAT happens it’s beautiful. 

So, let’s conclude by saying this; Stride: Fates is a parkour shooter that sometimes stumbles into mediocrity while trying to serve two masters, however, it is also occasionally capable of joining them together into the flow-shooter we all imagined it could be, I just wish that it succeeded at doing so much more often.

A Glimpse into Airon City

In STRIDE: Fates, players assume the role of a parkour spec-ops officer navigating through the intricate environments of dystopian Airon City, which ranges from dilapidated slums to luxurious skyscrapers. The narrative plunges players into a world of gang power struggles, dirty family feuds, and corporate secrets, as they leverage their agility and combat skills to unravel the mysteries of their past.

Players will engage in high-stake missions involving exhilarating climbs, swift vaults through windows, and rapid slides down cables, all while being under the watchful eyes of snipers and drones.

The open-world locations offer not only a vivid viewing experience but also a plethora of challenges that test one’s reflexes in action-packed gameplay scenarios.

Technological Advancements

STRIDE: Fates introduces significant enhancements, including advanced levels of graphics and interactivity, thanks to the reworked STRIDE engine optimized for standalone VR.

Every aspect of the original game, including running, battling, and puzzle-solving, has seen refinements promising a groundbreaking leap in VR technology.

Release Details

The game is slated for a holiday season release in 2023 on the Meta Quest platform, with a prospective launch window of November 2023. A Steam version is also in the pipeline, expected to be released in 2024, with a specific date to be announced.

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.