Lights, Camera… Action!

Action Hero casts you as an actor/stuntman playing the lead on various movie sets, a clever premise that should breathe new life into Superhot’s time-manipulation mechanics. The game unfolds across five distinct “movies,” each broken into four acts. Each Act consists of five or six action-packed vignettes. Your director then encourages or chides you through sequences ranging from high-speed battles atop a moving train to Matrix-inspired showdowns.

The Hollywood setting proves genuinely inspired, offering a natural justification for the game’s segmented structure and repeated attempts at perfection. Each “movie” pays homage to different action genres—you’ll find yourself channeling Indiana Jones one moment and Neo the next. The aptly named “The Code” sequence, with its cyberpunk aesthetic and reality-bending set pieces stands out as a particular highlight.

While the concept and setting work well, there is definitely room for improvement. You can choose between two directors at the beginning of the game, but this choice seems to be entirely limited to the voice-over that pushes you through the game, which is a real missed opportunity.

Had the choice between the directors been integrated into the actual gameplay mechanics, the option between two distinct personalities could have been transformative rather than merely superficial. Had the stricter director imposed time limits, restricted the number of retakes before “firing” you, or demanded specific style points for a scene, the game would have been much improved. Similarly, the other director could have offered more generous conditions but lower score multipliers.

Implementing such mechanics would have perfectly aligned with the movie-making premise while adding meaningful replay value and, at the same time, offering the game at least one gameplay addition to set Action Hero apart from its inspiration. Instead, we’re left with little more than a voice pack selection.

A Time-Tested Formula

Let’s address the poignantly static elephant in the room: Action Hero‘s core gameplay is virtually identical to Superhot. Time moves only when you do, creating a strategic dance of bullet-dodging and precision shooting. This “bullet ballet” remains as engaging as ever, with each vignette playing out as a spatial puzzle where plotting your path through enemies requires both tactical thinking and physical prowess.

The game shines in its moment-to-moment gameplay. Consider a sequence atop a speeding train, where motorcycles leap through the air amid explosive chaos—time crawls to a stop as you map out your response, each movement a calculated risk. When scanning your surroundings, you learn to move with exaggerated slowness as any quick head turns accelerate the incoming threats. Players will use these temporal mechanics to master each scene, eventually blossoming from a cautious planner to an action hero who can handle real-time combat with practiced grace.

Individual scenes can be completed in seconds, but perfecting them becomes an addictive pursuit. The game includes a “normal speed” toggle that lets veteran players attempt runs without the time manipulation crutch, adding another challenge for leaderboard chasers. It’s the kind of game that can steal minutes or hours as “just one more try” becomes your evening’s mantra.

However, where Action Hero falters is in its reluctance to innovate. While Superhot’s mechanics were revolutionary, their direct reproduction here feels safe to a fault. The game could have explored new variations on the time-manipulation theme—perhaps scenes where time moves backward, where maintaining momentum is crucial, or where particular objects remain in real-time while others slow down. Instead, it settles for being an exceptionally well-produced clone of an exceptionally well-made original.

Blockbuster Flair

The most significant departure from Superhot comes in the visual design. Gone is the stark white-and-red minimalism, replaced with vibrant, colorful environments that pop in VR. The movie set themes allow for varied locations and spectacular set pieces—exploding barrels, mid-air motorcycle jumps, and Matrix-style environmental effects create memorable moments.

However, this shift comes with tradeoffs. While Superhot’s minimalist aesthetic achieved a timeless elegance, Action Hero‘s more conventional approach, though polished, feels less distinct. The blockbuster styling is well-executed but lacks the iconic visual identity of its inspiration. It’s a reminder that sometimes less truly is more. That said, this will come down to personal preference as there will doubtless be many who prefer the bombacity of the blockbuster aesthetic. I prefer the context and flair given by the action movie set motif, but I know that others (Ed.) will not agree.

Setting the Scene

The sound design effectively serves both form and function. Slow-motion explosions and gunfire sound satisfying and provide crucial spatial awareness cues. A barrel exploding in slow motion to your right naturally draws your attention. The audio mixing cleverly balances the needs of both slow-motion and real-time gameplay, ensuring important sound cues remain clear regardless of your temporal state.

The sound design also pulls double duty, simultaneously selling both the action movie experience and the “behind-the-scenes” setting of a movie set. The addition of director voice-overs adds personality, though as mentioned earlier, the two-director system feels like a missed opportunity for more profound gameplay variation. The overall soundscape successfully reinforces both the action movie premise and the core gameplay mechanics.

Cut! Reset! Let’s go again!

Action Hero presents a challenging dilemma for reviewers. Viewed in isolation, it’s an exceptionally well-crafted VR action game that delivers satisfying gameplay in digestible chunks. The movie set premise is clever, the execution is polished, and the core mechanics—borrowed as they may be—remain compelling.

Yet it’s impossible to ignore the game’s derivative nature. This isn’t merely inspired by Superhot; it’s essentially Superhot with a fresh coat of paint. While the original broke new ground, Action Hero seems content to merely redecorate it. The additions it does make—the movie set premise, colorful visuals, and director system—feel more like surface-level changes than meaningful evolution.

For players who have never experienced Superhot, Action Hero offers an excellent entry point into this style of VR action. Those craving more of Superhot’s unique gameplay will find a pseudo-sequel on offer and will likely relish it for its familiarity. However, veterans of the original may find themselves wishing for more innovation beneath the Hollywood glamour.

Concept: 4
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 8
Sound: 7.5
Longevity: 8
Overall: 7.5

Color by numbers Superhot

Now, almost 30 years later, the team from Happy Giant are bringing back the dog with the hat and the naked rabbit for their first foray into Virtual Reality. Will they successfully slap the stupid grin off the face of evil or fall victim to yet another oversized novelty exploding head? Come on, Lumpy, let’s find out… 

Hitting the Road, again

I was, and to a degree, I still am a massive fan of the original 1993 Sam & Max game. I was about 12 years old when I first played it. I remember laughing hysterically, painstakingly working my way through the puzzles, and having a great time. This is a particularly relevant point to make at the start of this review because I believe it speaks volumes about the game’s target demographic.

As a weathered 41-year-old, this iteration of Sam & Max seems out of balance with my fond memories of these characters. I mean, yes, I’m swimming in nostalgia, but the pool feels very shallow, and there’s something slightly alarming floating in the deep end. That said, for a new generation of players, this game could well be just as engaging as the original was for me. 

Well, maybe…

Sam & Max: This time It’s Virtual sees the player embody the voiceless “Lumpy”, a new recruit press-ganged into joining the zany world of the Freelance Police. After a brief tutorial that acclimates you to the various game mechanics and the game’s sense of humour, you begin your journey to complete the Freelance Police training course. In terms of plot, this sees you head over to an abandoned amusement park. From a gameplay perspective, this park serves as the springboard for the many single-player mini-games at the games’ core.

It’s dej avu all over again

The game is broken into three chapters, each containing at least one obstacle course and two other sideshow attractions. These include activities ranging from diffusing comedic bombs to a bizarre game of baseball where you attempt to hit gravity-defying soda cans. There’s even a clever little puzzle-based escape room. These mini-games try to showcase a decent variety of mechanics but lack originality and are, for the most part, short, simple, and sadly underwhelming by modern standards. 

There are shooting gallery type affairs, but the aim feels off, and the targets aren’t engaging. There’s climbing, but there’s no actual technique and getting over the top almost always feels janky. There are throwing games, which are actually some of the best, but they still don’t feel anywhere near as good as other, more focused games. The only elements that really land are the puzzles, which seem to take their cues from the original game. They are light, both in their demands and their tone, and fit the game well. These were the parts that made me feel like I was reliving some great Sam & Max moments. Had Happy Giant focused on these elements rather than their sideshow attractions, things may have fared slightly better.

Between chapters, some basic narrative levels require you to perform specific tasks to progress the main plotline. These elements seem almost more like a confused attempt at an interactive comic than an actual game. I struggled to see them as anything more than a ham-fisted attempt to indulge in a little more dialogue. Again, while encased within the wit and banter of the Sam & Max IP, it’s broadly bearable. Still, if the exact same game came out without the IP and the charm to back it up, I doubt even the newest newb or the youngest youngster would find themselves hurrying to dive back in. 

It’s dej avu all over again

Visually Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual hits all the right notes. It is crisp and cartoony, making it easy to suspend disbelief and immerse yourself into the comical folly of the Sam & Max universe. The clean, simple visual style and low-impact gameplay mean that everything renders nicely and frame rates are silky smooth. The only notable exception to this is a single street scene in which littered newspapers render as you walk around. It’s distracting but far from game-breaking.

The sound is fantastic, carried mainly by the tremendous character performances of David Boat and David Nowlin, who expertly deliver the titular characters. The remaining performances are also admirable, keeping pace and tone with both the game, the canon and the lead performers. The rest of the sound design is equally well directed, with every auditory component feeling appropriate and compelling.

Well, that is except for one particular puzzle, which sees a certain song play on repeat for the duration of the time it takes you to figure out. I got stumped for about five minutes, and that song made me want to hurl my headset out the window. But other than that, everything in this department is as it should be.

Is that a naked rabbit driving a Desoto!?!?

By this stage in the review, I have made my peace with the fact that Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual has forsaken me and focused on offering the same pleasures of my youth to the next generation. In fact, in an environment where young children are accessing technology beyond their years, I applaud the existence of some funny, wholesome content for them to enjoy. What I don’t understand is Happy Giant’s decision to completely exclude the parents.

The lack of multiplayer options in Sam & Max is a missed opportunity that unforgivably holds the game back from living up to its (albeit stunted) potential. With a focus on quick, quirky mini-games ensconced within lavish amounts of family-friendly humour, the ability to pass the headset back and forth could have bridged the generation gap while injecting some much-needed relevance into the franchise. In fact, the inclusion of some sort of asymmetric multiplayer mode could have been an outstanding addition for a game like this. 

There must be countless other middle-aged nerds like me who would love to share the games of their youth with their kids. Approaching Sam & Max as a party game could have been just the right way to do that. Happy Giant had the recipe for a blend of nostalgia and whimsical adventure that could have made for some perfect family fun. Unfortunately, what Sam & Max actually delivers is all of the peripheral components of a great party game, with the glaring exception of one critical thing; the actual party.

Played as it is, Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual will be a relatively short-lived affair. Even after getting stuck on one puzzle for quite some time, I was able to complete a run through everything in about four hours. Despite being able to go back into any of the mini-games to better my scores, I have little desire to do so.

Way to take the short view, little buddy

Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual is a quirky, light-hearted attempt to fuse a series of mini-games into a cohesive experience using broad narrative devices. It successfully delivers the bizarrely entertaining banter that made the original game a success but fails almost entirely at capturing the same magic in the gameplay.

Although some entertaining elements of the classic adventure puzzler are found, these are woefully underrepresented. Rather than a clever, irreverent puzzler like the original, Sam & Max offers a cavalcade of disappointingly executed single-player mini-games. It’s a game clearly intended for younger audiences. While it gets points for the puzzle levels and the charm of the titular characters, the rest of the game showcases how to do many things in VR in a very average way.

RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE

There is a distinct and rewarding whiff of quality to Sniper Elite VR from the moment it loads. Good, crisp, and well-designed menus make it quite clear that the developers have taken things seriously. A huge selection of comfort and movement options are offered, simply and cleverly streamlined for those who want to dive quickly into the game. If, like me, you’re a natural tinkerer with game settings, rest assured you’re well catered for here. It’s an immediate and all too rare indicator of the quality and care infused in the game, and it gets better from there. 

A few button presses and the game loads, and we’re presented with a scene of the rural idyll; a stone-built cottage in the Italian countryside and a young family playing in the sun. The player is the narrator, an old man watching younger generations play happily away as he reminisces about the second world war, and his reasons for fighting. It manages to not be too mawkish, and the unusual perspective of a Partisan rather than a square-jawed American Blast Hard Cheese-type is refreshing. It also, thankfully, doesn’t dawdle too long on this old fellow talking. This framing device works well for narrative context but doesn’t outstay its welcome. He’s an old chap sat on a bench briefly reminiscing, and his ‘diary’ acts as the menu hub and mission selector for the game. There are a couple of levels that act as tutorials for the rest of the game, which is all told in flashback. It works really well, and you’re only ever a few seconds away from being in the heart of the action.

SHOOTY BEAUTY

The first thing to strike you about the game is how lovely it looks. It isn’t going to stand in comparison to the latest Unreal Engine games on the current and next-gen consoles, of course, but we all know the Quest is basically a mobile phone with ideas above its station. As such, the fact that the visuals manage to actually impress is wonderful. It doesn’t feel like a creaky and antiquated engine that might fall apart at any minute; there’s good texture work, produced to the limitations of the hardware but beautifully realised nonetheless.

The architecture and panoramas actually look good. Explosions are convincing. Everything has a sense of weight, and it even borders on approaching realism at times. Yes, it never looks better than a really, really good PlayStation 2 game – but this is, in the murky new world of VR, still astonishing progress compared to what we usually get, and it makes such a difference.

SCOPED OUT

The sniping, thank goodness, works excellently. It would hardly be in any kind of elite company if it didn’t. Aiming down the scope feels natural and just challenging enough; reloading and chambering ammo is the right balance of convincing and accessible. If you’re aware of Sniper Elite as a game series, then you’ll be aware that its USP is the Kill-Cam you get upon successfully sniping a Nazi shitbag. This is a gleeful and heady mix of medical textbook musculature, organs and over-the-top gore, showing skinless soldiers having various bits of themselves popped by your bullets. In VR, the first person view follows the bullet as it makes its way over to its target in a way that should be quite sick-making, but intelligent use of slow motion and vignetting means it’s just the right side of thrilling and rewarding. I have made my way through four Sniper Elite games, including this one, and it never really loses its appeal, causing both giggles and satisfaction. 

The focus feature of the Sniper Elite games has been excellently implemented here. When the off-hand trigger is pressed while aiming, a small red diamond appears almost like a laser dot, slowing time and focusing ever more tightly on a distant target. After a few shots, it becomes second nature; after a few levels, it becomes a challenge to try snipe without it – one which the game even sets as an optional objective.

THOSE WONDERFUL TOYS

Other guns are well realised, and while it can often go against the grain for stealthy sniper types like yours truly to run-and-gun with an SMG or a shotgun, Sniper Elite VR is surprisingly encouraging and playable if you want to mix it up and play that way. Even in sections that find you trapped in a tower or other vantage point, it’s quite happy for you to drop grenades or fire bazookas at your targets rather than just stick to your sniper rifle, and that’s refreshing. I’m sure some people might find the point and aim system for throwing a grenade a bit simplistic for VR, but in actuality, it makes actually using them in the heat of battle a bit more practical, predictable and rewarding. The handguns such as the Luger feel a bit too Robocop, but at least they pack a punch. And as for the stealthy Welrod pistol… It’s lovely for the occasional short-range headshot, but its authentically woeful inaccuracy at any kind of distance can lead to much frustration.

LEVEL-HEADED

I was worried in the opening levels that some of the finer points of Sniper Elite might have been lost in translation. The most recent iterations of the flat games in the series have featured sprawling levels with multiple vantage points and approaches and large dollops of stealth. Given the technical limitations of the Quest specifically and VR in general, Sniper Elite VR does well to try and consolidate this experience. Levels might be smaller overall, often divided into a couple of levels per mission, but the first time that the game cuts you loose to try to take out soldiers as silently and efficiently as possible as you explore, it’s still quite a thrill. The game is impressively sizeable for a VR title. The locations take in a variety of pleasingly familiar locales, which convey the WWII setting as well as you might hope. Beseiged Italian villages, fuel depots, cliffside gun ranges… It’s all rather excellent, and the 18 levels present various challenges for most skill levels.

There are several ways the game encourages replaying levels; there are optional objectives to complete, ranging from time-based challenges to using specific weapons or other methods of murder a certain number of times. All the weapons have specific challenges attached to them, all of which are niftily displayed when you hold them up in profile. You might find yourself getting obsessed with getting 20 heart shots with your rifle, for example. There are also collectables scattered through the levels, although disappointingly, the letters you can pick up don’t seem to have any readable content this time around, which feels like a bit of a placeholder and a rare example of the game not being as fully fleshed out as its forebears. Nevertheless, there are a lot of things to do as you make your way through the levels, and it should keep you occupied (or perhaps fighting occupation?) for a long time.

BAD FOR YOUR STEALTH

So what’s the catch, Doc? Surely Sniper Elite VR can’t get it all right? Well, you know, astonishingly, it comes very close. The stealth is a little dated and unpredictable – a criticism which might also be levelled at the flat games in the series. It’s not bad by any means and is still far more polished and rewarding than, say, Espire 1: VR Operative. But there’s an unpredictability to the AI soldiers, which can lead to some gnashing of teeth; sometimes they can blunder about confused after finding a body or hearing shots fired, and sometimes they run in weird directions. If you learn the patterns and foibles of how the soldiers act, which is what I guess you need to do, then it’s possible to not just fluke your way through. But there’s no tagging of enemies or x-ray vision or anything like that, and sometimes it feels like the game hasn’t really played fair. Other times it’ll just put a soldier facing the other way, oblivious to you and just in the right position for a headshot, and you forgive it. Just be aware that if you want some sort of alternative to Hitman, none of the Sniper Elite games is that, especially this one.

PLEASE RELEASE ME

I’ve flagged a few niggles during my time with the preview build of Sniper Elite VR that the developers have assured us will be addressed in a Day One patch. If they show up for you, let us know; games can always be re-reviewed, for better or worse. At present, the gun belt/holster affair is wonky and confusing, but they’re sorting it. The game can often decide to put the menus elsewhere other than where you’re looking. Again, this is being patched, but a long press of the Oculus button to reset your view – or turning around a bit – should sort it. One slight annoyance (and it doesn’t seem to be on the patch list) is that expecting players to find keys for padlocks in a post-GoldenEye world seems massively redundant – especially as there are no animations at all for the act of unlocking said locks. Let us shoot them off, or at least turn the key if we have to! It seems a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, but that is my metier.

THE BEST OF THE BEST

It gives me a tremendous amount of pleasure to recommend Sniper Elite VR wholeheartedly. As a fan of the series generally, I was hoping it would be good, but that it serves as an exemplar of a Quest FPS is just a joy to me. It’s not only an unusually well-wrought and finely honed title but there are also some things it even does better than its flat siblings; the story and main character, for example, actually manage to seem vaguely interesting. It’s full of excellent design choices and has an uncompromising level of quality that is simply too rare for a Quest-based shooter. 

Without a doubt, Sniper Elite VR represents a new high bar for the genre on Oculus’ standalone headset. Generously, it’s even a cross-buy title on the Oculus Store, so those who use PCVR can buy this version and play that version for free. A class act, for sure.

Surely, all this would make for a thrilling VR game, one might think.

One would, unfortunately, be tragically, heartbreakingly, wrong.

Me Tarzan, You Jane

Remember the horrible prehistoric decades of cheap film-tie-in video games when for every action movie released, a terrible cash-in video game came along? It wasn’t just movie tie-ins, of course. Any IP famous enough suffered the same fate; reliance on the franchise to sell the game to unsuspecting children, incompetent mechanics, sloppy gameplay, and graphics that were at least one or two generations behind.

This, I’m afraid to say, is that.

My Mother Was An Ape

Tarzan VR promises many things. It promises that you’ll play as the titular character. It promises that you’ll swing on vines, swim, climb trees, and fight your way through three episodes of the game.

This is all true; you get to do all those things, but what the marketing doesn’t tell you is that no matter which of those things you’re doing, you’ll hate it. You’ll hate it so much that it’s borderline inconceivable that you’ll want to suffer through three episodes of this dreck.

Me Tarzan, Am Telekinetic

The gameplay in Tarzan VR is simple and boring. You move with the left thumbstick, and you turn physically or with the right thumbstick. You can sprint by moving your arms in a swinging motion as though you were running. You are given one weapon per episode, which you can tuck away by clicking the B button.

Swinging across vines is, depressingly, a hit-and-miss affair and can be incredibly frustrating, so much so that I almost abandoned the game at some point because of it. You see, you don’t jump to catch a vine, but click the grab button when you’re close enough to it, at which point it magically stretches towards you, you grab it, and your swinging begins. To catch the next vine, you reach with your other hand and click the grab button again, but the grab action only works when the other vine is close enough, or when some random part of its length is close enough, or when Tarzan VR, in its infinite wisdom decides to make the other vine grab-able. It’s sometimes so finicky that you’ll be swinging idiotically for almost a minute, hoping that the engine might allow you to grab the next damn vine.

Your enemies are mostly copy-paste men dressed in military costumes, and they have all the AI of an old brick. Some of the smarter ones will rush towards you much as you’d imagine a brick on wheels might. However, most will just conveniently stand next to an exploding barrel. You can blow up such barrels with your slingshot because, apparently, metal barrels explode when you throw rocks at them. Bad guys you don’t blow up can be pummeled with your fists. Oh, and you replenish your health by eating bananas and coconuts.

You’re given one unique weapon per episode. In the first episode, it’s an axe. In the second it’s the slingshot, in the third, it’s a long bow. You don’t accumulate the weapons, though, so you can’t use the axe in the second episode, for instance. This makes the ‘mini-boss’ fights unnecessarily difficult, since the slingshot only stuns enemies but doesn’t actually cause any noticeable damage. Still, you can lure the enemies close to a barrel, stun them there, and then blow it up after you gain some distance.

Kala Became Sad

When Tarzan starts, the first thing you notice is the graphics; they’re poor and flat. Rather than being realistic or stylized, the art style is perfectly happy to settle for what I can only refer to as ‘meh.’ They’re supposed to look cartoony, but they’re not as good as those in, for example, Jurassic World Aftermath or Yupitergrad.

The few exceptions to the incredibly dreary gameplay graphics are the Tarzan comic book pages that float towards you when the game first starts. They give a nice pulpy feel to the intro and the mistaken impression that Tarzan VR might hold some promise. Unfortunately, all such hopes are quickly dissipated. The graphics are disappointing, the animations are depressing, and the level design is linear and amateurish. Everything just feels like it’s the end result of a discount Learn To Code weekend workshop attended by somebody who didn’t want to be there.

There are so many ways Tarzan VR could have been better.

The swinging mechanics could have been vastly improved by having Tarzan jump to the vines, and then be able to jump between them to get closer to the next one. Haptic feedback could have been used to make both the swinging and the weapons feel more tactile. The enemy AI could have been improved so it doesn’t just consist of ‘shoot at Tarzan’ or ‘run towards Tarzan’. Weapons could have been accumulated across episodes rather than replaced. The graphics could be far better, both in terms of their polygonal level of detail and in terms of their textures.

The closest I got to actually enjoying Tarzan VR was when I got a chance to recruit a lion, who then ran along with me for a while, and took down some of the enemies, but again, rather than feel that you’re fighting alongside a majestic king of the jungle, the lion was so poorly rendered that it felt like an emaciated beast in dire need of nutrition. This sequence was a good idea and should have felt glorious, but it failed to deliver the graphics, animations, and sound required to carry it through.

Tarzan VR‘s highlight is the licensed audio, but you don’t need VR or a game purchase to hear some nostalgic ululating or voice clips. You can get those on YouTube without suffering through this tedious excuse for a game.

Tarzan Vee Er…

Here’s a little confession. As I write this review, I’ve not finished Tarzan VR. Instead, I have played two-thirds of the game at substantial mental and spiritual cost, finishing Episodes 1 and 2. Of course, there might be some alternate world out there in which some genius game designer god is messing with us. Maybe this sadistic monster of a god has crafted an incredible VR masterpiece and chose to hide it within the third episode of a game that does its absolute best to dissuade you from finishing it. If so, then I’m sorry, dear reader, but that’s a risk to my integrity that I’m happily willing to take. There’s only so much punishment I can take for your sake, and my limit has been reached.

As it stands, I’d sooner stand next to an exploding barrel and slingshot myself to an early grave than continue this particular jungle adventure. This is a game I cannot recommend to anybody, even to die-hard fans of old Lord Greystoke. Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll get a good VR version of Pitfall, but for now, there are many, far better, Quest games you can play.

Eternal Starlight of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Starlight is a space-themed strategy game that sees the player attempt to defend mankind’s claim to Proxima, a planet representing our last hope of survival. The story details humanity’s inevitable destruction of Earth and our equally inevitable pilgrimage into the stars to find a new home. Enter Proxima. Of course, we are not alone in our desire for this life-sustaining planet, and the warlike Kraya are hell-bent on clearing the “Terran scum” out of the region. 

The crux of the campaign essentially sees the player embarking on a series of micro missions, attempting to build resources and alliances that will help in the next looming confrontation with the Kraya. The player is free to choose which of the randomly generated missions to pursue based on the resources, items, and potential alliances to be earned. Thus, these missions are more like combat vignettes than actual missions. Most of them are over in an anti-climactically short time. Once complete, resources can then be spent on upgrading your flagship vessel or purchasing auxiliary vessels to bolster your armada.

But be careful – because defeat comes at a high cost.

Fire Photon torpedoes when ready!

The gameplay in Eternal Starlight sees the player take control of an initially tiny fleet consisting of your main flagship vessel and a small fighter. You control these ships by grabbing them and tracing the path you would like them to fly or highlighting the enemy craft you want them to attack. It’s reasonably intuitive, and for anyone who has played the outstanding Final Assault will come very naturally. 

Both the pace and the game’s scale can be manipulated to suit the players’ needs throughout the battle. At any given point, you can slow the action down to strategise and then put some manoeuvres into action. Also, using simple gestures, you can expand and contract the scale of the battle to allow you a tactile degree of control over your vantage point throughout the combat. While this sounds great in theory, the implementation is sadly lacking in Eternal Starlight. 

The speed with which crafts traverse the expanse of space during combat is far too quick to allow for any effective use of the zoomed-in viewpoint. The exception to this is when you’re targeting specific enemy systems. Although cool in theory, this feature can only be manipulated through a cumbersome process; slowing time, zooming in and selecting the target ship, then targeting the desired system, then expanding back out to a scale that allows some level of tactical control. Unfortunately, this process is required every time you want to target specific systems. On paper, the system seems great, but in practice, it just adds a tedious stop/start component that makes combat feels stilted and swiftly becomes a chore.

Similarly, the controls for this world-shifting are missing one of the most obviously necessary functions. That is, to be able to rotate the world around you. Unlike the excellent control system employed by Demeo, which allows the camera to effortlessly and intuitively be turned around the horizontal plane, Eternal Starlight offers no such mechanism. To shift your view along this axis, you need to physically move in virtual space or use the thumbsticks to spin the world in a broad and disorienting arc. 

Given that the perfect model for this system exists elsewhere in numerous incarnations, it is frustrating, bordering on unforgivable, to have it so poorly implemented here.

Death By Alien

Like all good roguelikes, Eternal Starlight builds tension by employing the ever-present threat of permadeath. That’s right, fail the mission, and you can lick your wounds and try again, but lose your flagship, and it’s “game over man!”. Now I’m generally I pretty big fan of roguelikes, but there’s something about it that just doesn’t work in Eternal Starlight.

But I’ll get to that later…

Eternal Starlight also has a Skirmish mode available, which allows the player to create custom battles from all the unlocked craft available. Utilising a point system, the player can face off against a fleet of up to six ships. This is, quite frankly, the most enjoyable part of the game. Once some of the more interesting ships have been unlocked, this mode provides a proving ground for your tactical proficiency and offers some higher intensity action. Had the rest of the missions felt a bit more like Skirmish, then this review may well have gone a little differently.

Deep Space

Eternal Starlight has a deep and varied progression system that could have made it a real star had a few alternative design choices been made. There are multiple branching tech upgrades, allowing you to either enhance a single vessel or purchase an armada of smaller vessels. The options are wide-ranging and interesting and, when deployed correctly, add a decent amount of tactical depth to the gameplay. In addition, there is a range of specialisations within each tech branch, each randomly generated for the current playthrough. This variety ensures that no two runs are the same and forces you to adopt a somewhat different strategy every time you play.

Each of your main ships can be upgraded with specific modifiers, additional weapons and weapons slots, as well as fantastic new special abilities. The combination of these elements will change the way you approach missions significantly. This means that each run can be played repeatedly thanks to the procedural generation of missions, rewards, and perks. Again, this sounds great in theory; however…

The rewards gained throughout each run are so miserly that it becomes either tedious or impossible to draw out the best elements of the game. Additionally, given that there is little lasting benefit carried over into future rounds, you have a recipe for disappointment and frustration.

You find yourself studying the various branching technology trees available, wish-listing a path and a strategy that you might like to employ. Then you’ll realise, after a few missions, that to earn enough currency to implement your strategy, you would need to complete the whole game three times over. The difficulty curve also escalates disproportionately with your access to enhanced gear. This means that after being frustrated that you can’t afford to buy anything good, you’ll just get blasted into space dust all over again. Another chance to wallow in the knowledge that you’ll have to start the whole bloody thing again. It’s maddening!

Good roguelikes (In Death: Unchained, I’m looking at you) reward each playthrough with a little something to take into the next run. This builds the gameplay loop’s depth and the difficulty over time and gives the player a reason to keep coming back. Eternal Starlight, however, does none of that and consequently would actually have been better served as a standard campaign-style RTS. As it is, Eternal Starlight artfully dodges the best elements of the roguelike genre and manages to catch only its most frustrating traits. As a result, Eternal Starlight feels like the Star Shaman of the RTS world in many ways, as it suffers from almost the exact same raft of problems.

Star Shrek

Eternal Starlight is an ugly looking game, but it has layers. 

The overall visual presentation of Eternal Starlight is regrettably lacking in polish and depth. The world away from the core gameplay sees the player on the ship’s bridge or in their living quarters. Unfortunately, these environments just seem flat and unrefined. The characters that appear on your comms screen are also delivered with a retro-style aesthetic that doesn’t land as stylised but instead comes across as poorly executed.

The actual gameplay is obviously set in the expanse of deep space, so backgrounds are understandably barren. However, this isn’t compensated for by detailed, textured models for the various crafts, nor were the graphical resources spent on lighting and effects for the weapons.

Graphically, Eternal Starlight is serviceable at best. The visuals don’t hurt the gameplay, but they also don’t give the player the sense of awe one might have hoped for from a game set in the vast, inky void of the cosmos.

The sound in Eternal Starlight is the weakest component of the game and really let the game down. The sound effects are perfectly acceptable, with a decent array of zaps and pews and kabooms that sell in a decently convincing sense of futuristic space combat, but sadly that’s where the praise for the audio ends. 

The ambient music is rather monotonous and does little to convey a sense of urgency or tension throughout the brief combat encounters. It’s not distracting, but it adds so little to the game that, to a degree, it may as well not even be there. 

The voice-over, or rather the abject lack of it, is where the biggest problems occur. There is some dialogue between the player and the various other characters in between every cut scene, all delivered via text. While the text plays out, the character offers a sound bite, like “We don’t have much time”, but there is only one such recording per character, and it plays every time they are on screen. This happens regardless of the context of the dialogue. It is distractingly lacking to the point of being immersion-breaking and, unfortunately, screams of a production that lacked the experience and budget to deliver this element to a benchmark standard. 

CONCLUSION

Eternal Starlight is an ambitious attempt at combining the RTS and Roguelike genres that sadly fails to deliver on the enormous potential of the concept. The game offers a profound system of branching tech upgrades that could have been amazing if coupled with more extended missions and more accessible resource management. As it stands, the vignette style 3-minute mini-missions create a disjointed experience that prevents the player from immersing themselves in action.

The Quest library desperately needs something to fill its gaping RTS shaped void, but sadly Eternal Starlight just isn’t it. That said, it’s not entirely devoid of positive elements, so genre enthusiasts may still find some fun to be had. For everyone else, I suggest that we all keep praying to the Oculus Gods for a port of the amazing Brass Tactics.

Here’s a quick disclaimer, although I’ve played many RPGs throughout the years, I’ve never actually played a table-top DND game, so keep that in mind if you’re expecting a lot of table-top comparisons. 

Here There Be Monsters

Demeo keeps things pretty simple. At release, it comes with one story campaign made up of a three-level dungeon. The game can be played solo, but doing so would deprive it of its most fun component, working in tandem with friends or strangers, discussing how you should go about exploring the dungeon and defeating the monsters that lurk within. There are four characters to play; a bow-wielding hunter, a sorcerer, a stealthy assassin, and a warrior. Aside from moving your character with your virtual hands, all moves are card-based. Each character has a unique ability card that never depletes and a unique action deck with which they can fight their way through the levels. There’s a good variety of action cards. Some allow long-range attacks (if you’re the hunter or the wizard), and others allowing for powerful melee attacks (if you’re the assassin or the warrior). 

If all this sounds pretty standard for an RPG game, that’s because it is.

Why Do My Cookies All Look The Same?

Demeo is painstakingly conservative with its design and, at least with its first (and currently only) campaign, won’t throw you any curves. For the most part, there’s nothing original about the monsters you’ll face. You’ll fight the obligatory hell hounds, spiders, giant rats, ice and fire elementals, and evil mystics. If you’re a veteran of the genre, looking for innovations on that front, you’ll probably find its menagerie disappointing, its mechanics streamlined but predictable, and its character classes uninspired. However, one could argue that the initial campaign, The Black Sarcophagus, is purposely generic, essentially easing neophytes not only to the game but to the genre itself.

How Does Your Quest Quest? 

Unlike many other games on Quest, Demeo doesn’t whine or creek. The game loads quickly and runs well, and the multiplayer is well implemented. Everything is nice and snappy. You can quickmatch into an ongoing game, host one of your own, making it public or private, and ongoing games can be easily accessed with a four-digit room code. 

The controls are intuitive, and even first-time players had no trouble with them at all. Not once in my various multiplayer sessions did I see any player struggle with the controls or gameplay mechanics. 

The enemies are randomized every playthrough, and the difficulty can vary enormously between sessions, making it somewhat difficult to play solo. One thing that should also be noted is that there’s no meaningful RPG-type progression in the game. Sure, you gain experience points with your playthroughs, but your character doesn’t level up in any significant way. The experience points merely allow you to purchase cosmetic modifications to your character, dice, and base plates.

Shiny Shiny Spells

The graphics and animations in Demeo are pretty good, using a simple cartoony look that works well on Quest, making your characters and enemies pleasant to look at even when zoomed up close. The character designs are low on polygons and rely primarily on the texture work to liven them up. Spellcasting and combat moves are well animated, making most of the actions quickly recognizable and, at least before you get used to them, entertaining to watch in action. 

The audio is clear and practical, lending atmosphere to the proceedings without ever being too distracting, allowing you and your fellow players to converse easily throughout.

Nothing Beats Good Company

I was fortunate enough to run into a great bunch of people every time I played Demeo. The game style and length are perhaps responsible for this, helping weed out obnoxious players who might not have the patience for a turn-based dungeon-crawly RPG that rewards cooperation and coordination. The multiplayer component is robust, allowing you to mute players, use your in-game hands to illustrate things on the game board, and, if you’re the game’s host, kick any players that are making asses of themselves. 

There’s a Chink In Your Armor

If there’s one glaring issue with Demeo at launch, it is the absence of content. The starter pack is fun, but it is just one mission that you’ll find yourself forced to play over and over again, the only novelty being the company that you find yourself in, something for which the game can hardly claim any credit. For some players, this might mean that they’ll get a few rounds out of it, finish it once or twice, and then find the game less compelling to return to, at least until the promised DLC packs start materializing. The first of these, Realm of The Rat King, is due for release sometime in the summer, and for many users, it might be worth waiting until that’s released before shelling out $29.99 for the game. The good thing is that this expansion and at least the initial set of DLC’s will be free and promise new environments, enemies, and cards, so early adopters will at least be rewarded for their patience.

Boss Level

Demeo has been overhyped but is undeniably fun, especially with good company. It’s short on content for the moment but will undoubtedly get much better as new content is added over the next year.

In a bit…

Let me rip it a new one for all the things it gets wrong first.

I’VE SEEN SOME THINGS, MAN

What an oddly unrequited thing it is to both love first-person shooters and VR. Virtual reality seems built for the genre; the first time I physically reloaded a handgun whilst in a headset and then shot a guy by pointing my hand around a corner, I knew that gaming had reached an apotheosis for me.

Then we come to the catch; all of the military-themed run-and-gun shooters available on the Quest, and most of them generally across all VR, possess an unacceptable level of low budget, glitchy jank. There seems to be some unwritten rule that it’s OK to charge money for a game that resembles an early alpha build of something trapped in the limbo between PlayStations 1 and 2, provided that it’s thematically based on shooting terrorists in the Middle East. Onward leads the charge on Quest, in all its warping horror, but Zero Caliber: Reloaded definitely follows its example.

IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR HEAD

Come on, Doc, tell us more about the actual game. Yes, yes. You know the drill, soldier. Insurgency, military coup, ticking clock. SIngleplayer and online co-operative missions. Loadout. Pick a handgun and a big gun from various options and unlock more by shooting as many people wearing bandanas as you can. There are levels, and you play them. There are three difficulty modes; infant, normal and Andy McNab. You know all this; you’ve played Medal of Duty or Call of Honor games before. 

What you can definitely expect, and if you’ve played this kind of game on the Quest before, are probably bracing yourself for, is how bloody ugly and unfinished it all seems. There’s nothing like one of these Hoo-Rah Henry shooters on the Quest to convince you that the wondrous new frontier of technology you’ve been so entranced by is actually a way of offloading a lot of unreleased Nintendo 64 code. The environments are painfully simple, and yet the geometry still manages to pop in and warp. The sun is a one-colour pixelated circle. Vehicles have square wheels and look like Minecraft affairs trying to dress up in textures so they can get into more grown-up games. The NPCs are all one repeated model; their lips don’t move and are graduates of the Neil Breen school of acting. The plot is utter guff: Tom Clancy fan fiction written by AI. It’s impossible to engage with on any level. 

NO, WAIT, STOP, COME BACK

And yet… And yet. I really like the core gameplay of Zero Caliber: Reloaded – It’s terrific fun. Guns feel and sound satisfying, and those bad sods fall hard when killed. It’s empowering and rewarding to land shots, even if the enemy AI is on a similar level to a ticket machine in a car park. Reloading is the right mix of accessible and convincing as you scrabble for a new magazine under fire. There’s a really neat system of jumping and crouching using the right analogue stick, which feels intuitive and cool. Brilliantly, a good variety of guns can be picked up from fallen enemies, and you’ll find that your ammo belt magically carries the right ammo for them, leading to a good amount of on-the-fly improvisation. There are glorious moments when you find yourself utterly immersed. Maybe you’ll be climbing a sniper tower, hanging on to the top rung of the ladder while you cap the fool at the top with your pistol in your other hand. Or perhaps you’ll be crouched behind a crate, reloading just in time to headshot the guy trying to run you down.

These cool little moments are sometimes enough to make you forget that the levels are small, unimaginative, and constrictive. Even then, the game gives you dire ‘return to combat!’ messages if you stray out of their narrow corridors. It’s so much fun that you can just about tolerate the appalling hit-boxes on any scenery that isn’t perfectly square. Want to hide behind that upturned tank and snipe? Tough shit, your arm will get caught on the edges. There’s a crashed Chinook helicopter – maybe I can hide in the back? Nope! Look, don’t touch! Let’s party like it’s 1992. 

HOLD YOUR FIRE

I really want to dislike Zero Caliber: Reloaded more than I do because it could have been so much better. I’m sure that making an FPS run well on the Quest must be a challenge, but there’s no excuse for lazy and inept ways to go about it. If the budget doesn’t stretch to animating faces, maybe leave the NPC conversations out? Or even just give them COVID masks. Crappy textures and simple polygons offend me. How about stylised graphics that look good on their own terms? Others have tried and succeeded. And those hit-boxes! There’s no point having great gunplay if well-aimed shots spang harmlessly off invisible scenery.

Zero Caliber: Reloaded simply isn’t good enough for me to recommend wholeheartedly, but I find myself drawn to play it despite this. It manages to be more than the sum of its parts, but that might be fainter praise than it should have been. I just dearly wish that FPS games didn’t have to come with so many caveats on the Quest.

Carly and the Reaperman is a unique blend of third-person platforming and VR physics puzzles. You play as both Carly, a tiny person trying to escape the underworld and return to life, and the Reaperman, a giant floating skull, and pair of skeleton hands in the sky.

Spirited Away

With minimal introduction, the game begins with Carly arriving at a spirit-inhabited subway station. She’s informed that if she can help free the spirits around her, they will help her on her journey. From this central hub world, you can enter different environments and begin exploring the game’s many puzzles.

The Reaperman, from high up in the sky, has a great view of the action. Through his eyes, Carly looks like a miniature figurine running through a living diorama. You can rotate this view by dragging the environment or with quick-turn keys on the left joystick. Like in The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets, it’s a lot of fun just to scrutinize the tiniest details of this miniature world. Like, why are there vending machines in limbo, anyways?

Managing both characters simultaneously, as you do in single-player mode, is often a fun challenge. Carly can run, jump, and operate levers, and the Reaperman can manipulate the surrounding environment, usually by moving large blocks. Carly is controlled with the right thumbstick, and Reaperman can manipulate objects with the grip buttons.

While puzzles start off simple, with Reaperman placing blocks for Carly to reach higher ledges, new twists will regularly appear. For example, some stages are set in the dark, with a movable torch so the Reaperman can light the way. In a few timed levels, Carly has to keep moving to stay ahead of a gigantic, flying, world-destroying whale.

Drag Me To Heck

In addition to solo mode, Carly and the Reaperman was designed to be entirely playable in co-op. On Quest, this means a friend can join your multiplayer game using a code and take over either Carly or the Reaperman. This requires voice chat to coordinate where blocks should go, adding to the game’s complexity. Unfortunately, co-op mode also crashed a few times during our testing.

That said, it is undeniably fun to have a new way to interact in virtual space. Talking together through a puzzle can be engaging. The Reaperman can dress up in silly hats, even though you’d rarely see it unless you play as Carly. And you can even fist-bump, which is really a must-have feature for any game like this. Cross-play is promised through a playable PC and Mac client, although we did not have a chance to try that out for this review.

Carly and the Reaperman contains a lot of levels, and many of them are quite sprawling and complex. In general, I preferred the game’s more straightforward Mario-like platforming and timing-based levels instead of the confusing riddles and mazes, which lead to us getting stuck.

The puzzles are the main draw in this game, because the story doesn’t always come across well. It’s mostly told through bits of dialogue with spirits. There doesn’t seem to be any meaningful connection between completing puzzles and freeing lost souls. So, I pushed a block into place and hit the button, and now you can remember you used to be a bird? Okay, that works for us. On to the next level.

Soul Searching

To help you find your way through the underworld, it would be nice if the game included a level select menu instead of returning you to the central hub each time. Because of this, it can be difficult to remember which sections you haven’t visited yet, and which ones you need to revisit to find 100% of the collectible fireflies.

If you’re lucky enough to have a friend who wants to play as the Reaperman to your Carly, or vice-versa, this is a solid choice for some virtual bonding. Even if you just play it solo, Carly’s journey is filled with soothing music and unusual art, along with challenging puzzles that require a lot of coordination.

This combination of console and VR gameplay styles is hardly an endless wasteland. You may not want to spend eons here, but for at least four or five hours, your soul should feel right at home.

After 12 months in closed beta testing, GreenSky Games are finally ready to debut their baby as SWARM swings onto the Quest store. Grab your guns and dust off your Spider-Man fantasies because we’re about to find out if this one has been worth the wait…

Disclaimer

Full disclosure here; I have been a beta tester for SWARM for about 10 months. I’ve watched it grow and develop first-hand and have probably put in close to 30 hours of gameplay since first gaining access to the beta. Is it fair to say this means I like the game? Yes. Yes, it is. Does this also mean I have an intimate understanding of both the game’s strengths and its weaknesses? Indeed, it does. Probably more than any other game that I’ve reviewed, I am confident that I have given SWARM more than enough time to shine. In my opinion, that’s precisely what it does.

Swing Swing, Pew Pew

SWARM is, in every essence, an arcade shooter. The premise is simple. The player is equipped with a gun locked to either hand; these can launch grapples or shoot. You then are presented with a play area, designated by a series of platforms hovering conveniently (if somewhat impossibly) to traverse around. Finally, a relentless assortment of robo-baddies is thrown into the mix, and there you have it! Arcade magic!

There is no contrived narrative telling you why you are inexplicably swinging around destroying the literal swarms of cyber goons. There’s just no need. This is arcade action at its finest. Any attempt to shoehorn in a plot just for the sake of having a “full story campaign” would just slow the pacing down and cheapen the whole experience. 

Because that’s not what SWARM is about. SWARM is about four things and four things alone –

Swing. Swing. Pew. Pew.

Sultans of Swing

I’m relatively sure that I have referred to other games as “non-stop action” in the past. Still, that nomenclature seems foolishly misused on other games when compared to SWARM. For starters, one of the things that sets SWARM apart is that you literally cannot stop moving. The entire game is spent in a state of perpetual motion, swinging from platform to platform as you unleash hell on countless waves of bot-based badness. 

Raining bullets into the fray whilst remaining cognizant of where you’re tethered and where your next grapple needs to land is both fiendishly complicated and frighteningly intuitive. After a while, you stop really looking for the next grapple, relying instead on instinct and muscle memory to guide you around the zone. It really is fun.

Despite the theoretically dizzying movement at the heart of SWARM, I did not once experience any motion sickness at all. However, I can imagine this will not be the case for some. Despite having fairly advanced “VR legs”, I am still prone to the odd game (Dash Dash World, anyone?), but SWARM was a surprisingly comfortable experience to enjoy. This comfort probably comes from the excellent physics system that has been baked into the swinging mechanics.

There are nuanced little touches to the animation that help sell the feeling of weight and tension as you careen around the levels at breakneck speed. These touches set SWARM above its rivals. The ability to pull down on the grapple line to gain lift or use a hand over hand technique to build up some serious speed makes for some really responsive manoeuvring. Couple that with or the ability to use both grapples to make sharp changes in direction, and you have a movement system that is fluid, unique and utterly joyful.

That’s Swingtastic!

The action in SWARM is set over five distinct Zones, each comprising five levels and a Boss fight, and each of the zones has its own unique characteristics and environmental hazards to deal with. This can see you navigating anything from flying cars as they zip around a futuristic city to electrified platforms that cause damage if you grapple them by mistake. These environmental elements ensure that each zone plays differently and demands that you change your play style and situational awareness to suit.

Each Zone is then broken up into a range of classic arcade mission types, from wave defence to timed survival modes. There are also mission types that focus more on precise movement, challenging you to collect crystals as they move around the map. The Boss fights feel appropriately epic, and true to classic arcade games, you will need to find the right strategy and timing for each to take them down. 

SWARM sees the player begin with a standard pistol style weapon that will see your trigger figure aching before long, but string together enough kills in a row, and you trigger a kill streak. This enables auto fire for as long as you can continue to make kills without stopping, a perk which I quite frankly never got tired of. There are also temporary weapon powerups that spawn throughout each level, offering things like heat-seeking missiles and a powerful laser beam, amongst others.

The player also has a limited ability to slow time and a “Zip” attack which allows you to highlight a specific enemy or platform and launch straight at it. Adding these functions into the mix and deciding when to deploy powerups lends a light strategic element to the gameplay, but never enough to take away from the action’s immediate intensity. 

Mood Swings

SWARM is a stunning game that delivers the popular cel-shaded art style as well as any other title that I’ve played on Quest. The visuals are bright and vibrant and clear, suiting the arcadey tone of the game perfectly. Each Zone and enemy type is thoughtfully designed to work together, keeping everything clearly visible and easy to understand even amongst the game’s most chaotic moments. And make no mistake, the gameplay gets CHAOTIC!

The menus and UI are also very well designed, presented in an engaging comic book style that I found really cool to look at. It’s crisp, easy to navigate and just screams of polish. 

The music is also excellent, with each zone having a unique musical theme that goes a long way to making things feel fresh as you progress. The music contributes massively to the game’s energy, from vaguely Middle Eastern-inspired pop to hip hop and some heavy rock. The tracks and themes provide a character and depth that help make each zone unique.

The final component that helps bring everything together is the sound design, and again this is commendable. From gunshots to explosions, everything sounds exactly as it should. The voice-over that announces your achievements and warns you of incoming missiles is great. The spatial audio works well, and cues that let you know what’s happening around you are all spot on. All in all, the audio is exactly how it should be for a game like this.

Just Keep Swinging

SWARM launches with over twenty levels to play, bosses to beat, and a difficulty curve that will provide a challenge for even the most hardened of gamers. These difficulty settings have been really thoughtfully produced and tailor the experience to almost any skill level without losing any of the things that make the game great. I play Casual when I feel like zoning out and having mindless fun, Normal when I want to score chase, and Hard when I feel like a challenge (aka getting instantly obliterated). 

Trying to gauge “how long” SWARM will be is an exercise in futility as this is an ultimate “your mileage may vary” case. There are five mission types in total, which all centre around mastering the art of Swing Swing Pew Pew. These mission types are then repeated throughout the different Zones, which keeps things feeling fresh as you progress through the different environments. Between the mission variety and the unique challenges that each zone presents, there is more than enough to keep you coming back for more – time and time again.

Pew Pew Swing Swing 

SWARM is a fantastic iteration of ‘classic arcade shooter’. The amazingly well delivered perpetual motion mechanic lends a truly unique element to the genre and makes this game substantially better than most other arcade shooters currently available in VR. SWARM is the perfect mix of quick, accessible fun that suits jumping in for quick play sessions as much as it does settling in for much longer ones.

All that said, SWARM is what it is. If you don’t like arcade shooters, have no intention of score-chasing, or if games that have no storyline frustrate you, this may not be for you. SWARM stands at the top end of a crowded genre. It succeeds at every essential element that an arcade game should have and offers enough innovation to make it a great choice, even for genre veterans.

It’s worth mentioning right from the start that Guardians VR is an Early Access title, which is a relatively new phenomenon for the Quest. For those who aren’t yet familiar with the term, an Early Access title is essentially still a work in progress. Generally released at a lower price, developers showcase a game’s core elements and offer players an almost-finished version which is later finalised based on community feedback.

Guardians VR is a great example of this. There is undoubtably some more work to be done here, but the bones of something excellent are apparent straight away. After putting numerous hours into the gameplay, I’ve enjoyed the game on offer now and am looking forward to its ongoing development.

Did someone say Mash-Up?

Guardians VR is a first-person shooter that also includes strategic resource management and troop deployment elements. This combination of FPS and RTS elements is where Guardians VR really shines. The combat is fun in its own right. Still, the act of balancing between protecting your resources while building up your forces and pushing forward with your objectives is what makes the game uniquely enjoyable. 

There is a limited storyline, essentially based around the idea that the player is a Guardian, tasked with protecting various automated mining operations on a series of remote planets. Missions progress over three distinct worlds, all overrun with hostile alien lifeforms that give off some severe Starship Troopers vibes.

Playing Guardians VR reminded me of two of my favourite flat games from days gone by. The weapons and combat have a familiar Halo feel. This feeling has only been enhanced by the Plasma Blade update. Outside of the direct action, the strategic command options and the alien race’s aesthetic design clearly take some inspiration from Starcraft. 

Mission Possible

During each mission, the player must switch rapidly between deploying defensive structures and controlling troop actions to jumping into the fray and taking down the enemies directly with a range of seven different futuristic weapons. It takes a little getting used to at first, but it’s a really great twist on a prevalent genre once you do.  

Missions comprise various fairly standard formats, anywhere from payload style affairs where you guard a moving mining unit to straight out wave defence. Resources need to be harvested to purchase troops and defensive structures. The need for these often requires you to venture outside of your comfort zone. 

While you can play Guardians VR as a straight shooter, I strongly recommend avoiding that urge. The developers have even gone as far as to weigh the scoring system to reward tactical play. To get a coveted place on the leaderboards, you will need to be more than just a crack shot. The combat is fast and fun, and the strategic elements are light and engaging. While Guardians VR contains tactical components, make no mistake, this is an action game at heart. 

The mix of UI systems needed to manage these core components are thoughtfully composed, making blending these playstyles on the fly both intuitive and easy. Menus are well laid out. With a small amount of practice, you can switch between deploying units, building structures, and selecting weapons in seconds. Hotkeys and unit grouping mechanisms are present, allowing you to command your troops quickly and effectively. The map, teleport point system, and jetpack all work together, allowing you to move amongst the action swiftly and react to situations as they arise. All in all, it’s a lot of fun and feels like a fresh way to shoot aliens in VR.

Bug Crunching

Guardians VR hides its Early Access standing well in most areas, but it does feel like there is more work to be done on the graphics than in any other area. The visual world of Guardians VR is perfectly acceptable, although a little on the bland side. It would seem that to keep the maps large and open and the bugs fast and flowing, the developers needed to choose some somewhat dreary settings for the action to take place. Whilst this isn’t a big complaint, the two worlds available at launch are desert and snow themed, respectively and create large expanses of somewhat flat, uniform terrain. It’s perfectly functional and doesn’t hinder the gameplay, but it’s far from stunning. 

The waves of insectoid aliens are again adequate. However, like the environments, you can see where there is still some work to be done. Compared to the assets used in the similarly themed Crashlands VR, enemy animations and terrain textures seem flat. It would be a shame to see Guardians VR‘s fantastic gameplay overlooked just because a prettier equivalent released around the same time.

A few other small visual components require a bit more polish, but nothing is close to game-breaking. The static loading screen, an oversized image of a cockpit, is probably the most significantly underwhelming asset. Still, I’m sure that can be addressed easily enough. 

The audio is relatively good, with meaty sounding zaps and bangs for all the sci fi weapons and appropriately monstrous screeches when the bugs die. The soundtrack switches from a calm country twang reminiscent of Joss Whedon’s excellent Firefly series to some more up-tempo electro sounds when the combat gets going. It all works effortlessly, with the sound playing a supporting role to the gameplay, propping it up without being insistent in itself. 

The more the Merrier

Guardians VR launches with both single-player and co-op campaign, as well as PvP and PvPvE modes, which will no doubt be the icing on the cake for many. 

The PvP option consists of three game modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Destroy the Base. I should note that I played before Guardians VR went live on App Lab and, as such, found the player base a little small. However, when I was able to organise games in advance, it was generally enjoyable. There are a few elements that highlight the “early access” nature of the game. There is still a bit more work required before the multiplayer experience feels complete, but after giving our feedback to Virtual Age, I was pleased to find that tweaks and balances for almost all of our concerns were already being addressed. Like the rest of the game, the core elements of something enjoyable and unique are in place, but there is a bit more polish needed.

I was considerably more successful in finding Co-Op games, largely by virtue of the “allow players to join” toggle. Thankfully, this meant there was no need to wait around for players if I didn’t want to. I could just jump in and get blasting, and other players could jump into the game at any point throughout. In most cases, I was happily slaying space bugs by myself before noticing that I had company.

At launch, Guardians VR provides two planets to fight your way through, each containing four levels, with a third world to follow shortly after release. I was averaging about 15-20 minutes per level on normal difficulty, so even without the multiplayer, there’s a good 2-3 hours of content here with more on the way. 

I have been able to chat with one of the developers throughout the beta and initial SideQuest launch. There is a healthy roadmap of additional content planned, including new unit types and weapons, some interesting new missions, and even a map editor. There was also some discussion of possibly expanding the gameplay to embrace the RTS side of things more fully. Personally, I’m throwing my full support behind that idea.

Once more into the breach

Guardians VR offers a fresh spin on the often-tired FPS genre and is a genuinely promising new title for the Quests unofficial ecosystem. It has an impressive level of finish for an early access release and a well-defined sense of the game it will become. Sure, there are little bits here and there that could use a bit of polish, and the strategy element could be fleshed out some more, but the bones of an excellent game are clearly there.

Although the score as it stands might seem on the low side, I have high hopes that Virtual Age will deliver on the potential that the EA version shows. If they stick to the promised roadmap for new content and really focus on the gameplay’s Starcraft style strategy elements, I have no doubt the final release will see a higher score.