For those of you who have seen our review of Myst on the Quest (caption: we gave it a 9) from a couple of years back, you already know that I’m a book-carrying member of the Cyan fan club. In that review, I mentioned that the only real problem with Myst was that it was utterly eclipsed by its sequel, Riven. Now, the unthinkable has happened: Riven has materialised on the Quest and Steam, remade and rethought for VR and modern systems. I’m almost impossibly excited about it, but I promise you, dear viewers, that I will do my best to objectively analyse whether Riven 2024 is worth your time, money, and emotional investment. We will avoid spoilers for the plot or puzzles to the best of our ability.

A Link to the Past

I believe that Riven is one of the most important and successful titles in the history of narrative gaming. It epitomises the principle of “show, don’t tell.” It traps you alone in a beautiful, forbidding world where exploration and understanding are the primary rewards. There are mysteries to be solved, and each machine, lever, and room is an organic part of the world-building, context building upon context in a satisfying, thrillingly non-linear way. The original game was beautiful, intriguing, and immersive despite being presented as a series of static prerendered images. This remains a wonder today. Now, in the age of VR, the promise of Riven should be fully realised.

Age of Wonders

I have seen the opening scenes of the original Riven hundreds of times. I can vouch that Cyan has not only beautifully updated the graphics and gracefully replaced the live actors with motion-captured models, but they have also stayed true to the original performances and body language. The slightly dodgy 3D models of what were once real (but also dodgy) performers were the main sticking point of Myst in VR, but this is thankfully not the case here. When the cutscenes have played out and the game finally opens the door to the world of Riven, you’re free to explore Riven in full 3D for the first time. For me, that is a very emotional moment. It’s the difference between obsessing over a place through photographs for a couple of decades and then finding yourself there for real. I will preempt the rest of my review here and state right now that Cyan has utterly, definitively nailed it.

D’ni, The Champion of the World

The original Riven is a masterpiece. The remake surpasses it in every way, and VR is the definitive way to play it. It’s so much more than just a new way to explore the world; like Myst before it, it’s as if it has been waiting for VR to exist. To virtually stand in beautiful environments that have hitherto only existed as barely animated stills is a dream realised. It actually makes the puzzle-solving so much more rewarding and substantial. A very early puzzle involves working out the rotation of a pentagonal room to make progress. Being able to stand in the room and physically rotate makes the logic of the problem a lot easier to parse. Peering through lenses and gaps for clues is a physical act in VR rather than a button press, and the islands of Riven have been subtly retooled to take advantage of the new possibilities of vantage points and perspectives not available before. The physicality of VR—such as pulling levers, pressing buttons, or opening doors—feels completely fantastic. Reading a book requires physically holding the book and flipping through the pages, which is crucial to the lore and setting. The ability to use both hands on a machine or gadget while looking around, a natural act in real life but impossible in flat gaming, is a necessity in the VR version of Riven.

Cyan Pride

All of this is what one might cautiously and hopefully expect from a developer with a duty of care to its beloved back catalogue. What truly impresses me is that Cyan has been fearless in daring to improve on the original title. They have introduced new approaches to puzzles and new mechanics, altered the topography of islands here and there, and added subtle narrative tweaks and touches that enhance the classic version. All the changes are improvements; some were made not just to bolster gameplay but to make the narrative sing a little more. To new players, everything will seem well-wrought and satisfying. To returning players like me, there are a hundred little improvements and changes that delight, intrigue, and occasionally astonish. Cyan has served their fan base well and provided a wealth of riches for those taking their first steps in this brave new world.

Get the Book Out of Here

Riven is beautiful. The concern with any modern 3D remake would always be whether they could convey the same level of beauty as the original. For a 26-year-old game, Riven still stands up as astonishingly good-looking, the sheer quality of the prerendered world transcending its technical limitations. The folks at Cyan were kind enough to provide us with copies of both the Meta Quest and Steam versions of the game for comparison. Of course, the Quest will never compete with PCVR, and the nature of the game means it can’t draw from the same technical aspects as Red Matter 2. The PC version of Riven is utterly incredible to look at, bringing joyous new life to the game. Even with my gaming laptop running Riven at modest settings for VR’s sake, the graphics are wondrous.

The Quest version is an eyebrow-raisingly decent attempt to convey the same content with some caveats. Firstly, of course, the textures take a hit, but some more so than others. It’s still a beautiful game, but some environments are a little fuzzy and muted. There’s occasionally a bit of glitching and pop-in, but nothing too aggravating. In some areas, the foveated rendering (the pixelation around areas towards the edge of the Quest lenses) is noticeable and a little distracting. But it’s the water that’s actually problematic, noticeably devoid of splashing effects at best and, in one area in particular, flat and glitchy, making the surrounding geometry appear off. The rest of the game is so lovely to look at, and these issues really stand out. They could be better realised. Overall, while the Quest version is never going to reach photorealism, it’s a beautiful thing.

The Cries of Strange Birds

The audio is my favourite part of Riven’s presentation. The sound design is peerless, from the atmospheric ambience of different locations to the creaking of boards and old metal and the clanking of ancient machinery. The fact that most of it remains unchanged from the original game is a testament to the effort and care lavished on every detail over a quarter of a century ago. Sound plays a possibly more significant role in the success of Riven than the visuals, and this becomes even more apparent in VR. Put on some headphones, and you can lose yourself entirely in this alien yet relatable and familiar world.

Special mention must go to the music, a score that manages to be creepy, mysterious, and soothing all at once. Music is sparing and subtle but essential to the game’s fabric, underpinning everything with an unsettling, nagging sense of dread and wonder.

Familiar Patterns of Decay

There are a few things that could be improved in the current Quest version of the game. The glitches and pop-ins are a little concerning, detracting slightly from the game’s polish. While the use of VR is wonderful, and the additions to the game are completely welcome, the new inventory satchel could have been more organically realised. Many VR games use an over-the-shoulder motion to retrieve backpacks, which would be preferable to the button press here, making its absence a curious omission.

Loading times can be distracting and are the main thing that breaks immersion. While the lengthy initial loading process can be easily forgiven and forgotten, the long pause to take an in-game screenshot and bring up the menu is a drag. This might sound spoiled coming from someone who played through the original game multiple times and had to endure physically changing CD-ROMs between every island. However, the (short) loading screens during travel are unwelcome and jarring in VR. At least there’s a pleasant animation to watch while it loads.

My final gripe is that there needs to be a way to annotate the screenshots you take. A virtual pen to scribble on the screenshots and keep notes would have been a most welcome addition.

And So, I Close

Riven on the Meta Quest is, by far, the best puzzle and exploration game on the platform. It easily joins Resident Evil 4 on the winner’s podium for beloved older classics, given a new lease of life in VR. The care lavished upon Riven is considerable, presenting thoughtful armchair adventurers with a nourishing and immersive experience that will linger in the heart and mind long after leaving the headset. It’s been my favourite virtual world for half a century, and VR is the best and greatest way to experience it.

If you’re anything like me, you were probably excited by the trailer and early gameplay footage. They were enthralling, showcasing innovative mechanics that see you battling through a stylised adventure set in the world created by the hit TV show. 

What the trailer doesn’t show is how much of that experience takes place around you, operating at times more as an immersive psychological thriller than an actual game. In fact, at the core of reviewing Stranger Things VR sits a ponderous, elephantine question; Is this really a game at all or is this an interactive experience?

It seems that Tender Claws have set themselves the lofty ambition of combining the two, hoping to transcend both and become greater than either. As such, it is difficult to answer the question of what Stranger Things VR is, so perhaps we should focus on a different question; is it any good?

TOO MANY HATS

Stranger Things VR is a narrative-driven adventure with a much heavier focus on the narrative than the adventure. For those familiar with the source material, you take on the role of Vecna following his exile into Dimension X (sorry nerds, it’s no longer ‘the upside-down’). Here, you join him as he grows within his new powers and attempts to subjugate the sentient hellscape to his will. Fun times.

Interspersed within this prequel-style narrative are interactive vignettes that overlap with the characters and events of the popular television series. As the experience progresses the story increasingly unfolds around the player, with the gaming mechanics added in seemingly to give you the illusion of participation as the dialogue rolls on regardless of your actions.

Some sections incorporate an element of combat, but these are neither frequent nor varied. Similarly, there are innovative movement mechanics that almost take on a platforming element, however, neither of these elements offers enough depth to carry the whole experience as a “game”. 

BYSTANDER SYNDROME

What gameplay elements do exist in Stranger Things VR have the hallmark creativity that Tender Claws have previously displayed in The Under Presents. As the first few chapters unfold, the focus leans toward the gaming elements, which initially show potential. 

Players can use one power to spread a vine-like ‘corruption’ along the ground, which can then be used to anchor the stilt-like tentacle movement mechanics. This can then be used to vault into the air, allowing you to spread more corruption that you can use to traverse upon, like some kind of demonic Tarzan. 

What action there is comes by way of telekinetic battles. There is a fairly intuitive system for bringing objects close and hurling them at the various lurking monsters, but this is the sole attack the player is capable of throughout the entire affair. While it works, the requirement to always bring items towards you before being able to launch them is cumbersome and halting, failing to create anything resembling a fluid combat system. 

Combining these powers takes a little practice but works well enough that you can see it could have been quite engaging had they been developed and expanded upon. However, Stranger Things VR is only partly a ‘game’ and, as such, the gameplay never evolves beyond this early stage. As the story unfolds these mechanics are shelved in place of increasingly limited interactions within static scenes, dashing any early hopes for an action-packed adventure in the Stranger Things universe. 

THE STRANGEST THING

Set in the Stranger Things universe, the 3.5-hour immersive experience encompasses elements of all four seasons of the show. It even throws in a few nods to the stage show prequel. Familiar scenarios from the series are revisited from a different perspective, giving the spotlight to the internal struggles occurring in these pivotal moments. It’s a strange narrative construct as it requires knowledge of the source material to resonate, but having that knowledge makes the story immediately feel overly familiar. It’s also so intrinsically linked to the show that it’s difficult to imagine Stranger Things VR being even vaguely engrossing to anyone without a strong working knowledge of the series.

The narrative devices are often deliberately obtuse, with a diegetic use of time and space labouring the psychological tension between two characters locked in conflict within a single psyche. The story suffers terribly from pacing issues, and the narrative gets lost within its own distorted framework, often feeling aimless and repetitive. This is particularly notable in elements hinging on player interactions and it’s often confusing trying to assess if you need to do something, or just wait until the dialogue has run its course. 

Compounding these issues is an overuse of repetition, with scenes looping back to a single point before branching into slight variations with frustrating regularity. 

Perhaps the worst sin in all of this is that Tender Claws seem to have completely missed the tone and character that made the source material so popular in the first place. As a TV show, Stranger Things is hardly high art, and sadly this VR adaptation feels, in places, like a ham-fisted attempt to cram Avant-garde sensibilities into what is, essentially, popcorn drama.

LESS IS MORE

There seems to be a trend at the moment that sees MR sections being shoehorned into games regardless of whether it is even vaguely relevant. Sadly, Tender Claws seem to have succumbed to this as they offer two entirely superfluous mixed reality chapters. In fact, the optimisation and execution in these sections are poor enough that their presence actually lowers the game’s overall score.

Staying in theme, the first MR section introduces interesting mechanics before getting bogged down in poorly paced dialogue sections which, again, make it unclear as to the player’s ability to impact events. 

The final chapter is essentially a telekinesis-based wave shooter that sees players using hand-tracked gestures to close portals and fend off enemies. However, the MR implementation is finicky, with objects misaligned or clipping through the real world in a way that breaks any immersion garnered from seeing the virtual world appear in the real one.

PRETTY STRANGE

One thing Tender Claws does consistently well is create a unique visual language with which to tell their tales. There are places where Stranger Things VR looks fantastic, benefitting from excellent lighting and a superb overall sense of artistic direction. The sections of the game that overlap with the main cast offer character models that are unique and stylish. 

However, many of the game’s sections occur within the ill-defined realms of the upside-down or the dark expanse of a character’s tormented psyche. These seem to cash in on the murky aesthetic and, as a result, feel less polished.

The sound is also very well delivered, with a tense, atmospheric score that captures the show’s ambience far better than the overall narrative tone. The voice acting is high quality and is the main attraction as the story plays out, standing out in contrast to the frequently protracted dialogue.

Despite my criticisms, a few scenes use these audio-visual components to excellent effect, creating an intensely brooding atmosphere. In these moments, it is obvious that Tender Claws have some real talent, demonstrating a deep potential far beyond what has been realised in Stranger Things.

FINAL CHAPTER

At its core, Stranger Things VR feels conceptually confused. Interesting mechanics are squandered as diversions, feeling like a sideshow attraction amongst the disjointed progress of the narrative. Conversely, the gamified elements confuse the storytelling, poorly defining whether the player has agency to affect the events unfolding around them or is merely a spectator.

Despite some well-wrought and original gaming elements, there is a limited amount of actual gameplay on offer, and those looking for a traditional gaming experience may be disappointed.

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.

So let’s get that out of the way, and excuse me for having implied otherwise; Moss and now Moss: Book 2 are not platformers; they are narrative-driven action adventures with some casual combat, light puzzles, and exploration.  

Here There Be Powers

For those who haven’t played the first, Book 1 was about Quill meeting ‘the reader’, that’s you, helping her on a grand adventure as she saved her uncle and defeated a deadly serpent. 

Book 2 starts immediately afterwards and quickly becomes Moss meets Avengers Endgame as we find out there was an eviler boss behind the first boss. He’s trying to collect all five coloured ‘glasses’ to become all-powerful. Quill and her uncle decide the best course of action is to capture the glasses herself because, you know – we’re the good guys, and we can handle ultimate power…

Obviously.

Moral digressions aside, the first thing you’ll notice about Moss: Book 2 is that it’s endearingly pretty; graphics are great, the art direction is excellent, and the animations, especially of your main character, Quill, are a joy to behold.

How We Do

Quill starts the game with a limited set of powers, essentially those she had by the end of the first game, but quickly gets a couple of new capabilities that help solve new varieties of puzzles and traversals. I like the hammer. 

In a sense, Moss: Book 2 does everything a sequel is expected to do; it ups the ante, introduces new locations, features new mechanics, and continues the story. 

I’ve already mentioned the graphics and animations, but a special mention has to go to the audio department. Both the voice acting and the game’s soundtrack are perfect. They are emotionally resonant, compelling and engaging and make light load of the suspension of disbelief that drives the heart of any such fairy tale. 

I Sense Ye Have Issues

The question Moss doesn’t address well and that most third-person games in VR stumble upon is – why is it in VR?

There are, both here and in Lucky’s Tale, some mechanics that take advantage of VR, and there was a nasty Beat Saber clone buried in Ven’s Bowels, but they always feel like tacked-on mini-games or VR-101 interactions that engage with the medium but do not need it to breath. I’ll admit that Moss is well integrated on this level, with you as the reader holding back enemies or dragging them to use them as weights while navigating Quill with your thumb sticks. It’s immersive, sure – but is it ‘VR-native’ gameplay? That’s for you to decide, I guess. I’ll shrug my shoulders – the question of what games work best in VR is a complex one that might be worth tackling in a podcast but shouldn’t impact this review.

An enormous waste, in my view, is made of a character you’re introduced to halfway, and you get to play as her briefly, with a new move set determined by her weapon, a spinning blade. But then, she quickly meets up with Quill, hands over her blade, giving Quill that move set, and is never heard of again. I wish Polyarc had used her to allow players to explore different stories or introduce new locations. 

But hey. 

The Mouse Is Amousing

The gameplay in Moss: Book 2 is fun throughout but not particularly challenging. I finished it in about five hours, which wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t selling for $40. If there’s anything really wrong with Moss: Book 2 is that it’s priced as a full standalone title when it really feels like a great DLC that would’ve been ridiculously easy to recommend to fans if it were sold at half the current asking price. 

Moss: Book 2 is a worthy successor to Moss. The graphics, animations, voice acting, and music score are all wonderful, even if the plot is forgettable. If you enjoyed the first, you’ll most certainly enjoy the second, if you don’t mind the price. 

It’s the year 2053. Wandering outside the Citadel’s safety (don’t ask where the Citadel is, how big it is, or anything else about it because you never find out) presumably spells certain death. But, as in all video games, we laugh in the face of death! Is this a journey you should undertake by ponying up some of your real-life cash and buying the game? Well, there’re some things we should discuss first.

 You Got A Friend In Me

When Vanishing Grace loads, you’ll find yourself in an evening desert scene. There’s a campfire and what appears to be a souped-up Winnebago nearby. You’ll be treated to a cut scene. It starts off whimsically enough, focusing on a little girl and a paper airplane. But soon, ominous music starts and the girl holds out her hand, asking if you trust her. You run. She tells you not to look back. Of course, you look back. Yup, running was a good idea. You make it to safety, and the little girl implores you to never leave her. It’s actually a lovely intro that starts you off with pretty high hopes.

New Apocalypse, Who Dis

You then find yourself sitting in some sort of cafe. You have a multiple choice conversation with “Elena” through a walkie-talkie. Elena is your wifey, and she is pissed. You’ve had a fight because your friend Grace has disappeared, and apparently, you’re the only one who would bother to even look for her.

It’s heavily implied that your journey will be fraught with danger, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Nor apparently, does the fact that Elena is currently preggers. Nor that your relationship was already kinda rocky, and it kinda sounds like Elena was using the child to try to save the marriage..because that always works. The conversation’s weird and uncomfortable. As a player, you don’t really walk away liking either of these people very much.

All Aboard The “Fun” Train

After you endure the super cringey conversation with Elena, the screen fades to black. From there, “Day One” starts, and you find yourself aboard a hovercraft. It’s the same one that Grace used when she left the Citadel, and that returned pilotless. You’re out in the middle of the desert with nothing but sand, rocks, and a few dead trees to keep you company. There’s a cassette tape with your name on it. Playing it gets you some exposition from the now-vanished Grace. She explains that she was sick of her government job at the Citadel and wants to live out in the barren wasteland because that is her best life.

Then, the coolest thing in the game happens. You get a boomerang! I was super excited about this. I instantly flashed to Paul Hogan, all hyped up to indulge my inner Crocodile Dundee. I threw it and watched it arc out across the vast sandy expanse. I felt inexplicably cool as it returned to my hand. It was fun, it was novel, it was something that I thought could help set this game apart from other games. 

Now, I have to pee in your cheerios.

Turns out the ONLY thing you will use this boomerang for is smashing floating blue crystal thingies that provide fuel for your hovercraft. I cannot fully express my disappointment. Breaking crystal thingies is fun initially, but it quickly becomes tedious. The boomerang arcs seem to follow some pattern, but they have nothing to do with any actual physics. There’s also no urgency to the crystal smashing. You can miss as much as you want. Your hovercraft just keeps on rolling.

I knew this was a puzzle/story-driven game. Still, I had hoped for at least some boomerang-related combat. You know, smashing some of those post-apocalyptic zombie creatures that are ubiquitous in these sort of settings (spoilers, there are no such creatures). There is absolutely no combat. Nadda. The boomerang bubble bursts pretty early, which is a damn shame because it could have been so much fun.

Cabin Fever

Your hovercraft comprises three main areas: the control area, the work area, and the living quarters. You’ll learn how to make the hovercraft go vroom-vroom and some arbitrary things that the game makes sound important but really aren’t. For instance, Vanishing Grace makes this whole big deal about you not letting your ship overheat. Yet, I purposely let that thing go all the way over into magma-colored red, and nothing happened. You can, apparently, totally neglect aspects of your ship (along with your wife and unborn child). This is another missed opportunity to make Vanishing Grace more engaging because you’re about to spend ninety percent of your time on this damn hovercraft.

You bounce back and forth between your character Joel’s and Grace’s perspective. You get off of the hovercraft three times during the game. It’s almost a blissful feeling to have some change of scenery. Again, don’t get too excited. Your time off-ship isn’t exactly exciting. You stop, gather some objects, maybe take a photograph with the in-game camera, and that’s about it. The developers missed another golden opportunity to make this game better. Put some stuff in there that we can interact with! Give us some exciting locations to explore and things to find! No, you’ll just find some objects and head back to the hovercraft…

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. 

You get more story, solve more brainless puzzles, and wonder why the hell nobody straightens the damn floor rug.

Characters Devoid Of Character

For a story-driven game, the story part isn’t incredibly gratifying. Endless Grace “confession” tapes left me rolling my eyes. Vanishing Grace is full of weird exposition and muddy philosophy, and half-baked ideas that just come off as convoluted nonsense. None of the characters are likable; all of them seem self-serving, vapid, and oblivious. The dialogue is so taxing that I quickly stopped caring where Grace might be or whether she was even alive.

Vanishing Grace also does very little to explain what the actual hell is going on with the world. What happened to turn the Earth into a barren wasteland? What is the Citadel? Are there mutant people and animals out there? Is it actually dangerous to be out and about? Because all you’ll see from your hovercraft is sand and vaguely phallic rocks and trees. If you’re not going to show us, at least tell us. Give us some more back story about this epic friendship that is worth potentially losing your marriage over. For the love of all that is holy, give us something substantive instead of half-baked tangents that have no bearing on anything.

Riddle Me This

Here’s the thing: I can overlook one lacking element in a game if the rest is good. If the characters and storyline are lackluster, then dazzle me with great puzzles. Sadly, the puzzles in Vanishing Grace run the gamut from fiddly to insultingly simple. More than once, I was stumped because I thought the solution to some puzzle couldn’t be that simple. It was.

Don’t Be Graphic

The graphics in Vanishing Grace are competent but decidedly bare-boned for much of the game. Details are blurry, especially when you try to read many of the files or notes scattered around the hovercraft or when you try to inspect non-objective related items outside of the craft. But, simplicity can be charming. Some parts of the game were rather nice to look at.

Bug Off

Vanishing Grace isn’t horribly buggy but has some issues. Usable items get stuck in your hand sometimes, things fall through surfaces, objects aren’t always immediately responsive, that sort of stuff. More annoyingly, I could not find a save option, and the auto-saves seem to happen once per in-game ‘day.’ Twice, my headset died mid-chapter, and nothing from that in-game “day” was saved. If you’re going to embark on this adventure, make sure your headset is charged up plenty before you begin. The game’s dialogue isn’t something you want to have to sit through twice.

Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right

Vanishing Grace makes me think that somebody took a mediocre short-story and decided to make a mediocre game out of it. Everything about it is middle of the road. This is unfortunate because it could have been an interesting title, but between the dull puzzles and the annoying characters, its batting average is pretty low. The drama isn’t fun or compelling; it’s just tiresome. The story will either make you want to punch whatever is closest to you or put you to sleep. I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say it’s…underwhelming. 

Oh, and you’ll still hate everyone.

Survey Says…

If you want a light puzzler, you’re better off with something like Down The Rabbit Hole or The Curious Case of the Stolen Pets. If you want something more cerebral, you’re better off with The Room VR: A Dark Matter, Red Matter, or Myst. Vanishing Grace is also an incredibly short game, taking less than two hours to complete. The title may be ‘Vanishing Grace,’ but it was my own ability to care that vanished somewhere on that hovercraft. 

Nevertheless, I found myself a bit wary of the premise, involving as it did an in-game AI companion. AI companions are a hit and miss affair, at best. Sometimes, like with Ico and The Last Guardian (both of which were undoubtedly a significant influence on Mare), they work incredibly well, drawing you into the story and, despite yourself, creating an emotional bond between you and what you know is a digital entity. Other times, like in the ill-conceived Last Labyrinth, they fail abysmally at creating a character you care about (she dies way too many times for you to care) and instead add an extra layer of mechanical frustration between the player and the actual gameplay.

Set Them Free At The Break of Dawn

On startup, Mare immediately distinguishes itself with fantastic art direction and a GUI that puts you in the middle of a minimalistic but slick chapter selection menu. You’re in a dark place, seeing white silhouetted fragments of landscape loom around you. Monochromatic birds fly around, sparking electrical energy as they approach strange pylons. You don’t quite understand what’s going on, but you can click on the pylon, and in doing so, a large mechanical bird flies through a portal, taking you into the first chapter and setting you on your journey. 

The game begins with that mechanical bird coming to perch on a pylon above the clouds. As before, the art is simple but beautiful, wonderfully complemented by excellent sound design and music. Red balloons show up, some larger than others, and you’re not quite sure what’s going on. This uncertainty is there to stay, so you’ll have to get used to it.

Interactivity in Mare is limited but purposeful. You can click on pylons to make the bird go to them, and you can click on the environment and objects to discharge electrical bolts at them. Sometimes you are accompanied by a flock of smaller birds, and you can send them off to fly around objects and spark them up on their own. 

There are enemies to fight in the game, but the fighting is a point-and-click affair, not a test of speed or reflexes, or agility. It’s there to serve the story, not try to bring the game into the action genre. 

It’s Your Heart That You Betray

After the first sequence, you’ll find yourself in the company of a little girl, and she’s no more sure of her surroundings than you are but seems to trust you enough to follow you, like a duckling that’s been imprinted to your bird. She’ll do her best to follow you as you fly from pylon to pylon, and you can use that to weave her through the landscape. If the girl’s close to something she can trigger or a door she can go through, she’ll do just that, opening up new pylons you can reach, and therefore more areas you can explore. 

This mechanic is, essentially, how you progress through Mare. An unspoken alliance forms between you (as the mechanical bird) and the little girl, even if she occasionally screams when you discharge an electrical bolt too close to her. 

Mare builds on that relationship, and in time, you grow protective of the girl, defending her from dangers that lie ahead. So long as it doesn’t interfere with your mission, that is.

Pretend To Trust Me Until You Do

Mare doesn’t explain itself, and although that’s frustrating on some level, it’s part of the game’s DNA. It’s a dangerous gambit on the developer’s part; to obscure a game’s backstory so much that the player isn’t quite sure what it was all about even after finishing it. To their credit, the small team at Visiontrick pull it off. 

This obscurity also makes Mare a strange title to review. On the one hand, it would be criminal to divulge any spoilers, but on the other hand, if, after finishing a game, you still don’t quite understand it, how can you spoil it other than beating the mechanics and puzzles to death?

Don’t worry. We won’t do that here.

Something’s Out There

Mare plays out across eight chapters, and if I’m going to nit-pick, I’d say that the chapter divisions seem somewhat arbitrary. There’s no dramatic change of scenery between chapters, for instance. Sure the levels progressively move what little you understand along, but other than the stark contrast between the first chapter and all the rest, they all share a similar color palette and occur more or less in the same general setting. Having said that, the setting is quite stunning, so this isn’t quite the complaint it might at first sound like.

I’ve referred to Mare as a ‘game’ several times throughout this review, and perhaps in doing so, I’m doing it a slight injustice. It’s easy to consider it a game because it has puzzles to solve, a landscape to unlock, and choices to make. So in that sense, yes – it is a game. However, perhaps out of an abundance of caution, Visiontrick’s website refers to it as an “exploratory and sensory VR experience” perhaps so as not to antagonize players who might criticize its brevity. Let’s modify that description a little and say that Mare is an exploratory VR experience with light puzzles. It features an incredible atmosphere, mesmerizing graphics, excellent sound, and a purposefully oblique narrative.

There’s Something Here From Somewhere Else

The whole world of Mare feels both mysterious and macabre; it’s borderline creepy at times and beautiful throughout its campaign. The puzzles aren’t challenging to any seasoned gamer, but they do evolve gradually, keep the player engaged, and don’t overstay their welcome with needless fluffy repetition. For players who want more of a challenge, the game has collectible cats dispersed throughout the levels that you can try to collect. On my first playthrough, I collected about half of them without trying too hard, but some were difficult enough that I decided I’d save them for my next playthrough. Collecting all the cats unlocks an extended ending, and it’s one that I will relentlessly pursue even though I know that it still won’t answer all the questions I have.

Questions that I know will haunt me.

Mare wants to keep you guessing, and that’s absolutely fine by me. I’m confident that before long, there will be a small but dedicated fan base working online together to decipher its clues and work out, to the best of their ability and with what little information they can glean, the nature of the story it tells. 

[Update: Since posting this review, I’ve collected all the cats, and I saw the extra ending. I still have questions and I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll say this; get all the damn cats!]

The fact of the matter is that I truly enjoyed Mare. I love titles that are genre-breaking, and I love games that are unique and difficult to classify, and Mare (like The Under Presents) is both those things. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s very slick, and just a little bit twisted.

Who’s The hunter, Who’s The Game?

Whether you choose to see it as a game or as a fantastic experience with light puzzle elements, Mare is a title I can easily recommend to anybody who has an appreciation for beauty and mystery. It evokes a mood unlike any I’ve experienced in VR and truly feels like a cousin of Fumito Ueda’s console masterpieces. It may be brief, but its impact will far outlive its duration, proving beyond a doubt that it’s the quality of our experiences that matter, and not their duration.

MAKING BAD

As I’ve bleated on several times before, VR is a bold and relatively new medium which is uniquely placed to offer up new experiences to enquiring and imaginative minds. It can be empowering and liberating and can gift you with virtual superpowers. It lets you weave artwork out of the very air around you, enables you to scale mighty mountains or dodge hundreds of bullets like Rudolf Nureyev playing John Wick. Incredible stuff, exciting times. We haven’t even scratched the surface of where we can go with it. A couple of years ago, a group of talented game creators – with a track record of working on impressive, artistically dazzling titles [team alumni from classic titles such as ICO, The Last Guardian, Shadow of the Colossus – Ed] – had a brainstorming meeting to see what horizons in storytelling they might explore, what boundaries in gameplay they could redefine, by bringing their considerable powers to bear on the mindbending new frontier of virtual reality. 

They came up with…this.

A game in which you play a man strapped tightly to a chair, using a laser pointer taped to his forehead, who can only communicate by nodding or shaking his head. He is assisted in his efforts to complete dreary and unbalanced escape room puzzles by a clueless, ditzy and irritating girl who speaks only gobbledegook. 

Doesn’t sound too promising on the page, does it? Rest assured, in practice, it’s even worse. 

WORST THINGS FIRST

From the get-go, Last Labyrinth has the feel of a rushed budget title. Despite being in VR, the menus and presentation have the unmistakable whiff of a budget Japanese PS2-era title. It is immediately jarring to have to pick menu options using the head-mounted laser pointer; it doesn’t even mimic the line of sight from the headset, but from the forehead. It feels incredibly clunky – the sort of thing that would have seemed old hat on the Gear VR or the Go. And you don’t use the obvious and natural choice of the trigger button to confirm your selections, oh no. It’s the A button on the right-hand controller, presumably because it matches the in-game button that your wheelchair-bound avatar uses. It just feels wrong, like you’re playing it on the wrong system or something. Testing on the SteamVR version, however, feels even worse…

So, into the game. The player is sat motionless in a wheelchair, with only the head and right hand free to move a little. Trapped in a series of rooms in what I presume is the titular Last Labyrinth, you are accompanied by a generic pink-clad anime girl called Katia. You make your way through the puzzle-based rooms by pointing at objects of ‘interest’ like switches, levers or handles with your forehead so that Katia investigates. If you want her to press or pull or otherwise interact with the thing you’ve pointed your face at, you have to nod to confirm, or shake your head if you’ve changed your mind.

It’s a terrible system that divorces you from the situation at all times, and never stops feeling silly and frustrating. This is compounded by the fact that Katia’s animations and interactions with the world are so painfully slow and clunky, as she laboriously stop-starts and turns on the spot, with rudimentary pathfinding around obstacles that looks so unnatural that it’s redolent of watching character models from the very first Resident Evil. Everything just feels so 2003, and not in any kind of a good way.

RIDDLE ME THIS

Katia speaks a nonsense made-up language, which is no doubt meant to be endearing and mysterious and redolent of Ico, one of the many games that feature in the game’s impressive provenance, but which it completely fails to channel. As it is, it’s one more layer of frustration and annoyance to add to the pile, as you’re subjected to infuriating repeated sentences of gibberish. Katia is so generically designed that she’s instantly forgettable. Despite the heroic attempts of voice actor Stephanie Joosten to imbue her with some character, it never catches.

There are many scenarios where you press a button to complete a puzzle and Katia falls victim to a grisly death if you get it wrong, or, a drawn-out near-death if you get it right. These scenes are meant to tug at your heartstrings, I think, but it all seems a bit too Saw, too tasteless and voyeuristic. It’s the furthest cry from the likes of The Last Guardian, which weaves a tale of empathy and bonding with a virtual companion through shared hardship and touching animation. By the time Katia has died for the umpteenth time in a horrible and drawn-out fashion because you’ve told her to press the wrong button, you simply won’t care at all. 

MY WHEELS! MY GOD, I CAN’T MOVE MY WHEELS!

The player is deprived of any and all agency at every turn. There’s no movement, ever. Even when you ‘solve’ a room, Katia moves towards the player to push the wheelchair, and then it fades to black, fading up in the next static position in the next room. I think it’s a terrible misuse of VR, the physical equivalent of being manhandled whilst wearing a blindfold. If they wanted to sell you on the narrative of being wheelchair-bound, then being pushed around just a little would only add to that, maybe even help you bond to Katia a bit more. As it is, there’s never any context. You’re just watching someone else do all the interactions, and have all the fun. During one of the interludes between sections, Katia dances around you on a clifftop, grabs at a stray ribbon, and then falls off the cliff. She dies, you’re forced to watch. Like the rest of the game, but without a single button press to be had. 

The game treats you like both a paraplegic and an idiot. It then has the audacity to throw insanely involved and unbalanced puzzles at you, seemingly at random. In the early game, you tell Katia to press a button, and it randomly drops a pot on her head, which she laughs off, and the door opens to the next room. The next room features an involved and time-consuming puzzle with a model train and junction points which has the nerve to be both complex and trial-and-error, and also features an interminably long failure animation which kills you both and is impossible to skip. There’s no balance, no natural sense of progression or gradually increasing difficulty. At all times, there is this constant and despicable feeling of restriction and frustration. 

DING DING DING DING DING

Maybe the Last Labyrinth team thought it would be cool to cast you as a virtual Hector Salamanca, the paralysed, gurning, bell-ringing mute cartel boss from Breaking Bad. At no point does anyone on the team seem to have pointed out that it’s just a terrible idea. And at least Hector got to gurn and ding at people; he was also in a production of inherent quality and class. In Last Labyrinth you just nod at your carer like you’re in the day room of a nursing home, pointing at stuff with your head. There’s nothing to immerse you in the game at all. The graphics are low quality, with dreary and smeary textures that are devoid of interest. There’s not a single room or screen of the game that seems possessed of any originality or wit at all – it’s all so excruciatingly generic. 

The halls of Steam are littered with low-budget VR misfires like this; experiments which might cost a dollar or two and which you might head into expecting very little and getting less. The Oculus Quest store should have a far higher bar for entry [if only, remember Drunkn’ Bar Fight? – Ed]. The fact that Last Labyrinth is priced like a premium title, and has such an impressive pedigree, is almost unbelievable. There’s a complete lack of polish across the board, to say the least, from the execrable graphics to charmless animation routines. It’s a shoddy and graceless game which has all the cachet of any number of Unity asset-flips you can find for cheap or for free. Sound is compressed and at times unpleasant – there’s a static interference noise in one cutscene that is so nasty that it’s like the team has forgotten you’re trapped in VR with it. The music is sparse and entirely forgettable. I was genuinely surprised to discover that it had been composed for the game, rather than just ripped from a music library. 

A GOOD SIT DOWN, RUINED

You’ll notice that I haven’t gone into detail about the flow of Last Labyrinth, the plot, or its longevity. The sad fact is that I’ve described the gameplay as far as I can without verging on spoiler territory for those foolhardy enough to want to play through it. The game’s creators reckon you’ll get ten hours out of it; I haven’t managed to stomach more than five, but I haven’t seen everything the game has to offer, as there are multiple paths through it. None of them, from what I’ve seen, are worth playing.

As a fan of the creators’ previous work, I don’t enjoy hating on Last Labyrinth. This, however, stands out as being one of the very worst experiences on the Quest, and a tragic misuse of VR in general. With so many design mistakes and no-nos, Last Labyrinth will become a cautionary tale to other developers working in the medium, a litany of choices to avoid making if you want to produce a decent game. 

The highly focused setting of A Fisherman’s Tale keeps you confined to small play spaces, which are well-suited for escape room-style puzzle-solving. In a mind-boggling, recursive twist, objects that you place inside your model lighthouse appear as giant versions in your room, revealing that you exist in a mirror-copy model of a larger world.

A Model Life

Need a teeny-tiny captain’s hat for a hermit crab? Just locate a regular-sized one in your regular-sized room, then remove the model version, perfectly shrunken to fit a tiny crustacean. Throughout four short chapters, puzzles like these make excellent use of the game’s large-and-small mechanics. Once you wrap your head around the concept, certain ideas don’t seem so strange – like hitching a ride inside a giant tuna’s mouth, or assembling a model boat and then steering it out to sea. 

Although your play-space is tiny, A Fisherman’s Tale has all of the basics of VR locomotion covered. You can teleport a short distance, or snap-turn if you don’t want to move physically. Reaching for distant objects is handled by a button press, which will extend your wooden hands far enough to pick up objects off the floor. Utilizing the grip buttons will allow you to handle objects with relative ease.

Avast Ye Mateys

Guiding you through these environments and puzzles is a gentle voice-over narration, so you’ll never really feel like you’re at a loss for what to do. The magical maritime characters you meet will also provide you with ample clues, leaving little downtime where you’re scratching your wooden puppet head. I only got hung up on two physics-based puzzles involving a crane in one scene and a lit match in the other. Still, a few minutes of trial-and-error made the feeling of frustration quite fleeting.

A few narrative scenes, including a brief prologue and epilogue, help break up the thoughtful puzzles. Some of these scenes even hint at what A Fisherman’s Tale could have been like as a much larger narrative, especially a scene where you take your fishing boat out onto the open sea. What would it be like to trawl for fish with a virtual sun beating down on your face? For now, it’s just the brief dream of a sleeping developer, until someone gets around to adapting The Perfect Storm for VR.

Story Time

As creative, polished, and original as A Fisherman’s Tale is from start to finish, it’s also a brief tale. Much like The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets, A Fisherman’s Tale is brimming with confident and elegant design. Still, it’ll take you barely over an hour (if you leave the hints on, as per the default), and you’ll have little reason to play it more than once. It’s hard to judge a game that is so short and sweet because, on the one hand, we should acknowledge its excellence. Still, at the same time, gamers also expect a lot of entertainment or replay value for their money.

When a game is this engaging, it’s natural to want more levels, more puzzles, and more…story. If you’re going to support a game that is a delightful display of interactive artwork, spend the money on A Fisherman’s Tale (and don’t ask for a refund when you beat it in a day). VR tales like this might not be extended and drawn-out, but we can appreciate their originality and quality.

If you don’t mind that it’s a short playthrough, and if you value artistry and original puzzle design, give A Fisherman’s Tale a try. It’s a great introduction to VR puzzles and gameplay mechanics, suitable for a broad audience. It may give you a startling new perspective on the little lives of wooden puppets.

Fast Travel Games is not a new studio, the Stockholm, Sweden-based company was founded in 2016 by industry-leading veterans. Their debut title Apex Construct was available on the Oculus Quest since it launched. Shortly after Curious Tale is released, they plan to follow it up with Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency later this year.

In The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets, you get to help your grandfather solve the mystery of the stolen pets by exploring miniature worlds crafted from the ground up for VR. Every world is promised to be unique, full of playful interactions, joyful puzzles, and colorful life. 

Recently winning the ‘Best Immersive Game’ award at the 2019 Raindance Film Festival, The Curious Tale also features music from Wintergatan who claimed world recognition with their Marble Machine, a musical instrument using 2000 marbles.

Curious Tale is set to sell at $14.99 and supports Cross-buy between the Quest & Rift version.

 USE THE FORCE, AND THE SPOILER TAG

We’re going to try and avoid spoilers for a game which is both story-based and very, very short – so forgive me if this sounds vague, but we don’t want to mar your enjoyment should you choose to buy the game. Episode 2 immediately takes up the story where Episode I left off, and it doesn’t hang about. It’s a minute or so into the game before Darth Vader is teaching you to harness the Force, mainly for moving and throwing things. Initially, this felt like it could have been the extra hook that the first game lacked. The format remains mostly unchanged from the first title – mostly some basic interactions and combat while moving through a series of rooms. If you’ve played Episode 1, you’ll know the drill. There’s perhaps a little more excitement and spectacle in this instalment, given the threats you face and the inclusion of fledgeling Force powers. It’s undeniably fun lobbing rocks about and throwing droids down holes… While it lasts. 

I FIND YOUR LACK OF CONTENT DISTURBING

I know that this is, in the scheme of things, at the cheaper end of content in the Oculus Store, coming in at £7.99/$10. I know that it’s meant to be played as an episode of an ongoing narrative and is intended to be more of an experience than a full-fat game. Even so, the story in this episode is very, very slight, and some of the beats miss entirely. 

In a very short running time, the title manages to contain both action scenes which are over too fast, and longeurs where you’re just staring at the (admittedly impressive) scenery whilst not doing anything except listening to people talk. The pacing is rubbish, and the joyfully great bits are over far too quickly and also plagued with technical issues and design problems which threaten to ruin the experience.

RISE OF THE ROOMWALKER

We’ll talk about the technical issues shortly. Some of those can be patched out, I’m sure, but the identity crisis at the heart of the game is a fundamental design problem. In short, it doesn’t know whether it’s offering the player a game or a vaguely interactive experience. The first episode could be forgiven for this, as it may have been many people’s first experience of VR. So the gameplay is not too challenging, and the interactions show off the magic of VR whilst not being too taxing. However, in this title, there are clear signs that they want to give the player more agency this time around. 

There are free locomotion options, but you still have to stand on certain marks to trigger the next (half-interactive) bit of story. You’ll hardly be roaming far. Also, the option for smooth turning is still incremental, moving the player in snap rotation but with a smoother transition. 

The game does everything it can to frustrate the sense of freedom that VR should bring. Stand there, do that. Ridiculous ‘return to the game area’ messages still appear should you stray from the very narrow path the game dictates, which is nonsensical for untethered, room-scale VR. At times, and this is most aggravating of all, the game will even turn you around or put you in a different spot by fading out to black briefly, so it can place you where it wants you to be. It’s really jarring and far more egregious than in the first game. 

The inclusion of Force powers really makes the design of the format strain. At times it’s incredibly empowering. It’s hard not to giggle with delight as you pick up a battle droid and hurl it down a fissure to be consumed with lava, or throw it at another droid and watch them both crumple. Then it’s over in a blink, and you’re back to trudging to the next marker on the floor. It promises freedom and creativity, like you’re going to be in a Jedi remix of Robo Recall, and then takes it all away. 

Also, it’s a lovely novelty that all the touch controller buttons make the fingers of your virtual hands clench, but it makes you feel like a right Jar-Jar when you’re force-grabbing a droid out of thin air and find yourself inadvertently doing a double thumbs-up.

All of this wouldn’t be so galling if the story were interesting. It just feels like a loose filler for a couple of set pieces, and then a set up for the next episode. A short story needn’t be a slight one. While we’re there, I have to say that I found Scott Lawrence’s performance as Vader a little bland and underwhelming. I can’t help but think that Matt Sloan (another Vader voice veteran) would have been a stronger choice.

WHO’S SCRUFFY LOOKING?

This is the continuation of what is clearly a flagship Quest title – so I’m still bemused by its technical shortcomings. Early adopters may be reminded of the bad old days before the patches that made some things a lot better. In my time with the game, I experienced frame-rate drops and stutters, audio glitches, and a couple of crashes, one of which was so severe that I thought I was going to have to factory reset my Quest [I had fewer issues, but it still crashed out at some point, my Oculus Home got weird, and I had to restart a section from the beginning – Ed]. There are strange vertical lines towards the edges of the view which seem to be present in a lot of scenes, striations which tear the image slightly. 

In many ways, this is a beautiful game with amazing scenery, but the engine feels like it’s almost literally coming apart at the seams sometimes. The very first thing you see when you load the game, as with the original, is a flat postcard of Darth Vader that glitches and jerks its way around the view in a nauseating manner. Why is it still there? A black void with the loading pips would be better than this.

L33T SABER

It isn’t all bad, by any means. The main saving grace, apart from ‘Hey it’s Star Wars pew pew bzzzzzzt!’ is the lightsaber dojo mode. With a different setting to the original episode, an unconventional lightsaber, and the addition of the Force, it presents a cool little way to honour the inner Jedi in most of us. Rounds of increasing difficulty, as in the original, mean unlockables like different crystals and such are fun to get. The later levels present a decent challenge. Throwing a lightsaber at enemies and then using the Force to bring it back like a laser boomerang of death will never not be entertaining. It’s not Space Pirate Trainer, but all things considered, it’s probably worth the asking price for the title alone.

Elsewhere, the spectacle of some of the scenery can be breathtaking, and one of the enemy threats presents a jaw-dropping, if heavily scripted, fight. I’m sure the spectacle of it all will be more than enough for most people to enjoy the hell out of. For some, however, I think that it will be played through in 20 minutes and refunded pretty swiftly.