Adult Swim will delist 4 PC games later this month
Warner Bros. Discovery, parent company of Adult Swim, will delist four more indies from Steam after beginning its spree in March.
Owlchemy Labs’ Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality Nominated for an Emmy
When film franchises are made into videogames disaster usually tends to strike, with the content offering a sub-par experience. That’s not always the case, especially when it comes to cartoons, with Owlchemy Labs, Adult Swim Games and Other Ocean Interactive creating the rather good Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality for virtual reality (VR) headsets. That work has now led to an Emmy nomination for the teams.
Securing an Emmy Nomination in the ‘Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media Within a Scripted Program’, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is up against Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why, Mr.Robot, Silicon Valley and Westworld for the prize.
“We are blown away by our nomination— it’s an enormous honor to be selected for an Emmy! The nomination is a fantastic statement about the value of high quality room-scale VR and experiences built explicitly for the medium,” said Andrew Eiche, Chief Technology Owl and Cable Slinger, who was the production lead on Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, in an email to VRFocus. “To have Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality selected alongside the other incredible experiences from such well-known properties is a huge validation for the work that we are doing in VR. We are excited that VR as a medium is getting the mainstream recognition that we believe it deserves.”
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality first hit HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in April 2017. The teams then finally brought the videogame to PlayStation VR a year later as both digital and physical copies. Due to its popularity the title managed to secure the top download spot for Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) headset in April.
VRFocus reviewed the original launch edition on PC VR, giving it a full five stars: ““If you enjoy this style of interactive VR experience then you’ll appreciate Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality even if you’ve not seen the cartoon, there’s even sections catering to first-person shooter (FPS) fans. Really though this is a video game for those that love Rick and Morty, and quite frankly that’s no bad thing. Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a madcap, fun filled adventure from start to finish, perfectly suiting VR’s qualities, it should not be missed.”
If Owlchemy Labs and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality do see success at the 70th Emmy Awards, VRFocus will let you know.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality Physical Release Arrives On Shelves
Fans of the incredibly popular animated series from Adult Swim, Rick and Morty will now be able to get hold of a physical copy of the PlayStation VR version of critically acclaimed virtual reality (VR) spin-off, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality.
Developers Owlchemy Labs teamed up with Adult Swim Games and Other Ocean Group to create Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality. The title involves travelling through portals, solving puzzles and getting yelled at a lot by Rick.
Nighthawk Interactive are distributing the physical version. For the biggest fans and collectors, a limited Collectors Edition is also available in North American stores, priced at $49.99 (USD). This edition comes with a copy of the videogame, a ‘Weaponised Rick’ Funko pop! Figure and a double-sided posted featuring Rick and Morty comic book art.
The title received much praise on release, with the VRFocus review saying: “If you enjoy this style of interactive VR experience then you’ll appreciate Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality even if you’ve not seen the cartoon, there’s even sections catering to first-person shooter (FPS) fans. Really though this is a video game for those that love Rick and Morty, and quite frankly that’s no bad thing. Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a madcap, fun filled adventure from start to finish, perfectly suiting VR’s qualities, it should not be missed.”
The title is fully voiced, featuring the original voice actors from the show. Players can hang out in recognisable locations from the cartoon, mess around with iconic objects such as the plumbus, explore strange new dimensions by travelling through portals and learn how to fix and intergalactic car.
The physical release of Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is available at participating retailers in North America from today, priced at $29.99. Further news on Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality will be covered here on VRFocus.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality Released Date Confirmed for PlayStation VR
In December PlayStation VR owners finally received confirmation that popular PC virtual reality (VR) title Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality would be coming to the headset in 2018. At the time no official date was mentioned. Now VRFocus can confirm that not only will the comedy videogame launch in April, it’ll be available as a retail release plus there will be a Collector’s Edition for sale.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality will launch in retail stores on 10th April, 2018 for $29.99 USD. The Collectors Edition version (whose price hasn’t been revealed) includes a copy of the videogame, a Funko Pop! Rick and Morty vinyl figure and an exclusive double-sided poster featuring Rick and Morty comic book cover art.
Built in collaboration between Adult Swim Games, and developers Owlchemy Labs and Other Ocean Group, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a VR adventure like no other. Combining the humour of much loved cartoon series Rick and Morty, with all the zany interactive elements of Job Simulator, players find themselves in the role of a Morty clone, there to do the duo’s bidding whilst they head of on another adventure. Set predominantly in Ricks garage/lab, players will need to solve puzzles, step through portals into strange dimensions, get yelled at by Rick, fight aliens, drink detergent, press buttons, and much more.
While you don’t need to be a Rick and Morty fan to enjoy the experience it certainly helps if you’ve seen some of the episodes as there are quite a few in jokes and casual references to the cartoon. Needless to say, VRFocus gave the PC-version a thumbs up, awarding it a five-star review, saying: “Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a madcap, fun filled adventure from start to finish, perfectly suiting VR’s qualities, it should not be missed.”
If further details emerge about the PlayStation VR version and whether it’ll include any new additions VRFocus will let you know.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is Coming to PlayStation VR in 2018
The main PlayStation Experience livestream is now over and there was a bunch of virtual reality (VR) titles revealed for PlayStation VR. Shockingly, one videogame that didn’t make to the stage or any of the video show reels was Owlchemy Labs’ Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, which has just appeared on PlayStation Blog confirming a launch for PlayStation VR in 2018.
This is major news as Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality was one of the biggest VR releases in the first half of 2017, originally supporting just Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Created in collaboration between Job Simulator developer Owlchemy Labs and Adult Swim Games, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality combines the humour of much loved cartoon series Rick and Morty, with all the zany interactive elements of Job Simulator.
You don’t actually get to play as either Rick and Morty, instead you’re a Morty clone who’s instructed to carry out all manner of tasks by Rick to help him with his adventures. While the majority of the experience is based inside Rick’s lab/garage, there’s far more to the surroundings than meets the eye, taking you on a journey that’ll take you across multiple dimensions and to places like Purgatory and even the Smiths’ bathroom.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality will be coming to PlayStation VR next year, but for those attending PlayStation Experience there will be a chance to demo the title.
While you don’t need to be a Rick and Morty fan to enjoy the experience it certainly helps if you’ve seen some of the episodes as there are quite a few in jokes and casual references to the cartoon. Needless to say, VRFocus gave the PC-version a thumbs up, awarding it five stars in the review, saying: “Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a madcap, fun filled adventure from start to finish, perfectly suiting VR’s qualities, it should not be missed.”
As further details are released, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Living the Life of Troy in Rick and Morty: Virtual-Rickality
One of the biggest virtual reality (VR) releases so far this year came by way of Owlchemy Labs and Adult Swim Games with Rick and Morty: Virtual-Rickality for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Players find themselves cast as a clone of Morty and if they’re familiar with the cartoon series will know that all sorts of strange and weird things are just around the corner.
VRFocus reviewed the title, giving it a maximum five stars, saying: “Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a madcap, fun filled adventure from start to finish, perfectly suiting VR’s qualities, it should not be missed.”
For today’s gameplay video VRFocus has looked at one aspect of the title, namely Troy, a VR simulator where players get to play through the life of the character. This is a nod to one particular episode of Rick and Morty where the duo head to intergalactic amusement arcade Blits & Cits, which has a VR game called Roy.
Troy features multiple choices so every play through can be different, with the main goal to live as long as possible. The video below showcases just a little of what players can expect.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality: Achievements, Cheats, Tips & Tricks
A couple of weeks ago Owlchemy Labs (Job Simulator) and Adult Swim Games launched the highly anticipated Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive head-mounted displays (HMDs). The videogame was well received with VRFocus giving it the full 5 Stars in our review. Now VRFocus has the full Steam Achievement list with a few handy hints for some of the trickier ones.
If you didn’t know by now Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is based on Adult Swim’s hit cartoon. Set in Rick’s garage, the game revolves around you helping the duo in their wacky adventures, with lots of nods to the cartoon series.
Full Achievement List:
- Big Hands Mode!
- Dude… your hands… they’re so BIG! – Eat the growth pill.
- Thrown Under the Bus
- Have a youseeks get hit by a bus.
- Wubba lubba dub dub!
- Achieve your ultimate purpose.
- From Downtown!
- Throw something at the Smith home from very far away. – From the satellite, throw the pink creature towards earth and exit the portal before it can follow you.
- You Have Shitty Taste
- Eat poop.
- He’s Thrashing Your Score – Throw the Social Security card when playing as Troy
- Love Hurts
- Give Jerry his medicine. – Take the bathroom doorknob off to give him his medicine
- Ding!
- Fixed a light bulb.
- Bureaucratic Nightmare
- Kill 100 Gromflomites in a single session of the shootout.
- Meet your Makers
- Watch the entire credits disc.
- Buttception
- Or is it eggception?
– Combine poop with poop.
- You Went There
- You should be ashamed – Combine two cassette tapes and then combine that with another cassette tape. Take the “Tape Tape Tape” and combine with another cassette tape
- Hand of Midas
- Give yourself a high-five, you’re a real alchemist now! – First combine your hand with the crown, then combine it with a mace.
- Old [FRIENDS]
- Ahh [HUMAN] memories.
- 1000 Years Troy and Morty! – Play Troy until you reach 1000 years as Troy.
- Emperor of Soundwaves
- Listen to all the tapes.
- Fully Charged
- Charge the largest battery to 900 or greater.
Review: Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality
Making a video game based upon another mediums franchise can be filled with pitfalls. More often than not the final product never lives up to the expectations of fans, either deviating from the core material or just a haphazard job that’s been rushed out to cash in. Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty has built up a strong fan base from its first two seasons and all eyes will be on developer Owlchemy Labs with the launch of Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality. Has it been worth it, yes it certainly has.
Owlchemy Labs has taken Rick and Morty and combined it with the gameplay style of studio’s popular VR experience Job Simulator, fleshing the idea out with an original storyline and masses of interactivity. Straight from the off there’s stuff to play with before even getting into the main game itself, and once you’re tuned into the simple control mechanics it’s easy to just while away several hours playing with all the random items in Rick’s garage.
Everything revolves around this one location, while it may not look like much there are objects hidden everywhere, and playing through the campaign will help you work out what’s what. Fans of the cartoon series will be instantly at home here, finding all sorts of nods to their favourite episodes. The entire experience does feel like its built purely by fans for the fans, so if you enjoy the franchise then you’ll have a massive grin from start to end. That’s not to say those who’ve never seen the cartoon won’t appreciate the title, but they’ll certainly miss a lot of the in jokes.
Naturally, comedy plays a big part. All the voices are performed by the original cast, and the humour and cutting wit of the cartoon is there, expertly drawing you in so that you are now part of another wacky scheme. As such this isn’t a video game for kids, there’s plenty of swearing throughout.
Such is the polish of Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality that you may not realise how much time you’ve actually spent within the the title. The core story is split into nine sections with a freeplay mode opening up at the end. The first playthough should last a couple of hours or so, but it can feel much shorter due to the level of immersion. As a single-player experience there’s always the worry of replayability, a campaign can only be enjoyed so many times if there’s no variation. Thankfully Owlchemy Labs has thought of this adding plenty of little touches that’ll keep players coming back for more (without spoiling too much, the game within a game Troy is worth going back to).
If you enjoy this style of interactive VR experience then you’ll appreciate Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality even if you’ve not seen the cartoon, there’s even sections catering to first-person shooter (FPS) fans. Really though this is a video game for those that love Rick and Morty, and quite frankly that’s no bad thing. Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a madcap, fun filled adventure from start to finish, perfectly suiting VR’s qualities, it should not be missed.
100%
Awesome
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Verdict
‘Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality’ Review
You’re dying for season 3 of Rick and Morty (2013) to come out, and the release of episode 1 on April Fool’s Day isn’t helping. You’ve got a fever that only the drunken ramblings of the genius Rick Sanchez and his level-headed, albeit hopelessly outmatched grandson Morty Smith can cure. The good news: Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017) is here to fill the void in your meaningless existence. The less good news: it’s basically Job Simulator (2016) expertly grafted to an episode of Rick and Morty. And you know what? Th-th-th*ugghhb*at’s just fine by me, Jack. Don’t know why I’m calling you Jack all of a sudden. Let’s just get on with the review.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality Details:
Developer: Owlchemy Labs
Publisher: Adult Swim Games
Available On: Steam (HTC Vive, Oculus Touch), Home (Oculus Touch)
Reviewed On: HTC Vive, Oculus Touch
Release Date: April 20, 2017
Gameplay
In Owlchemy Lab’s new Rick and Morty VR game, you’re lower than the low. Not only are you a Morty, but you’re a Morty-clone who has less purpose (and respect) in life than a butter-fetching robot. The only thing that might be construed as a lower being on the totem pole of galactic intelligence in the game is a Mr. Meeseeks, cleverly renamed Mr. You-seeks for the purpose of the game, of which you have in infinite supply. But all he does is mirror your movements, letting you pick up objects that go out of your teleportation range, making you basically the lowest life form in the entire multiverse.
It all starts one day when Rick, in his infinite wisdom, conjures you up to do the simple task of cleaning his clothes. Open the washer, pop in the suds and dirty clothes, hit a button, and you’re done. Game over. But not quite. From there you take on grander tasks, like retrieving “important parts” (for his spaceship), fixing the toilet, drinking gasoline—you know, menial Morty-tasks that need doing while the real Morty goes with Rick on actual adventures.
I genuinely started to feel jealous of my namesake as he flies away on Rick’s space ship, or hops through portals while I’m stuck in the Smith’s garage charging micro-verse batteries, ordering parts online to fix more “important things”, or feeding an alien laxatives. If you can get over the fact that you’ll never truly have that free-wheeling Rick and Morty adventure so tantalizingly close to your grasp, and that you will invariably be the butt of every joke, you’ll begin to see the game for what it is: a true glimpse into the Rick and Morty universe, one that’s masterfully stitched into Job Simulator’s object interaction.
Even though your tasks are essentially meaningless—and believe me, there’s plenty of plumbus-bopping and bottle-smashing—the patently absurd story arch playing out before you really makes you feel like you’re in an episode of the show, albeit a subplot to a grander adventure waiting behind Rick’s portal. In unmistakable Rick-like fashion though, eventually the old man’s machinations are revealed, giving the inane object bashing that much more importance and authenticity.
Easter eggs are also everywhere, with 13 collectible mix tapes featuring silly songs and ramblings from the show’s characters. The fictional VR game Roy: A Life Well Lived, made famous in the episode Mortynight Run (2015) in Season 2, also makes an appearance in the guise of a knockoff called TROY complete with cardboard cut-outs to give it that cheap-o feel.
Rick’s sci-fi ‘combining machine’ alone will keep you mixing and matching in efforts to create the weirdest object combination (think growth hormone + plumbus). I played through with minimal faffing and completed the main story in a little over 2 hours, but if you’re hunting for every last one of the game’s Easter eggs, it could take you much longer.
Immersion
The brilliance of the Rick and Morty TV show is how it reaches through your television and grabs you by the ears, sometimes directly by breaking the 4th wall, but often times by disarming you with absurdity while delivering powerful messages on mortality, loss—you know, the human condition. The VR game is all of this and more. You only need a few minutes in Purgatory after your first death, listening to the devil’s secretary tell you about why you shouldn’t reanimate back into the game to see what I mean.
From Rick’s lovingly recreated garage-lab, to all of the interactive items ripped straight from the show (including low poly 3D versions of Rick, Morty and Summer), there’s a feeling of familiarity that fans will definitely click with. But there’s something more insidious lurking in Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality though.
The show’s characters get in your head in VR in a way the TV show just can’t. Because you’re physically in front of the almighty Rick (voiced by show creator Justin Roiland) you can’t help but seek his approval, if only so he doesn’t dismiss you as just another stupid Morty-clone. You begin to wear Morty’s persona, the sycophant grandchild who just wants to please his ultimately powerful grandfather. If you do a job right the first time, you might get a backhanded compliment like “Hey, it looks like this Morty-clone isn’t a complete pile of flaming garbage afterall.”
And that’s when I started understanding something about the game: you just aren’t good enough to go on a real adventure with Rick. Hell, the real Morty barely is. Sure, there are action sequences with the promise of multiple deaths around the corner, but these are remarkably few in number, and stink of Rick’s characteristic manipulation. It isn’t a real adventure at all. And yet somehow, all of this is okay given the absurdity of both Job Simulator and the show itself.
All of this is done in a beautifully rendered environment that easily mashes up with the show’s hand-drawn feel. It’s like living in your favorite cartoon (if Rick and Morty is your favorite cartoon, that is).
Comfort
Getting to the nitty-gritty, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality offers many of the same features of Job Simulator, including its ‘smaller person’ mode that lets you scale down the size of your environment to let you access things easier. Despite this, the game is very much a standing experience that requires at least 2m x 1.5m (about 6.5 feet x 5 feet). Object interaction is the exactly the same as Job Simulator; bottles have poppable corks, and jars have screwable tops, i.e. almost everything is interactive and articulated enough to seem plausibly real.
There are three nodes you can teleport to, all of them inside the garage. This makes it an ultimately very comfortable experience, one that requires little explaining to master (even a 6-year old can do it).
Strangely enough, the Oculus Rift version doesn’t offer any form of ‘comfort-mode’ snap-turn for people with only a two-sensor set-up, which considering the 360 nature of the game may initially sound like a no-go for anyone without at least 3 sensors. Despite this, I found most interactions to be forward-facing, so I didn’t have to deal with Touch tracking issues all that often. The HTC Vive’s standard Lighthouse tracking predictably handles all room-scale interactions with ease.
Check out the first 10 minutes of gameplay to get a better idea of just what Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality has to offer.
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar 2 Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar 2 is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
The post ‘Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality’ Review appeared first on Road to VR.
Hands-On With the Hilarious ‘Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality’
