Rejoice PlayStation VR (PSVR) fans; now is your time. After a painfully slow start to 2017, Sony’s headset is finally about to kick it up a gear with a slew of great new releases. Two of those arrive this week with the long awaited port of a really good Rift and Vive game as well as a new tower defense title that’s exclusive to the platform. Enjoy!
If you missed last week, you can see those new releases here. Also, UploadVR has launched the ‘UploadVR PS VR Community’ on PlayStation 4! Join up, find other gamers to play with, and engage in discussions with them.
Also, don’t forget to check out our list of the
Fated: The Silent Oath, from Frima Studios
Price: $9.99
The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive launch game finally comes to PSVR, and it’s well worth the wait. Fated is the first part of a first-person adventure series in which players are cast as a father and husband that must protect his family against mythical monsters and more. It’s a surprisingly effective journey that you won’t soon forget and we can’t wait to see where the developer takes it next.
Recommendation: Definitely pick this up if you haven’t already seen it on Rift or Vive. Read our review here.
Korix, from Stellar VR
Price: $19.99
Korix offers a pretty promising mix of single player and multiplayer tower defense and real time strategy gameplay. Your home world is destroyed and you have to fight off attackers in stylish action inspired by games of the late 90’s. If that sounds up your street then this is probably an ideal pick for you.
Recommendation: Definitely one to check out for RTS and tower defense fans.
Hands up, I admit it; I was not expecting to enjoy Fated: The Silent Oath as much as I did. As a first-person game made by an indie studio using gamepad only controls I had a preconceived notions of what I was about to experience when I sat down to play. I thought I was going to get something short, full of heart, but ultimately unmemorable and underwhelming.
About an hour later I took off my headset after an unexpected gut punch that assured me that Fated was something I’d remember for a long time to come and left me longing for the next installment.
Set against Norse mythology — but without the appearance of a certain hammer wielding god — the game tells the story of Ulfer, a husband and father that struggles to protect his family as his clan falls upon hard times. At the start of the game, Ulfer is robbed of his voice, and must communicate with his wife Freja and those around him by either shaking or nodding his head. It’s a simple and obvious way to bring convincing character interactions into VR, and I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of it yet.
Things start out with an air of acclimatization. In the first five minutes as Ulfer and wife are carted off to safety I wondered if I would be getting full control of my character, but the game does a great job of slowly introducing you to its elements, gradually ramping up to the kind of action you’d expect from a traditional console experience. Make no mistake; this is a full locomotion title using the DualShock 4 and, even if the movement is a little more sluggish than desired, it’s not afraid to put you in exciting situations.
But as I said, things start off slow and a little clumsy. Fated has all the good intentions in the world; it wants you to feel for the characters around you, and lose yourself in its world, its just comes off a little ham-fisted in its opening acts. Your young nephew, for example, displays his anxiety by stuttering with literally every word, but will later run head-first towards a narrow tree branch that crosses a massive icy chasm. Your answers, too, often carry little weight, and controversial choices are simply shrugged off in disobedience.
For all those faults though, it’s the interactions between player and NPC that really make Fated worth playing. A passing joke from Freja as she squeezes past you in a carriage had me grunt with laughter and shoot her a knowing look as if she really was my wife. Disagreeing with her father out of a sense of loyalty conjured a rare sense of conflicting emotions inside me most game NPCs don’t elicit. Without spoiling anything, delivering an answer in the game’s final few moments really did spark a genuine shock that I’ll long remember as a prime example of why VR is so powerful.
As a straight up adventure game, Fated is full of amazing sights and set piece moments that will drop your jaw. Visually the game is both simplistic and yet richly layered. The cartoonish art style robs the characters of a breadth of expressions, but at the same time Firma pours on environmental details, resulting in pleasingly thick woodlands and suitably chilling caves. Mechanically it’s simplistic; a handful of puzzles are solved without trouble and you’ll have to go out of your way to actually fail in the moments where it’s possible to do so.
That said just being in VR gives some old videogame tropes new life. Timing when to step past a swinging axe is far more terrifying when you can see its rusty metal blades inches from your face, and charting a course across an unstable floor is more methodical when you’re constantly glancing back and forth between the solution and where you’re walking. These elements aren’t revolutionary, but they’re pleasingly engaging and prove that you can bring some of the excitement of full action-adventure games into VR without much discomfort.
Final Score:8/10 – Great
Fated: The Silent Oath deserves to be experienced not for its lush environments or adventure gameplay, but because it’s one of the few VR games yet that effectively creates a connection between you and the characters around you in a way that’s unique to the medium. Something as simple as nodding your head can spark a powerful reaction both in the game world and, more importantly, inside you. There aren’t many VR experiences that pull that off quite so successful yet and, for that reason alone, Fated is worth your time — even if it is a bit brief.
Fated: The Silent Oath is available now on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR for $9.99. Check out these official review guidelines to find out more about our process.
After quite some time waiting for it to be announced, PlayStation VR users will now be able to see what all the fuss is about with the launch of Fated: The Silent Oath being launched on to the platform today.
Frima Originals and Sony have announced the launch in style by producing a launch trailer for the PSVR version of the videogame. As noted in the VRFocus review of the PSVR version, the price has been reduced to £7.99 GBP and Fated has seen some alterations to make it suitable for the PlayStation 4 hardware.
Fated: The Silent Oath is set in the legendary time of the Vikings, in which a father named Ulfr is struck by a curse which renders him unable to speak. The player takes on the role of Ulfr as he travels the land, solving puzzles, uncovering mysteries and all the while attempting to protect his family. That Ulfr, and therefore the player, are unable to speak informs the interaction with other characters, as the player can only communicate with headshakes or by nodding.
Characterisation and storytelling are key parts of the game, with many reviewers noting that Fated managed to elicit a strong emotional reaction – sometimes enough to bring them to tears.
Further details are available on the PlayStation Store page. The full launch trailer is available to watch below.
VRFocus will bring you further updates on Fated: The Silent Oath and other PSVR titles when they come in.
Having originally made its debut for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift nearly a year ago, one might wonder what has taken Frima Original’s FATED: The Silent Oath so long to arrive on PlayStation VR. Despite the head-mounted display (HMD) having now been available for months and the original intention to have the videogame ready for launch, FATED: The Silent Oath has arrived late, but with it has come some obvious adjustment to optimise the videogame for the PlayStation 4 format.
For the uninitiated, FATED: The Silent Oath is the story set in the mythical age of Vikings. Telling the tale of an everyday father and husband who find himself caught in an unpredictable situation, challenged with accomplishing a mission that appears impossible while also ensuring the safety of his family. Battling against the potential destruction of the world at the hands of giants of old, Ulfr has also been cursed with the unexpected loss of his ability to speak.
The latter mechanic – or rather, lack thereof – has been incorporated to accommodate the first-person design of FATED: The Silent Oath and the decision to avoid HUD-based text at all costs. Simple shakes or nods of the head through the PlayStation VR’s head-tracking capability are enough to communicate your intentions; the script and story pacing have been written elegantly around this limitation.
The story is key to FATED: The Silent Oath, as it is without a doubt an emotionally charged experience. The interaction with family members and other characters is the driving force, and while other videogames often collapse under the pressure of crafting deep and likable characters across the spectrum of age, race and sex, FATED: The Silent Oath steers clear of trite dialogue and cliché with ease. It’s frequently amazing just how well blended the character design is into the overall narrative, should you choose to step back and think about it.
But doing so would break the immersion; a cardinal sin in virtual reality (VR). FATED: The Silent Oath has been designed to keep you hooked through the story and gameplay loop in such a way that stepping back is equivalent to undermining your own enjoyment. The division between story progression, exploration and puzzle solving is so thin that you shouldn’t question it. Whether it be rearranging stones so that their glyphs appear in the right order, teaching your nephew how to hunt, having your exceptionally strong wife, Freja, tell you that you’re being an idiot or charging along a ravine on a horse and cart to escape falling rocks, FATED: The Silent Oath’s pacing is commendable throughout.
In terms of the PlayStation VR edition of FATED: The Silent Oath, Frima Originals has obviously had to do some work in order to make the videogame perform as well on the PlayStation 4 console as high-end PCs. The visual quality has only suffered slightly – which could well be as much to do with the PlayStation VR’s lower-grade screen as a reduction in detail – and Frima Originals has acted wisely to ensure that no framerate drops are evident in the videogame.
FATED: The Silent Oath was originally billed as the first chapter in an episodic series. Exactly what is going on with the second chapter is not currently known, however this instalment is certainly enough to warrant a look by itself. With a reduced price point making the short duration of FATED: The Silent Oath much easier a pill to swallow, those who are looking for new content on their PlayStation VR could do much worse than to go adventuring with Ulfr and his family.
Originally slated to be a PlayStation VR launch title, the developers behind Fated: The Silent Oath have finally revealed when it will drop on to PSVR.
Fated: The Silent Oath came out for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in 2016, a version which VRFocus did a review of. The story of the videogame concerns a viking named Ulfr who is aiming to protect his family from mythical creatures that prey upon his homeland.
Developer Frima Studios created the game using Unreal Engine 4, and presents the world as colourful and bright, with characters that have vaguely cartoonish proportions. Gameplay largely involves puzzle-solving, though the player is prompted to interact with other characters, able to offer nods or head shakes in response to questions.
Frima Studios announced on Twitter that Fated: The Silent Oath will make its way on to the PlayStation VR on 28th March, 2017. As of yet, no price point has been confirmed for the PSVR version.
VRFocus will keep you updated on Fated: The Silent Oath and other PSVR titles
