Fracked offers a thrilling blockbuster campaign for PSVR… while it lasts. More in our Fracked review!
The metaphor might be overused but Fracked really is a rollercoaster ride. It’s a brilliant, explosive campaign that scales to great heights with its arena-based firefights before plummeting downhill in breakneck skiing segments. And then, before you know it, it’s over.
Most players familiar with VR shooters will get maybe three hours of gameplay out of Fracked’s eight-level campaign. Usually, I try to refrain from making a game’s length an issue in VR reviews if anything for the sake of not sounding like a broken record, but here it really is a sticking point. You’ll be having enough fun in Fracked that you won’t really want it to stop, but it isn’t long before it runs out of slope.
Let’s first focus on what works here, though, because there’s quite a lot of it. In its best moments, Fracked is a winning mix of brains and brawn with meaty first-person combat, set to the backdrop of a remote mountain facility, that offers hot-footed gunplay finely tuned to PSVR. It’s rare to play a game that feels like it was really tailor-made for Sony’s platform and its cumbersome Move controllers, but the smart use of your off-hand as a virtual joystick and a streamlined reloading system keep Fracked’s focus on the action, and not fighting a control scheme.
Fracked Review – The Facts
What is it?: A fast-paced VR shooter with a single-player campaign that mixes gunplay with skiing and more. Platforms: PSVR Release Date:Out now Price: $29.99 (10% discount for PS Plus pre-orders)
As a result, Fracked pulls off some of the more agile VR combat we’ve seen whilst retaining immersion and intensity. Its weapons, meanwhile, are butchy and erratic, trading out precision fire for spray and pray chaos. nDreams does a great job of removing the fuss from the experience – taking cover is simply a matter of grabbing the edge of an object and then using your hand to lean in and out of harm’s way. We have seen this in other games but it’s expertly applied here, allowing you to carve a path through enemies before hunkering down on the floor to recharge health.
Most of the game’s big encounters take place in wide-open, multi-faceted environments with objectives that often ask you to hold out for a certain amount of time as the enemies pour in. The game is essentially an arena shooter and, while it doesn’t do a great job of disguising that, it does have some of the right ingredients to pile on the pressure with enemy types that screech as they sprint towards you in hopes of blowing themselves up or tougher, armored foes that first need to be knocked down so you can blast their power source.
Skiing, meanwhile, works well with hands-free controls, allowing you to return fire as you race snowmobiles and weave between guard posts. It can take some getting used to and never really gives you full control but, like so many other elements of the game, it offers a strong foundation to potentially build off of in the future and one of the most platform’s most incredible spectacles where items tumble past you and vehicles explode in the background. The same goes for some of the platforming segments which graduate from the Nathan Drake school of ‘How to Climb When Everything’s Coming Off the Wall’.
There are hiccups in this formula, though. Some of the enemy AI struggles to find a path towards you, which is made apparent in one particular fight that asks you to get one brute to stand in a certain location. They really wrestle to comprehend how to reach you, turning what should be one of the game’s climactic encounters into a mess, and that’s far from the game’s only bug. You also get limited-use special weapons like magnums, shotguns and grenade launchers which are indeed helpful but also take ages to disappear after being used, leaving you exposed to enemy gunfire without a means of attacking.
Fortunately, these moments are anomalies; most of Fracked’s action is polished, frantic, and fitting proof that you can serve up fast-paced action in VR and still have it feel native to the platform. Sealing the deal is the game’s fantastic art style and great soundtrack, which feels like playing through the pages of a comic book. Kudos to whoever had the idea to show the actual bullets inside a weapon clip as a clever way of keeping count of your ammo in VR.
Fracked Review – Comfort
Fracked is a smooth locomotion-only shooter, and a fast-paced one at that. There are vignetting options but, overall, expect the speed of the action to take its toll if you’re not yet used to VR gaming.
Ultimately, though, the sheer quality of Fracked’s campaign makes the sting of its shortness hurt all the more. True, nDreams’ last game, Phantom: Covert Ops, was a similar length, but the slower stealth pacing and evolving gameplay ideas helped round it out in a satisfactory way. It’s not just that Fracked isn’t very long, it’s that it doesn’t have enough space to really flesh out its own concepts. This culminates in a final level that’s throwing the same three enemy types at you that you encountered in its first 30 minutes. The short levels and uneventful story, meanwhile, leave things unfinished when the credits roll and the game needed more environments, more enemy types, other weapon types and more of its inventive setpieces to really come together as a whole package, but it never pulls it off.
You can tackle the campaign once more in a permadeath mode (the option for which gives you your first indication about how long the game is) and collect coins hidden in levels, though the latter is really only for trophies.
Fracked Review – Final Impressions
Fracked is a blast to play, even if it isn’t quite the massive shooter epic to round out the PSVR era. By all means, its arena-based action is polished and thrilling, offering refined fast-paced action with intense combat setpieces. But the game’s simply over far too soon, never getting a chance to really expand on its core elements and deliver the rich experience its mechanics deserve. Fracked starts off at a sprint and never really lets up, but the finish line is far closer than it should have been.
For more on how we arrived at this rating, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Fracked review? Let us know in the comments below!
Fracked is the latest VR title from veteran VR studio nDreams, and a PSVR exclusive at that. The game has a lot going for it—good looks, a unique cover system, and strong fundamentals—but its combat and doesn’t evolve enough to really stick the landing.
STRIDE for Quest Details:
Available On:PlayStation VR (PS Move required)
Price: $30
Developer: nDreams Release Date: August 20th, 2021 Reviewed On: PSVR (PS5)
Gameplay
Fracked is a shooter at its core, but peppers in some skiing, climbing, and light puzzles which help break up the pace.
The game has strong fundamentals. Guns feel responsive and satisfying to shoot and reload. Art direction is great. A unique cover system—where you can grab nearby cover to easily peek your head around corners—works really well. And nDreams has done a commendable job with movement controls (considering PS Move lacks a thumbstick).
But while Fracked starts out strong, there isn’t enough variety to the combat to carry it through to the end of the game, especially as the ending sequence plays out like a wave shooter.
There’s really only three enemies in the game, and you’ll meet all of them within the first hour or so. There’s the basic soldier guys, the kamikaze guys, and the heavy guys.
The first two are fun enough to shoot at, but the heavy guys are more annoying than exhilarating to fight as they function mostly as a bullet sponge, by way of knocking them down with mines (that they place at their own feet) before you can unload on their weak spot.
A big clue that Fracked’s combat loop is missing something is that all enemies are visibly outlined, essentially giving the player x-ray vision to see where they are through walls and behind cover. Without this it would be really hard to figure out where the enemies are because they reposition frequently and quickly, and often feel like they’re coming out of the woodwork. While spatial audio could be a solution, I felt like the audio channel was often too crowded with music and other less important sounds for it to be a reliable positional indicator.
Image courtesy nDreams
While Fracked has a handful of weapons, there’s really only two ‘core’ weapons—the pistol and the SMG—which you can have permanently equipped. The three other guns—shotgun, revolver, and mortar—are treated as ‘power weapons’ which you can find during certain encounters with very limited ammo.
This division between ‘core’ and ‘power’ weapons might not feel so restrictive if not for the way that the power weapons and handled from an inventory standpoint. Unlike your pistol and SMG which can be stowed in your inventory, the power weapons can only be held. If you use your hands for anything else, you’ll drop the power weapon on the ground and (if you’re playing in the recommended seated position) you won’t be able to pick it up again.
This led to several frustrating moments where I went to climb a ladder only to watch the gun I just found drop out of my hand into an unretrievable position on the ground. Not to mention being forced to waste something like the powerful single-shot mortar on a single weak enemy because they ran up to attack me but the game doesn’t allow you to stow the weapon to save for a more opportune moment.
Fracked attempts to break up its combat sequences with a handful of other activities, most of which work well. There’s skiing, climbing, and some light puzzling, but combat still makes up the bulk of the gameplay and it just doesn’t see enough evolution over the course of the game to keep it interesting by the end, which is capped off by an exceedingly mundane boss fight.
As far as story is concerned, Fracked sets up an interesting premise but it fails to develop its world and characters, and often left me wondering what I was doing and why. It’s the kind of story where the main villain comes out at the end and you’re saying “who is this guy again?” The ending sequence goes a bit off the rails with some kind of sci-fi twist that doesn’t feel sufficiently explained. The very very end—like the last scene—actually made me say out loud, “whaaat?” in disbelief that it was actually the end of the game.
Fracked is also a rather short game, clocking in at just three hours—even after I had a handful of frustrating checkpoint resets from enemies that snuck up and killed me from behind before I could react.
Immersion
Image courtesy nDreams
Fracked is a great looking game. nDreams nailed the visual style, which not only gives the game a distinct look, but also fits great with the antiquated resolution of PSVR.
There’s not much to the game in terms of environmental interaction, except for scripted climbing sequences, and the occasional zip line, but Fracked does a good job of not showing you things that look like they should be interactive but aren’t (which helps hide the interactive limitations).
I found that the game’s cover system works very well as an immersive alternative to simply using a thumbstick to move in and out of cover. Instead of doing that, you can grab the edge of any cover and then use your hand to peek out of the cover. It feels natural in the midst of combat, and the vast majority of cover that I expected to be able to grab was in fact grabbable.
nDreams found a great balance between gun interactivity and simplicity. Both the pistol and SMG are reloaded by ejecting the magazine, inserting a new one, and then charging the weapon. The gestures for doing this are forgiving while still feeling satisfying. I can hardly remember a time where I messed up a reload, which let me focus on the action. Reloading feels so good in the game that it’s a shame the three other guns (the power weapons) don’t actually have their own reload sequences because they disappear after a single magazine.
Although the guns stick to your hands, I didn’t feel like this was out of place for Fracked, especially considering that PS Move lacks a dedicated grab trigger. Even though they’re attached to your hands, I appreciated that you could hand a gun from one hand to another, which made the cover system more flexible.
Comfort
Fracked makes a handful of comfort missteps that I couldn’t overcome without cranking up the peripheral blinders to their maximum setting (which felt very imposing).
Fracked doesn’t seem to mind forcibly moving the player’s view at times. But this can lead to discomfort, especially when its rotation. The instances of rotating the player’s view seem minimal—like during some climbing sequences when you round a corner—but I found them to be uncomfortable enough over time that I couldn’t play the game comfortably for more than 30 minutes at a time before cranking up the blinders. You can reduce the rotation while climbing by disabling ‘Climb Mode’ in the accessibility options, but this doesn’t prevent all scripted rotation in the game.
I was surprised to find that the game’s skiing sequences actually seemed quite comfortable; I think this was helped by the fact that you steer the skiis by tilting your head from side to side.
One small technical issue that likely has a big impact on comfort is the game’s snap-turn implementation. Instead of a proper instantaneous snap-turn, each snap is actually just a very fast rotation. This means that each time you turn you can still see the entire world turning around you, along with all the vection this creates. I was frankly a bit surprised to see this mistake in a game from a studio with such deep experience in VR.
Fracked isn’t a game that I would recommend to people who consider themselves fairly sensitive to VR motion sickness. While a sensitive player may find comfort by cranking up the peripheral blinders they bring a hefty blow to immersion.
Fracked Comfort Settings – August 16th, 2021
Turning
Artificial turning
Smooth-turn
Adjustable speed
Snap-turn
Adjustable increments
Movement
Artificial movement
Smooth-move
Adjustable speed
Teleport-move
Blinders
Adjustable strength
Head-based
Controller-based
Swappable movement hand
Posture
Standing mode
not explicit
Seated mode
Artificial crouch
Real crouch
Accessibility
Subtitles
Languages
English, Italian, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese
Fracked developer nDreams has confirmed that there are no plans to bring the game to other headsets beyond PSVR.
The studio confirmed as much in multiple posts in an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit this week. “There’s currently no plans to bring Fracked to new/existing headsets as it’s a PlayStation VR exclusive,” one reply reads, “tailor-made for the platform.”
Indeed, Fracked is designed very much with PSVR in mind, and can be played as a seated experience. Still ‘currently no plans’ doesn’t mean there will never be plans, so hopefully we could see the game ported to PC and Oculus Quest headsets in the future.
Elsewhere, fans asked if the game could get a possible multiplayer mode in the future.
“The game was designed from the ground up to be a single-player experience first and foremost, and our priority was delivering that, but we could certainly see the appeal of multiplayer,” the developer said. “There are currently no plans to add this at the moment, but we’re open to all player feedback.”
We recently spoke to nDreams to chart the studio’s history in VR as it prepares for its next big VR release. Fracked, meanwhile, hits PSVR next week. We’ll have our full review of the game ready for you very soon.
nDreams, the British virtual reality (VR) behind titles including Phantom: Covert Ops, Far Cry VR and the upcoming Fracked has announced that ex Codemasters CEO, Frank Sagnier is joining immediately as its new Non-Executive Chair of the Board.
Sagnier’s videogame career spans 25+ years having previously held roles at Electronic Arts, Acclaim Entertainment and Funcom. As CEO of Codemasters, he oversaw the company’s IPO in 2018 followed by its acquisition by Electronic Arts for $1.2 billion USD in 2021. Additionally, Sagnier is an Ambassador for BAFTA Games and a Vice President of SpecialEffect, a UK-based charity.
His appointment to the nDreams board follows Dan Nord (Maxar, Amazon Games and EA Mobile) as Non-Executive Director and Julie Parmenter, CFO, nDreams.
“I am delighted to join nDreams’ board to help the company achieve its mission to become a world leading developer and publisher of VR games,” said Sagnier in a statement. “Over the past few years, Patrick has built a reputable studio with high quality teams delivering high quality games. The fast-improving hardware together with highly immersive and innovative players experiences mean the VR market is bound to see significant growth and exciting times ahead.”
“I’m thrilled to welcome Frank to the nDreams board. I’ve known him since he was building up EA Partners, and I am certain that his wisdom, experience, passion and drive will push us forwards as we head towards some very ambitious goals. Frank is a force of nature, and it’s exciting to have him on our side!” said Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO, nDreams.
With two huge VR sequels and the latest PSVR exclusive, August is shaping up to be another great month of VR game releases. Here’s the full new VR games August 2021 list.
New VR Games August 2021
Stride (August 5th) – Quest
Stride is coming to Quest this month following its PC VR debut last year. If you need a sure-fire way of knowing if you want this title, it’s basically Mirror’s Edge in VR. Make of that what you will.
Price: $14.99
Disc Ninja (August 5th) – Quest
Disc Ninja is essentially frisbee golf set in a magical version of Fuedal Japan. There’ll be 50 different environments to enjoy at your leisure – which gives us Walkabout Mini Golf vibes.
Price: TBD
Carrier Command 2 (August 10th) – PC VR
Carrier Command 2 puts you in charge of deploying both aircraft and amphibious units as you launch your offensive to gain control of the area. It’s also a sequel to a classic 1988 game.
Price: TBD
Fracked (August 20th) – PSVR Exclusive
PSVR’s latest action-packed exclusive is coming towards the end of the month. Fracked was our Upload Access title for July so check out our exclusive interviews, gameplay videos and more right here on UploadVR.
Price: Standard $29.99/£19.99, Deluxe Edition $34.99/£24.99
Lone Echo II (August 24th) – Rift Exclusive & Quest via Link
Lone Echo 2 continues the story of Jack and Liv as you return to the rings of Saturn in this highly anticipated sequel to 2017’s Lone Echo. This is also the very last Oculus Rift exclusive, but you can also play it on Quest via Link.
Price: $39.99
I Expect You To Die 2 (August 24th) – PC VR, Quest & PSVR
The brilliant Schell Games is back with another installment of I Expect You To Die. Evil corporation Zoraxis believes you to be dead, which is the perfect time to go undercover to uncover what they’re up to. There’ll be plenty of puzzles and a chance to meet John Juniper, voiced by actor Will Wheaton.
Price: £24.99 / £18.99
Traffic Jams (August 26th) – PSVR
And finally, Traffic Jams is racing on over to PlayStation VR to finish off the month. Redirect traffic and survive less than normal situations in this fun party game, available either as a single-player campaign or get four other friends to unleash mayhem from their phones in multiplayer.
Price: TBD
We’ve got a few more games expected to release this Summer including Arashi: Castles of Sin, Song in the Smoke, Ionia and Pistol Whip’s latest story updates, so keep an eye out right here at UploadVR for the latest.
I mean that quite literally; today, the studio’s headcount sits around 100 people occupying two floors of an office in the London-neighboring town of Farnborough. The team’s developed and published something like nine VR apps to date with its next, PSVR exclusive Fracked, arriving this month. It also helped Ubisoft bring Far Cry to VR arcades earlier this year, has yet more games in development, plans to publish more VR titles from indies, operates a talent-nurturing academy initiative and, just last week, announced the launch of a new, remote VR studio dedicated to making live games.
That’s quite the evolution from a once-small outfit best known for making content on PlayStation Home, and it’s taken a lot to get here.
A New Home
nDreams has been around since 2006 but you really wouldn’t know it. Its early years saw it keep a low profile between a handful of alternate reality and promotional games as well as work on Sony’s virtual social hub, PlayStation Home. When the studio dived into VR in 2013, the team had aspirations of becoming a premier studio known for making the best content you could find inside a headset. With the launch of 2020’s excellent Phantom: Covert Ops and the response to last month’s Fracked demo, you might argue the team’s well on its way to achieving that goal. But, as with many aspiring VR studios, the path towards it has been rocky.
In many ways, nDreams’ story of survival in VR is no different to many other studios. You already know the outline; VR had a slow start, making it as an indie was tough and, even with multi-million dollar investment under its belt, nDreams wasn’t immune to those struggles. Before it could get to where it is now, the team worked on a string of VR games, covering partnerships with Google, independent releases and even publishing titles from other small studios. Some tried to cater to gamers, others were more experiential. It’s an earnest, if inconsistent portfolio, connected only by the act of throwing everything at the wall to see if something might stick. Some of it did. Others? Maybe not so much.
Chief Development Officer, Tom Gillo, who joined the studio in 2015 after working on the PSVR experiences that would eventually make up PlayStation VR Worlds at Sony London Studio, puts it in a way that will ring true for many long-time VR developers: “I guess the thing, that we tried to do quickly and early on in our journey, was unpack what we felt made good VR. So it was really understanding the tent poles around, how we would try and make the best VR games that we could. And, you’ll know this, it’s not always possible on some of the budgets, it’s a challenge.”
Some Assembly Required
Reluctantly waving goodbye to the steady stream of revenue it generated making content for PS3’s PlayStation Home (Sony didn’t carry the service into the PS4 era), nDreams searched for what’s next. In the very early days of VR, it released the SkyDIEving demo for the first Oculus Rift development kit. It was one of the first playable experiences for the device and proved popular enough that people near the offices even asked if they could come in to see it (I know this because, anecdotally, I have friends working in completely different industries that did just that).
Following up were early titles for the first edition of the Gear VR, including a space shooter called Gunner and a virtual beach destination simply known as Perfect Beach. The former was essentially EVE Gunjack, with gaze-based aiming, whereas the other dipped its toes into the still-untapped potential of virtual tourism. But these experiments were secondary to what the team hoped would be its breakout VR game, a narrative-driven launch window title for all upcoming VR platforms named The Assembly.
I’d be willing to bet that, for a lot of you, that name doesn’t ring a bell.
Not that The Assembly was bad. Far from it, in fact; The Assembly was intended to be an answer to the call for ‘real’ VR games, featuring an intriguing universe in which players explored the underbelly of a sinister scientific organization. It boasted great production values for VR at the time and had a focus on keeping players comfortable. But the game had started work in 2014, a year before the reveal of the HTC Vive, and it would eventually launch on PC in July 2016, a good few months before the arrival of PSVR and the Oculus Touch controllers. As such, nDreams had stuck to its guns and developed a gamepad-only control system for the experience.
That’s why you probably don’t recall the game among other breakthrough titles from 2016 like Job Simulator and Superhot, which placed a huge emphasis on motion controls. Comparatively, The Assembly was an ironic case of feeling dated even as it launched on futuristic hardware. It did eventually get motion controller support of its own, but the game’s 2014 foundations limited just how far interaction could go. “I think like any like any studio going through that journey and particularly at that time with the hardware being so in its infancy, clearly you’re going to learn lessons from it,” Gillo says. “And one of the lessons I guess, would be that […] we need to now figure out how to be even better, and the signature things we need in VR games.”
It also taught the team the realities of where VR was going in its first few years. Gillo says nDreams views The Assembly as a success and that it did see “very long tail sales”. But it was also self-published in the hopes that it could help fund future solo efforts from the studio. “Unfortunately, the market just wasn’t there, in terms of the numbers to make that viable.”
It’s Dangerous To Go Alone
The Assembly was a learning experience, then, not just about how to make VR games but also what nDreams was going to need to do in order to survive in these nascent years. It would need to apply the latter before it could really return to the former; the studio wouldn’t take another stab at an ambitious single-player narrative adventure until Phantom: Covert Ops four years later, but it released four titles in the meantime. There was Perfect, another VR travel and relaxation app that simply presented a handful of nice environments to stand in. Gillo says this was an exercise in “understanding how we could get something to market relatively quickly and how we could lean into some of the early adopter expansion.”
Gaming-wise, nDream’s output was mixed. There was Danger Goat, a Google Daydream exclusive puzzle title that, while fun, really didn’t have much to offer the medium. Gillo fondly recalls getting to be one of the first to work on Daydream and laments its downfall but isometric puzzle games about secret agent goats weren’t exactly what the VR audience was clamoring for in 2017. nDreams also got into VR publishing with Bloody Zombies, a 2D beat ’em up which, while certainly competent, didn’t really seem well suited for the platform either.
This, I’d argue, wasn’t the sort of output you might expect from a team that wanted to be making VR’s biggest games. But, can you blame them? If Google is dangling money to make a game at a time when self-publishing your own is financial suicide, Danger Goat probably seems like a safe bet. “I think we’ve always aspired as a studio to do longer-form games,” Gillo responds when asked if the studio was where he thought it would be in that era. “But there is obviously the reality of the market and the reality of the budgets available and so on. And so you work with what you have to continue to elevate your capability and your understanding of that market.”
A Fruity Twist
At this point, we’re reaching 2018, a time in which the VR market seemed pretty bleak. Sony’s PSVR seemed to be selling somewhat respectably, but the barriers to entry for PC VR — cost, hardware and accessibility — were proving too big to significantly grow the install base. Once-bright-eyed and hopeful developers were beginning to throw in the towel. Without a major hit to its name, you might’ve suspected nDreams to follow suit. And maybe something would have been different were it not for Shooty Fruity.
Released in mid-2018, this was a wave shooter that, again, might not have resembled the industry-defining experience nDreams had envisioned itself making but would help it get there thanks to, in Gillo’s words, being “phenomenally successful” from a sales perspective. This was before we had the Oculus Quest (the game didn’t hit that platform until 2020); Shooty Fruity managed to resonate with VR’s existing userbase.
It was a simple if strange idea; you shot sentient fruit as you pushed supermarket items through a checkout. Truthfully I remember being a little vexed when I first saw it that year, and we only ended up giving the game a 6/10. But I distinctly recall the buzz online around launch being quite positive, particularly on PSVR where shooter fanatics were hungry for something new. Though full sales stats for Shooty Fruity haven’t been revealed, Gillo’s tone suggests the game’s reception helped open a few doors.
And that’s a key point. From Gunner through to Danger Goat, nDreams hadn’t yet really had a standout VR hit. While developers like Sanzaru Games were scoring exclusivity contracts with Facebook and the like, nDreams seemed to keep being passed up on to make its own Asgard’s Wrath or Lone Echo. “I think one of the things that I realized really early on, and this is slightly hubris and naivety on my part, is that you come from somewhere like London Studio and then you come to nDreams, then you just assume that the world’s going to take note,” Gillo says. “And that was tough because, we were hiring some really brilliant people, seasoned veterans from elsewhere around the industry. But if you’re Mr. Oculus or Mr. Sony, you’re just going to judge us on the last title.”
Out Of The Shadows
With Shooty Fruity’s success and a proven record of putting out multiple games, nDreams hoped it had reached that point of notoriety. It was now time to “bet the farm”, in Gillo’s words, on the kind of ambitious, long-form VR experience the team had always wanted to make. Internally, the studio had been working on a prototype for a different kind of stealth game. You wouldn’t be performing close-range takeouts like Solid Snake or donning Splinter Cell’s green goggles; you’d be sneaking through an enemy base through water, set entirely within a kayak. All your weapons would be attached to you and handle realistically, while movement with the paddles would feel immersive and authentic. This was to be a VR game that wouldn’t make any compromises in its quest for presence. Gillo says it was crucial to show that demo to the right people.
“And it was great because we got the reaction that we hoped we would, which is, ‘Wow, this is, this is really unique and it’s thinking about VR, in a really innovative way’,” he says. “And so that was the sort of pivotal moment really where we knew we were onto something and we could yet springboard from there.”
Phantom ended up being published by Facebook itself, launching on Oculus Quest and Rift in mid-2020. It achieved the highest score Upload had given an nDreams game to date thanks to its compelling, immersive mechanics, and still ranks on our best stealth games list. It wasn’t perfect but, by a lot of VR design standards, it set an incredibly high bar. Earlier this year, nDreams confirmed that the game had generated more than $1 million in revenue. Again, perhaps not quite the blockbuster numbers a team of nDreams’ size (which by this point was approaching 100 people) would need if it self-published the game, but a sign of significant progress. Finally, nDreams was making the games it had envisioned when it started its VR journey nearly a decade ago.
“When I have a down day, I will go and I will read comments on the Oculus store about Phantom and occasionally you’re going to get somebody for whom it didn’t quite resonate,” Gillo says. “90% of the time it’s people just going ‘I absolutely love this’ and it warms the heart because you go, ‘Okay, great. It did resonate. And it did land and people did get what we’re trying to do.’ ”
Frack To The Future
Given that Phantom was such a considered effort on the immersion front, it’s somewhat surprising to see the studio throw so much of its design out the window for its next game.
Earlier this month, Creative Director Steve Watt told me that immersive design wasn’t a big focus for Fracked. The game instead wants to cater to explosive AAA action more akin to a Call of Duty or Uncharted title. It’s a bombastic shooter in which players shoot down ski slopes and charge through combat arenas, with more in common with Doom than the studio’s last effort. “So there’s lots of things where the medium has moved forward and where we’re actively pushing against [boundaries], sensible or not,” Gillo says of the change in tone. “You know like deliberately pushing to find out what is acceptable. And I think that’s always really important in any medium and art form is that you continue to push, continue to explore and you consider what works well.”
Something like eight years on from when it first jumped into VR then, nDreams has a sense of getting there. There’s a busyness to the studio’s office, the sensation of many different parts moving a mile a minute, and the team’s new Orbital studio will see it cater to a different branch of the VR market with a focus on live games (titles that evolve post-launch with new in-game content, like it Fortnite or mobile apps). “I’m thinking about, the kinds of audience expectation in five years’ time,” Gillo says of the expansion. “And yeah, I think that does mean much much longer engagement. That means different ways of delivering content. And that’s not something that we’ve invested in enough. We’ve done things here, obviously we supported our titles, but service games is a different skill set. And so by building that out and putting a slightly different lens on things, it gives us learnings again.”
nDreams survived VR’s shaky start and now more closely resembles the studio its leaders had dreamed of it becoming. Like any long-running VR developer, it hasn’t been easy, but it also helped the team rack up lessons applicable to the next phase of VR.
Gillo ends on this note: “I can’t really talk about what’s coming next, but the things that we’re working on internally now are the things that, if I could have gone back five years and said, ‘Hey, you’ll be doing this’, then it would have made the journey all worthwhile? The answer is, wholeheartedly: Yes.”
British developer nDreams is doing very well at the moment, seeing success with Phantom: Covert Ops(2020), Far Cry VR, and soon its latest Frackedwill arrive. Today, the studio has unveiled its latest initiative, opening a second virtual reality (VR) development studio focused on live service games, nDreams Studio Orbital.
The new studio will be helmed by Chris White who previously worked for FitXR – the VR fitness app which moved to a subscription model this year – bringing his live service experience to the team. White has also worked at Electronic Arts (The Sims Social), Glu Mobile (Project Gotham) and Space Ape Games (Transformers: Earth Wars and Samurai Siege).
“VR continues to grow at pace so it’s an incredibly exciting time to join,” said White in a statement. “There are so many awesome games out there already, but there’s still so much to discover, especially around experiences that engage players for years. I can’t wait to start building out the team and deliver something truly amazing for all the VR players out there!”
nDreams Studio Orbital hasn’t revealed any projects at this time or which direction the team plans to take down the live service route. Whatever the team decide it’ll be very different to nDreams’ usual titles which all tend to be single-player experiences.
Based in Farnborough, UK, nDreams was founded in 2006 and pivoted towards VR when the first Oculus Rift development kits (DK1) became available in 2013. The studio’s first big project was The Assembly which was followed up by Perfect, Bloody Zombies and Shooty Fruity. nDreams Studio Orbital will be fully remote and currently has several roles to fill.
It’s not just live service games nDreams is expanding into. Earlier this year the VR specialist announced a new £2 million fund which would be used to co-fund and publish VR content from other developers.
As and when nDreams Studio Orbital reveals what the team is working on, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Enjoyed last week’s surprise Fracked demo? We’ve got five minutes of exclusive gameplay to hold you over just a bit longer.
This new footage debuts a new section of the upcoming PSVR exclusive shooter, including some brand new features. For example, the clip starts with a new weapon – a more powerful pistol with a laser sight that seems to be temporary in use. Once you’ve used up all your ammo, the gun disappears. That could help instil a little strategy to the game’s firefights.
There’s also moving cover – at one point the player grabs onto a moving mine cart for safe passage through the environment. It’ll be interesting to see how much of a focus this gets as the game’s campaign progresses.
Fracked launches on PSVR on August 20. We’ve got more coverage of the game from our month of Upload Access coverage, with just a bit more to come before the end of the week!
British virtual reality (VR) developer nDreams has been on top form of late thanks to titles including Phantom: Covert Ops (2020)and location-based entertainment (LBE) experience Far Cry VR. Its latest project Fracked looks to continue that success, providing players with an action-packed thrill ride where you can run and gun through elaborate levels designed for verticality, exclusive to PlayStation VR.
Fracked has the usual action-hero dynamic where you’re trying to save the world from some interdimensional aliens. So cue plenty of dramatic set pieces like skiing down a mountainside trying to outrun an avalanche or ziplining across a building whilst peppering enemies with gunfire. All fairly standard stuff but nDreams has made some interesting design choices, especially where the PlayStation Move controller is concerned.
Firstly, Fracked can only be played using Move as the gameplay style just wouldn’t suit a DualShock 4 or PlayStation Aim controller. Move is necessary when VR videogames require physical actions like climbing ladders or reloading a weapon and there’s plenty of that in Fracked. In fact, mechanics like the reloading work provide a nice balance between realism and automation. There’s no ammo belt to worry about, simply eject the magazine, push in the next and cock the weapon. The process is smooth enough so that even in the heat of battle it doesn’t feel bloated and awkward.
Locomotion and PlayStation Move haven’t always been a match made in heaven, and that’s certainly so when a fast-paced shooter requires you to be seated. However, Fracked isn’t slow and lumbering like others in this field, being able to easily move around environments (without teleportation), taking cover and planning your next move. This is aided in a couple of ways. As you are seated and there’s no crouch button all you do is grab whatever cover you’re behind to pop up, take a few shots then duck back down. A very simple yet intuitive mechanic. The other are those ziplines mentioned. Fracked has plenty of places to climb yet it’s the ziplines that provide extra dynamic flavour to the experience, quickly traversing areas to get the drop on enemies.
There first few areas also showcase a nice level of pacing, offering an instant challenge in normal mode without being too overwhelming. Fracked also has a nice visual flavour to it, kinda reminiscent of Borderlands 2 VR and that cel-shaded art style. nDreams has achieved a fitting balance between realism and comic book aesthetics, vivid with its colour palette use yet you still feel like you’re in an abandoned mining town.
Even though the demo only lasts around 30 minutes the most important factor shined through, Fracked was enjoyable to play. You’ll easily go through the demo several times over ahead of the official launch in August, testing how much freedom you really have when tackling set pieces.
From first inspection, it certainly seems nDreams is going all out to make Fracked the action blockbuster of the summer. It is up against some stiff competition from the likes of Vertigo Games’ After the Fall but Fracked has all the ingredients for an engaging experience. Considering nDreams’ previous VR escapades Fracked is its boldest, hopefully managing to maintain this exciting gameplay throughout the campaign for a truly solid adventure.
Fracked, the upcoming PSVR exclusive from developer nDreams, is now due to launch next month, and today we got our first hands-on time with the game thanks to a new demo that’s available today.
Frackedleans clearly into the shooter genre, but from our time with the demo it looks like nDreams is aiming to shake up the format with an interesting cover system, climbing, and some more novel thrills too.
The first thing you’ll experience in the demo is a relaxing downhill ski while being pursued by an avalanche. It’s somewhat surprising to see skiing in the game, as the rollercoaster-like motions aren’t generally comfortable in VR. Granted, in this case nDreams seems to have taken care with the specific implementation (using a ‘lean to steer’ system) which—at least so far—seems to be relatively comfortable.
After hitting the slopes, the demo introduces you pretty quickly to combat. You’ll find a semi-automatic pistol which, thanks to unlimited ammo, seems like it’ll be your go-to backup gun.
While Fracked is by no means aiming for realism, the game features simplified manual reloading that so far feels really good. There’s already a lot on your plate with the game’s locomotion (which has to overcome the lack of sticks on the PS Move controllers), so the simplified reloading fits in nicely. Rather than asking you to juggle mags, a new magazine will automatically float next to the gun and simply needs to be inserted before chambering the gun.
While I’ve seen similar systems in other VR games, the implementation here feels quite good. It manages to be easy to do without taking away the visceral feeling of manually reloading your weapon. This is surely helped by solid sound design, good hand poses and forgiving grip points. If you peer into the side of the magazine it will become transparent and show you how many rounds remain inside. Though unrealistic, it doesn’t feel out of place with the game’s comic-book look, and manages to be a useful detail to boot.
You’ll be doing more with your hands in Fracked than just pulling the trigger and reloading. The game uses a sort of grab-based cover system which allows you to grab any nearby cover to easily move yourself in small increments to peek around corners or over cover while leaving your other hand free to shoot. In practice it’s very natural and also works as an effective alternative to real crouching or a button-based crouch. It’s a simple and smart idea that I wouldn’t be surprised to see adopted elsewhere.
From the guns we’ve had a chance to use thus far, Fracked has a deliciously chunky feel to its combat, both in the reloading and the shooting. Although enemies can definitely tank a handful of shots, the animations, effects, and sounds help sell the action quite well.
Between the fighting Fracked mixes things up with climbing, zip-lining, and some one-off activities. Beyond skiing, another one-off we saw in the demo is controlling a crane to clear an inaccessible pathway. These kinds of things can be fun breaks from a constant run-and-gun, so we’re definitely hoping to see more peppered throughout the full game.
One thing that also stands out in the demo is Fracked’s colorful, well executed art style. From what we’ve seen so far, the studio has really nailed the comic-book look it’s after, and the game looks about as sharp as any game could look with the dated resolution of PSVR. Upon looking at footage from the demo, I’d say that the game looks better still in the headset.
While the demo definitely gave me a promising impression of Fracked, one thing that worries me a bit is comfort. The game has a handful of comfort options, but seems it will rely entirely on smooth locomotion with no teleport. Though there’s plenty of games in which smooth locomotion is perfectly comfortable for me, the Fracked demo got me a bit dizzy. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why, though I suspect that it may actually have more to do with a wonky ‘snap turn’ implementation that rotates the player quickly, instead of instantly, as it should. That may be an easy fix, and we’ve given the feedback directly to nDreams.
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If nothing else, Fracked looks filled with character all its own. The excellent art style, simplified but satisfying gunplay, and grab-based cover system leave a great impression that I hope lasts. As long as the full game can up the action with a compelling story and strong level design, Fracked could deliver a worthwhile experience.
