Magic Leap and Insomniac Games announced a new game, Strangelets, for the Magic Leap One. The game is a follow-up to Insomniac’s previous AR title Seedling, which released last year.
We tried an early version of Insomniac’s previous AR game, Seedling, at Leap Con in October last year. The full version of the game released later that year in December, and according to Insomniac the new AR game Strangelets follows on from Seedling’s story and sees players continue to deal with “the effects of ‘The Schmelling Incident'” from the story of the first game.
The Magic Leap blog also provides a brief description of the gameplay that Magic Leap owners can expect from Strangelets. “With the help of a mysterious companion known only as “Bulby,” Strangelets invites players to search their homes for dimensional rifts, reach inside to rescue strange alien creatures, then care for their collection by using harvested energy from real-world objects.”
The game also supposedly takes real-world time and weather into account to vary the gameplay, and features a story “worthy of retelling.”
Sony recently acquired Insomniac Games and, as such, the announcement for the game suggests Strangelets will be the their last release as an independent studio. Before Stangelets, their most recent release was Stormland, an Oculus-exclusive VR title, which was announced before the acquisition but released after it. Stormland’s release was unaffected by the acquisition, but the studio’s future in AR and VR remains unclear.
Insomniac Games, the studio behind VR games Stormland (2019) and The Unspoken (2017), announced its acquisition by Sony Interactive Entertainment back in August, and while we imagined their last independent project was surely the open-world Rift adventure Stormland, it appears the studio had another title sitting ready in the wings for Magic Leap One called Strangelets.
Strangelets is Insomniac’s second ML One title, which follows December the release of Seedling (2018), a game that puts you in the shoes of a space cadet tasked with repairing a dying galactic ecosystem due to the effects of ‘The Schmelling Incident,’ a catastrophic cosmic event.
Playing in the same universe, strangelets (cute alien creatures) find themselves “trapped in pockets between dimensions,” the studio writes in a Magic Leap blog post.
Here’s how Insomniac describes the game:
With the help of a mysterious companion known only as “Bulby,” Strangelets invites players to search their homes for dimensional rifts, reach inside to rescue strange alien creatures, then care for their collection by using harvested energy from real-world objects. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience that encourages physical movement through multiple rooms, transforming players’ familiar spaces into a playground of discovery and surprise.
“After the launch of Seedling, our small team of spatial computing pioneers were more inspired than ever by the potential of this new platform,” said Nathaniel Bell, Creative Director for Strangelets and Seedling. “We were ready to dive headfirst into our next experimental experience and to continue collaborating with our passionate partners at Magic Leap. Our goal moving forward was to build on lessons learned from Seedling and to venture into new territories of spatial computing not yet experienced by players.”
It will be interesting to see where Insomniac goes from here, and whether it continues to focus on VR/AR, or keeps its main focus on traditional ‘second party’ games for PlayStation. However it goes, Insomniac is one of the most experienced studios in immersive gaming, so we’re hoping for something good for PlayStation 5 and the next iteration of PlayStation VR to say the least.
Insomniac Games will soon no longer be an independent studio thanks to its acquisition by Sony Worldwide Studios. Before that happens the developer released Oculus Rift exclusive Stormland earlier this month. And today the studio has announced another, this time for Magic Leap with Strangelets.
The title is in fact a sequel to 2018’s Seedling, with Insomniac Games taking the lessons learnt from that first experience and expanding them into Strangelets. The story goes that players have to confront the effects of “The Schmelling Incident,” a catastrophic cosmic event that served as the catalyst for Seedling’s story. As such, they’ll find the Incident has caused alien creatures from across the galaxy to become trapped in pockets between dimensions.
So gameplay revolves around finding dimensional rifts, rescuing these alien creatures then looking after them by using harvested energy from real-world objects. As you do so you’ll be able to build a collection of these lovable creatures.
Insomniac Games has created its own proprietary tech for Strangelets, experimenting with news to use spatial computing. Gameplay is affected by a players real-world time and weather as they nurture, grow and customize alien plant life forms.
“After the launch of Seedling, our small team of spatial computing pioneers were more inspired than ever by the potential of this new platform. We were ready to dive headfirst into our next experimental experience and to continue collaborating with our passionate partners at Magic Leap. Our goal moving forward was to build on lessons learned from Seedling and to venture into new territories of spatial computing not yet experienced by players,” said Nathaniel Bell, Creative Director for Strangelets and Seedling in a statement.
Strangelets is the second videogame announced for Magic Leap One this week, the other being detective experience Glimt: The Vanishing at the Grand Starlight Hotelby Resolution Games. But while the latter is still months away from launch, if you own a Magic Leap One device then you can download Strangelets today from Magic Leap World.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Insomniac Games and Magic Leap, especially as the former heads into new territory as a Sony studio.
This is one of the biggest weeks for VR news yet, with two huge but separate stories. For that reason, we’ll have two episodes of The VR Download.
Unlike regular video podcasts, The VR Download is broadcast from a virtual reality studio! Our team are together in a virtual space, giving us many of the benefits of a studio even though we live on different continents.
Episode 7: Wednesday 10:30 am PST
Our Special Guest this week is Mike Daly, the Lead Designer of Stormland! He’ll be joining us for the duration of the show, and at the end we’ll be interviewing him.
Since Valve just announced Half Life: Alyx, its “flagship” VR game, and will be sharing more details on Thursday morning, we’ll be having our first special episode all about this game after those details are revealed.
This won’t follow our normal show structure, and we won’t have a guest. You’ll get our opinions, insights, and hopes about what this game could mean for you and for the VR industry as a whole.
Watch In VR With BigScreen!
Every week, you can watch The VR Download LIVE in virtual reality with an audience of other VR users on any major VR headset (including Oculus Quest and Oculus Go!), via the BigScreen platform.
Click on the image above to subscribe to the event.
Are you looking to pick up one of the biggest VR releases of the month, Insomniac’s AAA open world sci-fi shooter? Make sure your PC is up to scratch.
Stormland is an open world co-op shooter developed by Insomniac Games and funded by Facebook. The game features a vast open world that blends traditional level design with procedural generation. It features crafting and an innovative climbing system.
We gave Stormland 4 stars in our review, calling it “a real achievement“- despite some bugs and issues.
Stormland is impressive, both in its visuals and its scale. It may be the best looking made-for-VR open world title yet. But that accomplishment, and its partial procedural generation, come at a cost.
GPU
Like Asgard’s Wrath, the other big Oculus release of the season, a strong GPU is recommended for Stormland. While it will run on the regular Oculus recommended specs, you’ll have to keep the graphics settings fairly low.
While playing on an RTX 2070, we found we needed to use High settings rather than Ultra.
CPU
CPU is where Stormland’s requirements go noticeably beyond Asgard’s Wrath. Stormland’s large open worlds filled with enemies and interactables will tax even the strongest CPU.
These processing requirements may contribute to some of the AI issues we noticed in our review. Often you’ll see only some enemies notice and fire at you. It is just speculation, but we wonder if the game may be deciding to only process some enemies in order to maintain framerate.
With Oculus Link slated to release this month, we’ll be curious to see how Stormland performs on Quest. The lower refresh rate and resolution should make it easier, but the overhead of video encoding may prove problematic.
Ready to head to the clouds and take on The Tempest? Not without our handy Stormland tips, you’re not.
Insomniac’s latest VR game offers a sprawling mass of islands to shoot your way across. But there are several elements to Stormland that make it a bit more complex than your average first-person shooter. So settle into our Stormland tips guide before you head out into the wilds and make sure you’re prepared.
11 Stormland Tips To Get You Started
Be Agile
Stormland basically makes you a cross between Iron Man and Captain America; you can perform athletic miracles like throwing yourself up cliff faces at lighting speed, but also hover in the air and throw yourself across chasms. Treat combat as a fluid, agile experience; don’t get bogged down on the floor all the time. Use verticality to your advantage. One thing you should try instead of jumping with the standard button is to grab hold of the ground and use it to fling yourself upwards. It gives you great mobility.
Don’t Start A Run On Monday
Stormland is a live game; its world resets every week and you start your mission to take down Terminus from scratch. This happens on Tuesdays at 9:00 AM EDT/6:00 AM PDT/2:00 PM GMT. From that point, wherever you are in a run, you’ll need to start from the bottom all over again. It’s a good idea, not to start a run close to that time unless you intend to see it through in one sitting. You’ll keep your resources but you’ll have wasted a lot of time.
Get Into The Habit Of Dismantling Most Guns
Stormland doesn’t have a reload function. Once a gun is out of ammo, it’s useless to you if you’re out in the field. But don’t just drop it on the ground; that’s wasteful and you risk accidentally putting an empty gun in one of your holster slots. Instead, get into the rhythm of grabbing your empty gun from the top with your free hand and then pulling it apart. Doing this nets you some alloys you can later spend on new weapons, refills and upgrades. Not much, mind you, but it’s a greener way to discard of your unwanted weapons.
…But Keep Your Rare Finds For Later
That said, you shouldn’t necessarily dispose of every gun as soon as it’s empty. You can refill its ammo, but only back at a workbench (and for a cost). This is a bit of a hassle and, nine times out of ten, it’s better to just get rid of it and find a new one. But if you find an especially helpful gun, maybe one that’s a level or two up from what you have available to purchase, it might be worth keeping hold of it and seeking out a bench.
Seek Out Checkpoints Before Getting Into A Fight
Chances are, if you’re about to get into a big fight, there’s a checkpoint nearby. They’re circular platforms attached to a small tower, often located near a workbench. It’s worth dotting around the island to find one if you’re about to get into a big fight, otherwise you risk respawning on the other side of the map if you die. Not that it takes you long to return to the same point, but it saves a bit of time.
Unlock Multiplayer As Soon As Possible
Oddly enough, the multiplayer unlock is actually a side quest in Stormland, though you’ll likely end up doing it very early on. The mission is called Lost Operator and it opens up after doing one of the first main missions in the story. You can find out more about how to unlock it in our guide here. Once you have it, you can enjoy all of Stormland with a friend and, frankly, it’s much better that way.
Unlock Upgrade Nodes As Soon As Possible
In Stormland, the upgrades you attach to your body are only temporary. But unlocking additional nodes to attach more upgrades is permanent. Unlocking nodes costs the same currency as usual upgrades — a mix of alloys and Aeon Buds — so it’s best to get the heavy spending on unlocks out of the way early so you never have to think about it again. If you follow any of our Stormland tips, make it this one!
Choose Your Upgrades VERY Carefully; You’ll Have Them For A Week
As you probably know by now, Stormland resets itself every week. The world is remixed, objectives are refreshed and new conditions are established. You’ll also have all your upgrades stripped back and you’ll need to purchase them again. Once they’re attached, though, you can’t take them off until the next cycle. So make sure to pick ones that are the most helpful, especially given the conditions of that week’s cycle. You don’t want to spend all your slots on features you won’t use.
Harvest Everything
Stormland’s resources system features two main currencies: alloys and Aeon Buds. Alloys can be used to buy weapons and upgrades, while buds are primarily reserved for character upgrades. Harvesting each, however, is ridiculously simple. Alloys come from metal deposits growing out of the ground, crates and dismantling weapons. Buds come from crushing fruit growing on trees and finding rare flowers. You can also get scores of both from grabbing the seed-like object at the top of the heavily guarded towers in each layer of the Stormland. But, basically, you are never far from either of these two things, and you should gather them as often as possible. Use your wrist-mounted gun to avoid wasting ammo when harvesting.
Get Four Weapon Slots As Soon As Possible But Hold Five Guns
You start off the game with just two weapon slots. Pretty soon on, you can unlock a permanent third over-the-shoulder slot at a workbench. But you can also purchase a fourth slot every week from an upgrade terminal. Given Stormland’s ammo situation, it’s far better to stockpile fully-loaded weapons than it is to scrounge leftovers from dead enemies. Having four weapon slots filled leaves you with the least chance of being caught in the middle of combat without any ammo. Better yet, take a fifth weapon in your hand; you’ll still be able to climb up structures but you might need to put it down to do some two-handed interactions.
Switch Between Dual-Wielding And Two-Handed Guns Appropriately
Perhaps my favorite feature in Stormland is that any gun can be held with either one or two hands. If you choose the latter option, your weapon morphs to accommodate your free hand. This makes them more accurate and, frankly, it feels cooler. But you need to choose the right times for both two-handed and dual-wielding combat. Two-handed is for long-range, cover-based shootouts. Dual-wielding is when you’re standing right in front of an enemy and want them dead ASAP. Just make sure you’re choosing the right setup for the right situation.
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Stormland is available from today on the Oculus Store. Got any more Stormland tips? Let us know some in the comments below!
Insomniac Games’ latest VR title, Stormland, is a great single-player shooter, but it’s even better in two-player co-op.
But how do you access the game’s co-op mode? If you’ve picked up the game today, you might notice the lack of multiplayer options in the variety of menus. No need to panic; this isn’t a missing feature. It just means you haven’t got far enough into the game yet.
How To Play Co-Op In Stormland
You actually need to play around 60 minutes of Stormland on your own before you can play in co-op. Early on in the game, you’ll travel to the Cycad Region, the first collection of islands that make the Stormland. One of the first main missions in the game is to respond to a distress beacon from a possible ally. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to unlock co-op.
To do this, you need to complete the Lost Operator side-mission. It’s a pretty simple mission that eventually leads you to an island with a crashed ship. Inside the ruins, you’ll find a tiny chip that, once installed, gives you access to the multiplayer menu.
How Co-Op In Stormland Works
From this point on, you can press the multiplayer button, located next to your Objectives and Index options on your wrist. You’ll then either be able to join a game, or invite another player to yours. You can access your Oculus friends list to send out specific invites, or link up with strangers.
Stormland is split into two main parts. There’s the opening story-driven segment, which lasts about four hours, and then the larger, evolving element where you work your way up the Stormland to Terminus. If you join another player in the same section as you, you won’t have any issues. But, if a player that’s completed the story section joins someone in it, they’ll be warned that none of their progress will be saved.
It’s essentially a means of helping others get through the story segment as smoothly as possible. Once they’re done, you’ll be free to tackle Stormland’s ever-evolving landscape together.
Stormland, the VR open-world adventure from Insomniac Games, is set to launch tomorrow. The studio isn’t only offering the chance to unlock virtual collectibles for display in your Oculus Home when you actually play the game (a function made available to Rift platform titles some time ago), but in a bid to coax pre-orders, Insomniac is also offering exclusive collectibles to anyone who plonks down the $40 now before it goes live, raising a few important questions: ‘Are VR digital pre-order collectibles a thing now?’ and ‘Why the hell should I care?’
Are VR Pre-order Collectibles a Thing Now?
Yes. Virtual pre-order collectibles exist now, ergo they are a thing; however it’s a bit more complicated than that. What purpose do they really serve? And how are they different from your bog standard virtual items? I’ll get to that, but first a bit of recent history for the sake of context:
In 2017, Oculus made Home customizable for all users as a part of its Rift Core 2.0 update, which represented a big shift for the Rift platform towards a more user-centric space. Before then, Oculus Home was basically a 3D splash page for the Oculus Store and game library, but as Home became something of an item-driven social space, it also made us all unwitting digital hoarders in simulacra, as we weren’t simply given a full set of stuff to arrange and play with, but were rather given an intentionally limited set of items that would then slowly expand over time.
Users were, as they are now, treated to a magical gift box delivered to their Home space each week for simply returning to play a Rift game, the contents of which hold three random items; furniture, toys, and decorations aplenty.
Oculus Home circa 2016 | Image courtesy Oculus
At the time, Oculus was no doubt experimenting in how to best drive user engagement, which is one of the biggest factors that VR has yet to nail—hence the boxes and slow drip of Home items to try and coax players back into their headset. Look no further than any of the largely depopulated multiplayer-only VR games launched in 2019 and you’ll know first-hand why nailing engagement is so critical.
That said, it’s unclear whether Home’s infinite dole of boxes really does bring enough people back for their weekly dopamine drip in the form of a gift unboxing; I have a pile that stretches back four months.
Example of an Oculus Home space | Image courtesy Oculus
Eventually some unique collectibles were offered up though, such as an Oculus Rift DK1 owner statue indicating that you were an original Kickstarter backer (among other things), but it wasn’t until Oculus opened Home up to developers in October of last year that the ‘achievement’ model was fully realized. Achievements were no longer generic virtual plaques to hang on your virtual walls; studios had the option to create custom models and trophies representing achievements which you could proudly display—things with real workmanship that looked just like what you’d find in the game.
Side note: in addition to free virtual merch, users can import objects created in Oculus Medium, the platform’s art app, and can now also import .glb object files of any item you can create yourself, buy, or scrounge from the Internet, making Oculus Home more open in it customizabilty.
With the entrance of Asgard’s Wrath (2019) last month, the Rift-exclusive melee adventure game from Sanzaru Games, it seems pre-order collectibles are definitely a thing now, and depending on how well Stormland does, we may be seeing even more.
Image courtesy Sanzaru Games
Asgard’s Wrath offered up a special shield and sword for use in-game, while Stormland is serving up five character model statues for your Oculus Home; not anything to write home about, but interesting to see how Oculus, the publisher of both games, is treating its thoroughbred ‘AAA’ titles in lieu of a pre-order discount or some physical bonus items.
What is clear: Oculus is experimenting again to see how it can squeeze greater user engagement out of its likely now stable pool of PC VR headset users, and whether the cheap and cheerful digital rewards will tip the scales in pre-order numbers.
Who the Hell Cares? (for now)
I’ll admit it. I don’t pre-order games on principle, partly because I don’t think it makes any real sense as a consumer (are they going to run out of digital downloads?), and partly because I don’t care about what I see as contrived extras; the same goes for Special Editions.
When it comes to physical bonuses, I simply don’t have the need for more decorative junk in my life anymore—no more than I need used newspapers or mass-print paperbacks that would be better served as a few megabytes living on my Kindle. I don’t want any more plastic and ceramic jetsam clogging up the precious space in my apartment, which is already reserved for flailing around motion controllers.
Image courtesy Insomniac Games
Although I’m a proud Apex Legends no-skin, I really don’t mind digital collectibles as long as they add value to my experience. However outside of the multiple hours of virtual interior design to make my perfect Home back when they both Oculus Home and SteamVR Home initially launched, I just can’t say I’m that interested in either any more past the initial honeymoon phase. In fact, I’m not social at all through platform specific stuff, as I go directly to social apps like Bigscreen, VR Chat, or Rec Room.
So who, for now, ultimately cares about all this pre-order nonsense? Without a doubt it’s the platform holders and game studios that use pre-order numbers as some measure of success. They know everyone isn’t pre-ordering the game, in fact there may only be a small fraction of people who do, but it points to wider trends in adoption, and also gives them valuable data on how marketing strategies work on their target audience. Digital goods are also basically free in terms of developer man-hours, especially if they’re based on game assets, so it only makes sense to throw out a collectible or two for the fanatics among us. That’s the boilerplate behind it, although there’s something else beneath the surface.
Something as trivial as a Home decoration pre-order bonuses actually represent a pretty surprising fusion of the physical and digital that you wouldn’t wholly see in non-VR games. Rare collectibles like avatar skins and trophies are a potent driver in flatscreen games, and there’s nothing stopping that from being true for VR too. There’s something even more personal about holding something in your (virtual) hands though, knowing that it’s rare, and putting it on display in a space that feels like its yours.
In the end, I cynically believe I’m not being manipulated correctly; I don’t care about Home now because it’s not the hub I want it to be. But as Facebook puts their Horizons app front and center, and we see yet more entanglement between Oculus and Facebook-brand social spaces, you can bet the company will be looking into more ways to turn the pre-order dial up to 11 as they hone in on how to craft a social environment that truly lets you flaunt your rare collectibles, skins, and yes, even hats.
Brimming with features, boasting infinite hours of play, and unrivaled in visual polish, Stormland is as slick a VR shooter as you can find right now.
It’s a burgeoning game that, at its best, glides straight over the competition’s head before sliding into a slipstream and leaving them in the dust. It is the yard stick to show you how far the VR FPS has come in the past three years, but also how much further it has to go.
Insomniac’s latest is easily its most ambitious VR project yet. As such, there’s a lot to explain here. Stormland offers a set of sprawling open-world maps, dotted with tiny, lavishly-produced islands you reach by skimming across an ocean of clouds. You embody a robot that takes the fight to a hostile army of machines known as The Tempest which often guard objective markers with a watchful eye. Your first four or five hours with the game will be spent learning the ropes, upgrading your body to get into fighting shape and establishing a base of operations as you move up through three layers of the Stormland, each harder than the last.
After that, though, the game shows its true colors.
See, Stormland isn’t your traditional story-driven shooter. After that extended tutorial the world essentially resets itself and you have to make your way back to the top to take down a facility called Terminus. This time, however, you’ll be given a different set of missions and side-objectives, each layer of the Stormland is redesigned and, more importantly, you have a time limit. Every time you take down Terminus you can start over with harder enemies and better equipment. But every week on Tuesday morning around 9AM PT, the Stormland resets and you’ll find a new(ish) world to explore and shoot your way through, often with new conditions that might make enemies tougher or greater in number. Not only that, but you’ll be able to respec your upgrades each cycle.
In many cases, this would sound like endgame content, but it’s important to make the distinction that, in Stormland, this is the game. Insomniac’s admittedly ingenious remedy for the trials of making a meaty VR shooter isn’t to pad out an exhaustive campaign but instead regularly revitalize a more manageable set of levels. You’ll see the same assets and such used again, but the idea is to make Stormland a persistent go-to for VR action either for yourself or, preferably, with a friend in two-player co-op. Dry spell in VR releases one week? Not to worry; there’s always Stormland.
This is a sprawling shooter, but a recycled one. You’ll have seen much of what it has to offer visually within those opening hours; it’s just a case of approaching it all again in ever-varying shades. It is, by its very nature, a repetitive game, driven by your own desire to upgrade and expand. But that cycle has rhythm; a beaten path so moreish to follow and a set of mechanics so meticulously refined that the tedium of reliving the same game never really sets in, especially when playing with friends.
Though you can trace much of its design back to traditional console games (including a surprising set of similarities to Insomniac’s Ratchet and Clank series), everything in the game has been thoroughly sifted through a VR filter with painstaking scrutiny to allow almost unprecedented freedom in how you approach most objectives. Each weapon for example, can be held in one hand but, to make them more accurate, they’ll extend their grip if you grab it with your free hand. It’s a mostly seamless transition that makes for one of the smoothest shooting experiences I’ve had in VR.
Comfort
Stormland is an undeniably intense VR experience with fast smooth locomotion, gliding and flying. It will be a lot for people prone to simulation sickness to stomach, but there are options to offset this. You can add a vignette, change the speed at which you start walking and change turn styles. There’s no getting around the smooth locomotion, though, so keep that in mind before you make a purchase.
Crucially, though, every island allows you to clamber all over with VR’s tried and true climbing mechanics and, when in the air, you’re able to slowly descend based on the direction in which you’re pointing your arms. This is truly a 360-degree shooter, allowing you to attack from any angle you see fit. Sometimes I’d be hoisting myself up over a ledge with one hand to take pot shots with the other. Sometimes I’d be raining down death from above as I hovered overhead. The versatility on offer here is nothing short of impressive and it often makes for empowering play. You may essentially be a Terminator, but I kept coming back to Rambo when considering how to approach the next encounter.
The trouble is that the game’s enemies struggle to keep pace with your military superiority. Easily Stormland’s biggest problem is the enemy AI, which wrestles with its open-world ambitions throughout. I’d fairly consistently see sentries trying to walk through walls or, more worryingly, appear absolutely oblivious to my presence when the guard standing right next to them was opening fire. There’s no faster way to break immersion than to see what’s meant to be a threat stumbling over so often, and it can rob a lot of encounters of the cinematic intensity Insomniac was clearly gunning for. It’s a shame given the lengths the developer has gone to maintain immersion elsewhere.
In fact, every interaction in Stormland has been approached to reduce VR’s tinge of awkwardness, at least as much as possible. Activating menus and maps on your left hand is wonderfully intuitive thanks to a Lone Echo-style holographic UI. Need to set a waypoint on your 3D map? Just… touch that point and you’re good to go. What about the oh-so-sticky VR shooter pain point that is reloading? Simple; Stormland doesn’t have it. Once a gun is out of ammo, you get rid of it (or dismantle it for upgrade parts), pick up another from a dead enemy, and let loose.
Gliding and hovering over the clouds, meanwhile, has a Superman-style (and only slightly humiliating) satisfaction to it when you raise your arms. If Stormland’s lush jungles and erratic wildlife remind you of Nintendo’s Metroid series (or, more specifically, Metroid Prime), then surfing on clouds to jet between islands carries the breezy enlightenment of sailing the oceans in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
For all it’s many triumphs, though, Stormland still has plenty of reminders of just how hard it is to make a fully immersive, AAA shooter. While the controls remove much of the overwhelming fluster of other VR games, they’re not perfect. I’d get irritated by the constant vibrating of my touch controllers when my hands approached my weapon holsters even if I was just dropping my arms. To make matters worse, I’d often go to grab my guns, but my hands instead grabbed the ground as if I were climbing a wall. When I wanted to hold a minigun with both hands, there was a 50/50 chance I’d accidentally grab the end of the gun to dismantle it instead. When you’re experiencing these hiccups in the heat of combat, Stormland can be a really frustrating game.
I also had problems completing objectives in the game once I entered the main component. Sometimes I’d get missions I was told would be marked on my map, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. At other points I had, as far as I could tell, done what an objective was asking me to do, but couldn’t seem to progress. It wasn’t until I quit out of the game and returned that these issues fixed themselves. This caused some real road bumps that Insomniac needs to either fix, or provide clearer direction with going forward.
This isn’t as remarkably trouble-free an experience as, say, Asgard’s Wrath, then. But Stormland only runs into these issues because of its incredibly ambitious premise. When it’s not falling over itself, it is an utter delight to play.
There’s plenty more work to be done, then, but when looking back at the shape of VR shooters over the past three years, Stormland shines as a real achievement. Many of its dizzying strands of design are dreamlike in delivery, from the seamless UI and scaling cliff faces with Olympic proficiency to effortlessly surfing its bed of clouds or unloading a rattling barrage of bullets on enemies. Its stumbles are as obvious as they are numerous, but it picks itself back up again time after time. The seas of VR shooter development are still stormy, but Stormland sails them with aplomb.
Final Score: 4/5 Stars | Really Good
Note: We are changing our review scheme to a five-point scale, without half points, rather than a 10-point scale with half points like before. All past reviews will stay as they are, but all future reviews (that includes games, non-game apps, hardware, and more) will all be reviewed using the same five-point star rating scale. Expect the visual representation of this new scale to change with a more attractive style soon.
Insomniac Games is one of the gaming industry’s longest-running, most respected and all-round best developers.
From early hits like Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet and Clank leading all the way up to 2018’s blockbuster Spider-Man game, the studio’s bound to have made something you played and loved.
But did you know Insomniac made a bunch of great VR games too?
In fact, Insomniac was one of the first developers Oculus partnered with under its Studios banner. Since then the developer released a total of four Oculus Rift exclusives in the past three and a half years. That’s no small feat. Take a trip back in time now as we revisit every Insomniac VR game we’ve reviewed so far. The team’s now owned by Sony, but we hope to see more VR from them going forward.
Insomniac’s VR debut was a thrilling third-person action game that mixed elements of the Uncharted series, Dead Space and Lovecraftian horror. Played with a gamepad, you set out on an arctic expedition in search of lost friends. It’s not long before you descend into madness and fight for survival against horrifying monsters.
What we said: ‘Edge of Nowhere is an uncomfortably personal and unnerving horror experience unlike anything else I’ve seen inside of a VR headset. This is an Oculus Rift exclusive that is not to be missed.’
While Edge of Nowhere marked a great start for Insomniac and VR, Feral Rites was a less than successful follow-up. It’s a third-person brawler in which you can transform into monsters and lay a massive beatdown. Sluggish pacing and boring gameplay made for a forgettable experience, though, and the game’s price infamously plummeted upon release.
What we said: ‘Feral Rites isn’t necessarily a bad game, but it’s also well below the usual standard of excellence one expects from Insomniac. Fans of brawlers may want to pick this one up to experience their favorite genre in VR, but everyone else should feel safe giving it a pass.’
Getting back into fighting shape, The Unspoken is Insomniac’s first VR game to utilize the Oculus Touch controllers. It delivers on the spell-binding promise of multiplayer wizard battles, using gesture-based inputs to deliver spectacular showdowns. We loved its multiplayer features but, since then, Insomniac has gone back and added a deeper single-player component too.
What we said: ‘This is a title that could only ever work in a VR headset and it succeeds because of, rather than in spite of, the unique capabilities of its platform. The Unspoken represents everything that is fun about playing games in VR and has all the makings of an iconic title we will still be talking about for years to come.’
Insomniac’s first new VR game in years is easily its biggest and most ambitious to date (and the first to be reviewed on our new 5 Star scoring system). This is an evolving first-person shooter in which you surf the clouds between interconnected islands, gunning down enemies in either single-player or two-player co-op. It’s often breathtaking to play, but not without issue.
What we said: ‘Many of its dizzying strands of design are dreamlike in delivery, from the seamless UI and scaling cliff faces with Olympic proficiency to effortlessly surfing its bed of clouds or unloading a rattling barrage of bullets on enemies. Its stumbles are as obvious as they are numerous, but it picks itself back up again time after time. The seas of VR shooter development are still stormy, but Stormland sails them with aplomb.’
