Fracked, the upcoming shooter from Phantom: Covert Ops (2020) developer nDreams, is officially set to release on August 20th, arriving exclusively on PSVR. Can’t wait to strap on those skis and jump in? Well, there’s a free demo is now available on the PlayStation Store.
The Fracked demo is said to contain over 30 minutes of gameplay which lets you go hands-on with the game’s ski-based locomotion method alongside its “no-rails” movement system, which lets you traverse the game on foot, by climbing obstacles, and physically grabbing cover to hide behind.
We’ve got an early preview of the Fracked demo, and we were notably impressed with its colorful, well-executed art style and its satisfyingly tactile combat. Road to VR’s Ben Lang says he especially like how Fracked mixes things up with climbing, zip-lining, and some other 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,” Lang says.
Alongside the Standard Edition of the game ($30), the studio is also offering up pre-orders for a Deluxe Edition ($35). That gets you get a 72-hour head start with the game before it launches on August 20th, as well as Earth Defender equipment skins, a digital artbook, and digital soundtrack.
Fracked is designed exclusively for PSVR and requires PS Move controllers. It’s said to work on PS4, but also offers an enhanced version for PS5. The studio says the PS5 version includes uncapped dynamic resolution, improved framerate, resolution, and loading times over the PS4 version.
We speak to Audio Manager Matt Simmonds and Audio Designer Callum Bigden about creating the making the music and audio behind PSVR exclusive, Fracked.
When you’re envisioning a soundtrack for a game like Fracked, does the fact it’s in VR influence your work at all?
Matt Simmonds: Yes, always. Designing audio for VR brings with it a lot of opportunities for detail work in locations and a real sense of space. Fracked has a much more full-on action movie approach to audio than our previous work on Phantom, but we still focused on grounding the player in the environments and giving them a lot of spatial awareness during combat.
What did you want to achieve with Fracked’s music and what were some of the influences?
MS: The soundtrack style is based on the mixtapes that Rosalez (the helicopter pilot) plays on her ferrying trips around the complex. She has quite eclectic style choices, from house to ’90s rock to ’50s orchestral soundtracks, fused together as the player progresses through the maps. We decided early on to not always tie the action happening to the soundtrack, sometimes dropping out to more ambient pieces or remixing earlier work in for narrative references. Using the mixtape idea gave us quite a lot of scope for this.
When it comes to sound effects, did you go for traditional, realistic gun sounds etc or did the comic book art style influence you to go in other directions?
Callum Bigden: I don’t think the art style alone really influenced any stylisation for the audio. It was a conscious decision to keep to a soundscape heavily based in the real-world, whilst leaning towards the hyper-realism of blockbuster action movies like the game as a whole. So individual elements usually started off with thoughts like: “this is what it SHOULD sound like, how can we make it bigger?” I think in the end this has helped create quite a unique approach to the games overall audio.
We wanted to make the player feel at the centre of everything – whether they’re in combat or participating in a game sequence, and it just made sense to exaggerate certain elements. It was important that everything feels satisfying and punchy – guns that feel powerful and explosions that feel deadly if you are nearby but rewarding if you cause them. Combat can get hectic very quickly, with lots of sounds happening all around the player, but that is certainly part of the intensity we wanted to create. But there is still a lot of spatial info and narrative details that we have to pass onto the players, so that intensity has to be very carefully managed.
Were there any big challenges designing the audio around VR like this?
CB: The biggest challenge was getting all these often-competing big audio elements to sit alongside each other nicely in the game. You have these intense environments with broken structures, mixed in with plenty of machine guns around large set pieces – all while keeping the player informed on plot and game states. It has certainly created a very “full” soundscape, and with a lot of elements wanting all the players attention the overall sound mixing has become much more of a focus. It became heavily about how each sound event interacts with one another, more so than on any project I’ve worked on before. Take the music for example, its big and heavy, and driving the player through the levels.
Throw in combat on top – which in itself is also big and heavy – and now all the gunfire, enemies, environment and dialogue has to sit nicely with one another in the soundscape. There has been a sweet spot to aim for while mixing, and although it took quite a bit of reworking to get there, the result is a brash and commanding soundscape that we feel this genre in VR deserves. It’s been a fun process to bring this kind of audio into a VR game, and we have learnt a lot from this style of game to take forward into other projects.
Stay tuned for more Fracked content coming up on Upload Access!
The commercial VR entertainment is charted by industry specialist Kevin Williams, in his latest Virtual Arena column – and in this second part of his feature and he look’s at the launch of Far Cry VR: Dive Into Insanity and the free-roaming VR experience created around the Ubisoft property for commercial entertainment.
In this second part of our regular coverage, and we continue to look at the new investment seen in the commercial entertainment market, from a London perspective. Following the global lockdown in business, a new thirst for location-based entertainment (LBE) can be charted internationally.
The investment in the standard VR arcade has grown towards a greater variety of experiences on offer (as was seen in the previous part of our coverage). The addition of free-roaming backpack PC VR has mushroomed, the latest phase of the deployment of this commercial entertainment into the market. Back in 2019, we charted in our column the appearance in London of a facility that was dedicated to offering Arena Scale VR through their purpose-built venue – MeetspaceVR located at Wembley’s BoxPark.
With the Zero Latency VR free-roaming installation, we have revisited the site and seen the growth of the business, including a VR escape room component, all part of continued investment. We returned as one of the first LBE VR sites we visited recommences business. Especially as the company has installed the latest free-roaming title and marketed a major development in the cross over between commercial and consumer IP.
The Ubisoft property Far Cry has been given the free-roaming multiple player VR experience, in a partnership with Zero Latency VR, and one of the first locations to install this new game was MeetspaceVR. The game can run eight players through the virtual environment, but due to capacity conditions following COVID is currently only operating six player games. The hardware in operation is the latest Gen2 version of the Zero Latency VR platform with HP Reverb G2 headsets and the latest PC backpacks and force-feedback weapons: totally immersing the players in a high-end VR experience.
With Far Cry VR the experience of the video game universe has been condensed into several compelling sequences as the players work as a team to escape the murderous clutches of their captor and his soldiers. To achieve the needed level of immersion and storytelling, Ubisoft and Zero Latency VR turned to UK game developers nDreams. Known for their successful development of Phantom: Covert Ops and other titles – the company’s pedigree is allowed to shine on the powerful high-end immersive hardware used in this free-roaming experience, and the AAA quality of the game is evident.
Designed for team play, with hordes of enemy, appearing in cover-based shooting sections, where the players must watch each other’s backs, and pick off attackers, up-close, or at distance. This is achieved by giving the player the ability to swap between an assault weapon and a crossbow for distance shooting. But the action has been spaced out to allow players time to catch their breath, as well as pulled into a drug-fuelled experience in the caves of the tropical island that has become their prison – pricing at £29.99 per player for the multi-player experiences.
After a 30-minute team-based game, the player is totally immersed in the experience, and the action proved a real workout, wielding the gun and blasting attackers with a heart-pounding final boss battle. Having tried all the Zero Latency VR game experiences since they launched, this game is the most refined, and feels like a AAA title – but also has learned from much of the experience the company has gained rolling out their platform across over 50-venues internationally.
This is the latest move by Ubisoft towards cross-platform promotion of their IP in the commercial entertainment space – with the ‘Virtual Rabbids’ VR amusement platform, the Ubisoft Escape Game VR experiences and now the license for free-roaming adaptation of their properties. It is expected that this will not be the last time we will see major game and movie properties appearing in LBE VR venues, and we expect to announce, another major property makes its way to the commercial entertainment scene in the coming weeks.
Fracked looks a little different to most VR games.
nDreams’ upcoming first-person shooter eschews realism, instead gunning for a bombastic comic book style. Snowy mountain vistas are bathed in vibrant colors, weapons are huge, chunky lego bricks and parasitic enemies are a gooey purple. It’s one of those games that really feels like it’s coming at the end of a platform generation, understanding the strengths and limitations of PSVR’s graphical capabilities and producing something striking.
It’s also, as you’ll see, incredibly close to the concept art for the game. But Fracked didn’t always look like this as we discovered speaking to Kevin Martin, Senior Principal Artist on the game about envisioning the game’s art style.
“Early concept art for Fracked was conceived in a more realistic art style,” Martin reveals. “As work on the demo progressed and we prototyped the ski gameplay and first-person shooter encounters it became obvious this wasn’t a gritty, realistic game. It was frantic, fast and fun. People would finish playing it with a smile on their face. We realised that a game like this needed an art style to match. That was a really interesting creative challenge and opportunity for the art team.”
Of course, so much VR is about realism, and convincing players they’ve stepped into another reality. Doesn’t this approach conflict with that? “VR games have some parallels with traditional first-person games where there is a rich variety of art styles on offer,” Martin continues. “This gives you some confidence that anything can work. However, the VR perspective and experience is more immersive, more like reality. Working like this makes you think about gaming as an unfolding sensory experience. As you move through the world and interact with it, what is revealed, what is around the next corner? Unconstrained by realism, how far do you want to push the visual experience.”
But, by switching up the art in the early stage, Fracked’s art team found itself in an interesting position. Usually, when you envision a game’s levels through concept art, your end product is going to look dramatically different. An Uncharted game starts out looking like an oil painting on paper and then, over the course of the next few years, turns into near-photoreal in a 3D space. Fracked, meanwhile, looks pretty much exactly like that initial work.
“There was a transition early on in production where we decided to stop reinterpreting the expressive, vibrant concept art,” Martin says. “The goal was to work like concept artists in 3D. In other words, can you make the player feel that they are running, climbing, and skiing through the concept art. We started literally painting the world, the characters and weapons in broad brush strokes.”
This approach did come with challenges, though. Martin says he had to resist the urge to add in obsessive details to the game’s environments and models, and instead rely on principle art theories. “The elements are simple but ideally, when they combine, you have the kind of art that gamers like and want to experience for themselves,” he says.
But it also has its fair share of opportunities for design. Colors are more expressive in Fracked – the purple color of enemies is reflected in areas where you can expect combat, and there’s strong use of a striking yellow that Martin says helps you read the environment for enemies, climbable surfaces, interactions and goals.
“On foot locations are strongly coloured to make the arctic landscape feel dangerous and exciting – emotions that reflect the cover shooter gameplay,” Martin says. “To punctuate the colour palettes of those on foot locations, the ski slopes are made up of epic mountains and oppressive industrial buildings – all painted in broad black and white brush strokes that you traverse through at high speed.”
Expect a bit of a visual treat for your headset, then. Fracked hits PSVR later this summer. We’ll have plenty more from the game during our Upload Access spotlight, including new gameplay footage next week and a deep dive into the game’s locomotion system. Make sure not to miss our interview with Creative Director Steve Watt, too.
Fracked is our Upload Access game of the month! We’re kicking things off with a chat with nDreams creative director, Steve Watt.
Genre aside, Fracked is the exact opposite of what you’d expect from nDreams after last year’s Phantom: Covert Ops. That Oculus exclusive was a tense, realistic stealth experience with smart movement, immersive weapon handling and a gritty seriousness to its visual palette. My recent demo of Fracked, meanwhile, opens with a downhill ski chase, an avalanche right on your tail and an Olympic-level jump waiting at the bottom. And that’s all before you’re thrust into explosive run-and-gun combat high up in the mountains with soldiers possessed by alien parasites in a vibrant world pulled straight out of a comic book.
So yes, it’s a different kettle of fish. Like Die Hard, creative director Steve Watt reckons, just throw in some purple-skinned, screeching enemies that want to blow you up for good measure.
“When I first heard about VR, I wanted to be an action hero in the movies, and I thought VR would actually give you that experience,” Watt tells me. “When I think of action-adventure games, I think of Tomb Raider and Uncharted, and I think about what it would actually be like to be that character.”
And that pretty much gets to the heart of Fracked. What we’ve seen of the title so far feels reminiscent of an explosive James Bond action sequence sprinkled with setpieces that sometimes feel like direct nods to its gaming inspirations. You might’ve seen our Upload VR Showcase gameplay segment, which ended with a scene that would be familiar to any Uncharted fan.
But making a VR game that aspires to those explosive heights isn’t easy. Of course it isn’t — making any game isn’t easy — but Fracked also wants to find a path through the minefield of VR comfort options that others employ, and then it wants to dash directly through that path head-first. That’s somewhere only a few single-player shooters have gone so far; even Sony’s own Blood & Truth (the VR game Fracked feels more comparable to) regulated player movement, but this gives players full freedom of movement at any time.
“With Phantom, we really cared about the one-to-one experience of the canoeing, and I think other traversal methods was a big inspiration [here],” Watt says. “So we knew climbing worked really well in VR and also we’d created a skiing demo, and playing that skiing demo became so moreish.”
And that’s Fracked’s core loop right there: running, climbing and skiing. The latter two will help break up the game’s on-foot sections, but nDreams wants to keep its foot on the pedal throughout. In fact, it names its brand of quick-footed shooting ‘run, gun and cover’, referencing the importance of pushing the offensive and then, when you’re on the backfoot, quickly finding a safe spot to duck behind but physically grabbing onto it and pulling yourself to safety.
“This is a big part of the innovation in this game – run, gun and cover, two things that normally conflict with each other,” Watt explains. “It’s very much a run out there and shoot the AI […] and then what we saw as you were playing it was, when you start to become overwhelmed, you intuitively grab the cover and start to go for the respite and you start to heal.”
To maintain this speed, nDreams wants to streamline the experience to some extent. Remember last week when we spoke about Sniper Elite’s labored weapon reloading or, heck, even Phantom’s arsenal of stealthy but tricky firearms? You won’t see any of that here. When you need to reload, for example, the magazine just appears, hovering below the gun, ready for you to push in place and get back in the action.
“We knew that we didn’t want the player to start to get all sort of faffy with the gun […] a big thing we didn’t want to do was dual-wielding because that actually fights with the accessibility and that fights with the fast-paced action we wanted to deliver,” Watt says.
Another ‘faffy’ aspect of VR can be comfort. As you’ve no doubt heard time and again, it’s vitally important to making sure games can be experienced by as many people as possible. And Fracked isn’t ignorant of that, but it’s also more trusting that players be fine with its breakneck battles than it is actively making sure they will be. To that extent, Watt points to features like the grab-based cover system, which he says “anchors” players in environments more naturally, or the importance of keeping players focused on specific objectives. Watt likens that to a little like keeping your eye on the horizon on a boat. “There were quite a lot of constraints or considerations about making it fast-paced for the comfort,” he says. “In a kind of way, if we knew we could solve that, then we knew we were onto a game that the audience was expecting.”
Of course, audiences expect a lot, and nDreams is bullish on the idea of delivering a console-quality shooter with Fracked. Watt says the game has “traditional campaign length” with evolving gameplay strategies and a story with strong characters. In that sense, Watt hopes Fracked will rub shoulders with some gaming greats. “I think of it sort of similar to a first-party title,” he says, “where you make blueprints for other games to build off. And so I want people to look at this game and go “Wow, you really can make super fun games in VR.”
“To me, it’s not about satisfying the VR audience, it’s about satisfying the gaming VR audience and showing the gamers “Actually, come to VR and see the different experiences you can have and how you can have your traditional mechanics suddenly disrupted or enhanced by using VR.””
We’ll have a lot more from Fracked and nDreams over the course of July. Keep an eye out for chats about the game’s art and music, a look back at nDreams’ history and growth and more. We’ll have a full schedule for you very soon.
Every weekend VRFocus gathers together vacancies from across the virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industry, in locations around the globe to help make finding that ideal job easier. Below is a selection of roles that are currently accepting applications across a number of disciplines, all within departments and companies that focus on immersive entertainment.
Don’t forget, if there wasn’t anything that took your fancy this week there’s always last week’s listings on The VR Job Hubto check as well.
If you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).
We’ll see you next week on VRFocus at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the world.
Fracked, an upcoming single-player shooter, just got a brand-new gameplay trailer that shows off more of its high-energy action.
Developed by nDreams—the same team behind Oculus exclusive Phantom: Covert Ops (2020)—Fracked is heading exclusively to PSVR sometime this summer. The updated gameplay trailer was revealed at both IGN’s ‘Summer of Gaming’ event and UploadVR’s game showcase.
In it, we get a look at some new action as you take on enemies skiing down a mountain, and have to fight through a horde of different baddies at a funicular station—that’s fancy talk for a train that can go up steep inclines.
If you’re wondering what the hell is going on, here’s what nDreams says about Fracked.
The corporation dug too deep unleashing the ‘Fracked’ from the depths. Across one day, take on an interdimensional army that combines hive mind mentality and gun-wielding supremacy – the perfect targets to unload round upon round into. Fracked is in-your-face action with a cutting commentary on corporate greed and the climate change emergency. Save the day, to save the world.
The studio says Fracked features a unique cover system as well as multiple first-person free movement methods. You’ll be able to lean into your skis as you traverse the game’s many mountains, physically climb to safety when, say, the funicular’s tracks have been destroyed, and make dangerous base jumps when you need a quick getaway.
There’s no clear release date yet, as nDreams is still quoting a Summer 2021 launch. We’ll have our eyes peeled for any news to pop up, so check back soon.
If PlayStation VR fans where worried about the amount of content coming to the headset this year then yesterday’s PSVR Spotlight should’ve easily put those worries to bed. Six new titles were revealed with two of them being exclusives, Doom 3: VR Edition and nDreams’ latest shooter Fracked.
From the team behind Phantom: Covert Ops, Fracked adopts a far more action-oriented stance, run and gun style mechanics and outlandish gunfights. The storyline sees you become the reluctant hero, fighting an army of gun-wielding, interdimensional enemies called the ‘Fracked’, all inside a remote mountain facility.
Completely ditching subtlety and stealth, the videogame allows you to ski, run, climb, base jump and zipline around the environments however you choose to gain the upper hand. So elements like skiing will require you to physically lean to steer and control yourself through the snow whilst shooting enemies. Fracked also offers a 1:1 grabbable cover system for dynamic shootouts whilst the weapons will have tactile reloading mechanics for a realistic feel.
“We wanted to create an uncompromised action-adventure, specifically designed for PS VR,” said David Corless, VP of Publishing at nDreams in a statement. “Fracked has kinetic, explosive combat plus free movement, skiing, climbing and base jumping off buildings… it kicks ass!”
Supporting PlayStation Move controller for PlayStation 4, Fracked will also offer PlayStation 5 enhancements including uncapped dynamic resolution, improved framerate, resolution and loading times.
VR publisher & developer nDreams, most recently behind Oculus exclusive Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), announced back in March that it’s creating a new VR shooter named Fracked. Due out sometime this summer exclusively on PSVR, we got a better look at Fracked in a new gameplay trailer.
Update (June 4th, 2021): nDreams has released a new trailer for PSVR exclusive Fracked, showing off more of its fast-paced action.
The fresh gameplay trailer includes a look at a level called POWERGRAB, revealing more cover-focused gunfights, free and fluid skiing, running and climbing. Fracked is said to support PS Move and also boasts “fully enhanced” gameplay for PS5. Check out the new gameplay trailer below.
https://youtu.be/vlE8X5Lq_Kw
Original Article (March 3rd, 2021): In Phantom: Covert Ops, nDreams managed to build an entire VR game around a kayak as the game’s mode of locomotion—and it worked pretty darn well. In Fracked the studio once again looks to innovate on the locomotion front, this time aiming for “free and fluid” skiing and climbing to be core to the game’s movement options.
The game is set to be exclusive to PSVR (requiring PS Move controllers), and while it will work on PS4, nDreams says the game has also been “fully enhanced for PS5,” which is backwards compatible with PSVR. The studio released a teaser trailer today revealing a Borderlands-like art style:
And here’s the premise, in which the studio also talks up its “grabbable cover system”:
Grab your gun, cock it, and take aim as a maverick war hero thrown back into the fight. Experience innovative VR gunplay that ingeniously blends improvised run and gun combat with a 1:1 grabbable cover system. Move freely around the battlefield to outflank, outsmart, and outgun an escalating threat with your arsenal of deadly, fully interactive weapons.
Venture through a harsh and dangerous mountain locale by seamlessly transitioning between a host of first-person free movement methods. Physically lean into the bends on your skis to master the slopes at high speed. Reach out and hold on for your life as you climb and zipline far above the ground or perform audacious base-jumps to elude your foes. No rails. No limits. No mercy.
The corporation dug too deep unleashing the ‘Fracked’ from the depths. Across one day, take on an interdimensional army that combines hive mind mentality and gun-wielding supremacy – the perfect targets to unload round upon round into. Fracked is in-your-face action with a cutting commentary on corporate greed and the climate change emergency. Save the day, to save the world.
While there’s no denying that nDreams did a good job with the kayak in Phantom: Covert Ops, it did feel like the player’s freedom was somewhat constrained given that they are stuck in the kayak for 100% of the game. At times the kayak felt like it would have been a great segment of a larger game.
nDreams seems to have caught onto that feedback and is aiming for a multi-modal approach to locomotion in Fracked. In the trailer we see several ways for the player to get around: skiing, climbing, zip-lines, and running. Beyond that, the studio says that players will even have the opportunity to base-jump from high locations.
We’ve seen the successful implementation of multi-modal locomotion in games like Stormland and are looking forward to nDream’s take on the same.
The studio also released a slew of Fracked screenshots today which give a clear look at the game’s visual style:
1 of 4
As a PSVR exclusive, ostensibly Sony has financially supported the title to some extent to ensure exclusivity, but it’s interesting to see this happening so late in PSVR’s lifecycle. We know that a new PSVR headset is in development, but it isn’t due out until sometime after 2021. Perhaps Sony is making an effort to tide users over until its next headset?
UK-based VR developer nDreams today announced its next project, a PSVR exclusive shooter named Fracked.
The game was announced over on the PlayStation Blog today. It’s coming to PS4 but will, of course, be playable on PS5 via backwards compatibility with some enhancements exclusive to the console. The game is a first-person shooter (FPS) designed around momentum. Players will engage in fast-paced shootouts on foot with free running options, but also take part in skiing action sequences and clamber up walls with climbing mechanics. Check out the first trailer below.
In the game, you fight off an army known as the Fracked that house themselves inside a mountainous fracking facility. PS Move controllers are required to play. nDreams is promising versatile level design that takes full advantage of VR, and physical combat that requires you to duck and weave in the face of danger.
“No on-rails gameplay and cinematic cutscenes here, everything is 1:1 and driven by the player’s controls, movements, and actions,” Creative Director Steve Watt said of the game. “Combat is unconstrained too, combining free movement for outflanking foes with 1:1 grabbable cover and tactile weapon reloading. What we’ve shown so far is just scratching the surface – we can’t wait to show the breadth and variety of the game in the coming months.”
nDreams teased the game earlier this week on its Twitter account, and we speculated it could be a sequel to last year’s Phantom: Covert Ops. That guess was way off.
nDreams has a long history with VR, releasing titles and demos for tech as old as the original Oculus Rift DK1 and Innovator Edition of the Gear VR. But the team’s best known for its 2020 Oculus exclusive, Phantom: Covert Ops, a stealth game in which players infiltrate a Russian naval facility via kyack. We thought the game represented a big step up for the studio, awarding it 4/5 in our review. It’s since become one of 60 titles to generated more than $1 million in revenue on Quest alone.
Will you be checking out Fracked. Let us know in the comments below!
