Tomorrow House Flipper VR releases on Steam to bring the oddly addictive and strangle therapeutic experience of renovating and decorating a house to VR headsets. This time, without the mess and physical labor.
Outside of VR, House Flipper is one of the most popular “menial task, but addictive in a video game” simulators out there with over 28,000 user reviews on Steam granting a ‘Very Positive’ consensus. Joining the ranks of titles like VRKShop and, to a lesser degree, Job Simulator, House Flipper VR looks quite peaceful and satisfying.
Interestingly, ‘HouseFlipper VR’ is already on the Oculus Quest from the same publisher, but it looks like a dramatically lower quality version based on the screenshots. The PC version appears to be closer to its non-VR counterpart.
The biggest differences between the VR and non-VR version are how much more interactive it is in VR. Instead of clicking objects to clean them you’ll have to actually move your hand and arms more realistically. It should still be a lot less work than actually renovating a real house, though.
Personally, my wife and I just sold our home. It didn’t involve any renovating or flipping, just packing and moving, but we’ve always enjoyed watching house flipper shows on HGTV and other channels. There’s an odd burst of dopamine when you watch other people do all the hard work while you sit back, relax, and watch the before and after shots. The drama in between is just an added bonus.
House Flipper VR is coming to Steam with support for Rift, Vive, and Valve Index. We’re not sure of the price, but we’d expect $19.99 just like the non-VR version. Let us know if you have any questions or thoughts on House Flipper VR down in the comments below!
Read on for our full Rinlo review, a recently released third-person platforming puzzle game for PC VR. It launched into Early Access earlier this year and has now since reached full release this month.
Rinlo is a third-person puzzle game that also occasionally asks you to do some platforming and make your way through stealth sections. You take control of Agatha, a girl abandoned to an orphanage early on in her life for reasons that she doesn’t know.
It’s a pretty heart-breaking opening, especially if you happen to have a little one yourself. The idea that anybody would give up their kids is hard to wrap your head around, and it hits pretty hard. Of course, if you don’t have kids, it might not have quite the same impact, but I think we can all agree it’s sad.
Well, it’d be even sadder if you could move the camera around a little bit. The opening demands a little bit of platforming, and for some reasons, I just couldn’t get the jump right the first couple of times. As a result, I had to watch dear Agatha stand up slowly multiple times. This is an experience you’ll likely have to deal with a lot because you’re probably going to die a lot.
The game’s not hard at all, it’s just finicky.
You’ll regularly find yourself doing a jump you know you can make, only to find that Agatha has bounced off of a rail or something and ended up falling into the void. You then have to wait for it to load again, potentially watch whatever bit of dialogue the area started with, and then do it all over again. It’s frustrating.
The platforming sections and general exploration makes up the majority of your time with Rinlo, so having them be anything less than fine is a big problem if you’re hoping to enjoy the game. Not every platforming section is bad, and not every area I explored felt like the camera was in the wrong place, but it was common enough that I’d wager more are bad than are good.
Outside of the dodgy platforming are the puzzles. These are first person affairs, and involve you doing things like memory puzzles, or dexterity-based ones like guiding a hoop along a rail.
The puzzles that don’t demand perfect control from you are probably the more fun ones. Following along with cryptic clues gives the old grey matter a bit of a stretch, and you get a nice feeling of satisfaction for solving them.
The dexterity ones are horrific though. Due to a mix of reasons they ended in failure far more often than was comfortable. That’s not me being bad at puzzler, it was usually because something decided to be awkward with my setup and would jolt a controller slightly and end the puzzle. You then have to start from the beginning and hope that nothing would go awry this time. The fact that this was never because the puzzles were tricky was all the more annoying. I never failed a puzzle because I didn’t know what to do, I failed them because something in the game or my headset jerked and everything went awry, or there was some hidden nonsense I the dark corner of the puzzle itself that would insta-fail you.
The other issue with the puzzles is that they never fit with what’s going on in the world. You’ll go to open a door and suddenly have to get a ball through a maze. It doesn’t really mesh with what Agatha is doing, and it feels disjointed and distracting because of that.
All of these little issues add up to one constant headache when it comes to the gameplay. It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t bother you until you think about it, and then you do, and then everything around it is far too much to ignore. It makes no sense that you’d have to complete a weird weight puzzle just to open a door. Where would it even be kept? Who would like their door like that?
It’s a real shame because I really like the visual style and some of the places you visit. There are some beautiful areas in Rinlo, places with great skyboxes and some lovely detailing, but they’re mixed in with other areas that feel ripped out of the early noughties’ beige era of gaming.
The one thing that was consistently great was the soundtrack. No matter how infuriating other parts of the game were, I always enjoyed the music accompanying it. The same can be said of the voice acting too. While there were a couple of performances that felt a little wooden, it was generally quite nice to see the character chatting to each other and find out more about the world they inhabit.
It’s just a shame that everything else wasn’t up to the same standard as the sound design.
Rinlo Review Final Impressions
Rinlo frustrated me more often than it brought a smile to my face. Despite the occasional clever puzzle, far too much of the game felt ill-conceived. I really wanted to like Rinlo because it makes a good first impression and the story it tells does have some good notes, but the mixture of dodgy camera angles and occasionally inaccurate controls makes it an irksome and slightly painful experience, rather than the enjoyable puzzle game it aspires to be at first.
You can find Rinlo on Steam now for $14.99 with support for Rift, Vive, Index, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. This review was conducted using a Steam copy of the game on an Oculus Rift.
In a massive update post, the developer outlines what it’s calling the Combat Rebalance Patch, which makes “significant changes” to the game’s combat system and zombie behavior.
One of the biggest issues at launch was the relative weakness of most firearms and other ranged weapons. The default starting knife was an instant one-hit kill if you stabbed the brain and didn’t even require much force, whereas guns would require multiple shots. There is no durability system in Onslaught, so there was little reason not to use the basic knife 90% of the time. That’s been changed quite dramatically.
According to the update, “all ranged weapons” now allow one-hit kills to the brain at close range, but less damage obviously to the jaw, neck, and below. There is also now damage drop off depending on distance, which can be improved at the workbench. Additionally, “all melee weapons have had their damage values tweaked” so that less damage is dealt to the non-brain areas of the head. Blades also get stuck in skulls requiring more force to pull them out and dead walkers will no longer automatically slip off onto the ground.
Other highlights include increased walker perception and aggression, higher damage from walkers, larger groups of walkers, and more. Progression is also eased so you’re not grinding for resources as much, plus a litany of other changes. You can read the full patch notes right here.
This still doesn’t address some of our key concerns from the review, such as the red misty fog indicated the “horde” approaching or the quality of other areas, but it’s a great start on quick notice less than a month after release.
Let us know what you think of these changes down in the comments below!
Just over a month away from the upcoming console’s release, Sony has finally detailed the small list of PS4 games that do not work on the PS5. There are only two PSVR titles on the list of incompatible games fortunately. The games are Robinson: The Journey and DWVR.
DWVR is a single-player action-adventure shooter that combines mystical Indiana Jones-style elements with swords, guns, and magic spells available for $14.99 on PSN. We never got around to trying this one for ourselves, but if you were really hoping to see what it would play like on PS5 you’re unfortunately out of luck. DWVR is also available on Steam for $14.99.
Robinson: The Journey On PSVR
The only other PSVR game listed is Robinson: The Journey from Crytek. Back when Robinson first came out it was a big deal as a prominent PSVR-exclusive that featured gorgeous visuals in a strange, alien world overflowing with dinosaurs. It also featured a climbing system reminiscent of Crytek’s own The Climb rock-climbing game.
Notably, Hitman GO actually does exist in VR — on Rift ($9.99), Go ($7.99), and Gear VR ($7.99) — but it doesn’t look like the PS4 version ever got PSVR support, inexplicably. We were big fans of it back in 2016. It’s essentially a top-down stealth puzzle game with some Hitman flavors.
Previously we reported that Sony’s CEO, Jim Ryan, stated “99%” of PS4 games would work on PS5 and it seems he was pretty spot-on with that estimation. That being said, we still don’t know specifics about PSVR compatibility other than it requires a “free” adapter. Although, we do have confirmation that the new PS5 HD Camera does not support PSVR, as expected.
Let us know what you think of the news down in the comments below!
It’s already been an entire year since Asgard’s Wrath first released exclusively on the Oculus Rift and won our Best VR Game of the Year award for 2019. We dove back into Sanzaru Games’ action RPG epic and were delighted to find that it remains just as impressive as we remember.
Asgard’s Wrath: Still Impressive One Year Later
A lot has happened since Asgard’s Wrath first released, including the announcement and impending release of the Quest 2 as well as revelation that Facebook will start selling its first Oculus Studios first-party game on Steam soon. VR is a very different landscape now. Back when Asgard’s Wrath came out, it was the big title to prove VR could be more than tech demos and two-hour walk-around-and-read stuff adventures. Now, games like Boneworks, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, and Half-Life: Alyx have continued to carry that torch.
I still really, really like Asgard’s Wrath. For more specifics on why you can obviously read my full, lengthy review or watch the video version above, but to put it simply it’s the kind of VR game I’d always wanted. Growing up I was raised on The Legend of Zelda, Lord of the Rings movies, and a fascination with mythology and medieval swordsmanship. In many ways, Asgard’s Wrath is the culmination of all those things into a single, neatly crafted package.
That being said, it would be easy to nitpick and criticize individual elements from Asgard’s Wrath, but it’s much more than just the sum of its parts. Yes, combat relies on pre-made enemy animations heavily rather than the physics-driven combat sandbox of Blade & Sorcery. No, it’s not a true open world that lets you go anywhere or do anything. But within the confines of what it tries to be — essentially, a VR Zelda game complete with epic boss fights, a litany of items and gear, and head-scratching puzzles to mix things up — it knocks it out of the park.
If we take a look at all of the VR RPGs on the market, both those that released before and after Asgard’s Wrath, you’ll see there is still nothing that really compares.
Watch my interview with the Creative Director on the game, Mat Kraemer, right here:
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR is perhaps the closest comparison, but you’d need to mod the hell out of it to get something that feels like a made-for-VR game and even then it’s still nine-years old. I love The Elder Scrolls as much as anyone and it’s a remarkable open-world RPG, but it doesn’t deliver the same narrative impact with a well-paced adventure through a series of dungeons. Asgard’s Wrath borrows its design more liberally from Zelda than anywhere else, as mentioned before.
Journey of the Gods isn’t bad, but the simplistic art style and much smaller scope (mostly linear levels without real dungeons totaling around 10 hours vs. 30+ hours) puts it in a different ballpark. The Wizards is a fun mage adventure, Vanishing Realms does a good job with what it’s got going for it, but is over pretty soon as well.
To put things into perspective: I don’t think there are many other VR games on the market, even a year later, that offer the amount and variety of content that Asgard’s Wrath does that isn’t procedurally generated. These are hand-crafted assets with full voice acting and wonderful world-building.
Visually, I don’t think Asgard’s Wrath has been topped in my opinion. Half-Life: Alyx nails the decrepit sci-fi dystopia without issue, but Asgard’s Wrath has it beat in terms of scale and variety. Gazing out at the snow-capped mountains of Helheim before facing off against Hela herself, pausing on the edge of a cliff to admire the ocean, or seeing intricate, ornate structures as tall as the eye can see in Asgard is all magnificent.
I’m still holding out hope for a full-on sequel of some kind after the cliffhanger ending we got at the conclusion of the story, or at least some kind of DLC to keep things going, so hopefully an announcement of some kind isn’t too far off. Now that Facebook owns Sanzaru Games you can guarantee they’re hard at work on whatever is next in VR.
Asgard’s Wrath clocks in at around 130GB on PC, so a Quest port seems unlikely, but maybe a spin-off of some kind could work. That being said, I’ve played it on the Oculus Quest 2 using Virtual Desktop and with Oculus Link and it plays great on both. The Quest 2’s sharp screen and 90Hz refresh rate in Virtual Desktop looks excellent if you’ve got a beefy enough PC and strong WiFi network.
However, you really need to have ultra-precise reaction times here and any latency, such as over wireless Virtual Desktop streaming, can make combat difficult at times. I’ll also say that this is not the best game to put down for a full year and then suddenly pick up again. It’s very complex with a wide range of companion characters, weapons, and features that I honestly spent a solid 20 minutes just trying to jog up the muscle memory. It’s a doozy — but it’s so worth it. And if you’re playing for the first time then no worries.
Here’s to hoping I can eventually play something else that will make me feel excited to binge a ~30 hour RPG fully in VR. Until then, I can always return to Asgard’s Wrath.
Population: One finally has a release date set for October 22nd, less than a week after the launch of the Oculus Quest 2 on October 13th. Big Box VR is bringing their battle royale shooter to all PC VR headsets and Quest at launch with full crossplay support for $29.99.
Population: One – VR Battle Royale
Jamie, Ian, and I all got the chance to dive into Population: One last week together as a team and you can read my impressions from that hour-long play session right here or watch a bunch of gameplay in the video up above.
The comparisons to games like Fortnite are unavoidable and obvious. Not only is this a battle royale game in which players are tasked with being the last team standing as a toxic gas slowly encroaches on the map making it smaller and smaller over time, but it also features build-anywhere mechanics to spring up cover and quick structures on the fly.
What really sets Population: One apart though is that you can climb literally any surface. All you do is reach up and hold the grip button and you’re off climbing. You can also glide from any surface with an always-equipped glider so you never need to worry about fall damage. It complements the climbing system nicely.
Population: One will launch with a single map, several guns including assault rifles, SMGs, pistols, shotguns, and snipers, as well as grenades, and each match can hold up to 18 players across six 3-persopn squads. Your teammates can revive you if you go down, but if your team is wiped then you enter a spectator mode that lets you fly around the map in the sky to watch as things unfold.
“We’ve worked hard to bring POPULATION: ONE to as many platforms as possible by pushing the absolute limits of modern mobile VR chipsets,” said Gabe Brown, BigBox VR’s CTO and co-founder in a prepared statement. “We’re excited to see how players use the Vertical Combat System to compete and win starting on October 22nd!”
Population: One is slated to hit the Oculus Quest platform and all major PC VR headsets on October 22nd for $29.99. For more on Population: One, check out our hands-on impressions right here and keep an eye out on UploadVR for more coverage and a full review later this month.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Population: One is releasing later this month and we’ve already gone hands-on with this high-flying VR battle royale game. We played three full matches with developers last month on Oculus Quest 2 and have our complete impressions, plus a gameplay video, for you to check out. Population: One is hitting Quest and PC VR with crossplay on October 22nd.
Population: One – VR Battle Royale
I’ve played a lot of battle royale games. From the big hitters like Fortnite, PUBG, and Call of Duty Warzone, to the more obscure such as Ring of Elysium and Darwin Project, down to new releases shaking up the genre like Spellbreak. Generally speaking, I really, really enjoy battle royale games.
Until now there really hasn’t been a definitive VR battle royale game that was actually polished. I’ve played quite a lot of Stand Out and it’s a mostly passable imitation of PUBG, but it’s so janky and unpolished it’s hard to recommend. Rec Room’s Rec Royale is a fun diversion, Virtual Battlegrounds does a decent job expanding on the Stand Out formula, and we’ve seen a couple others but nothing really jumps out as a de factor battle royale VR game. But from what I’ve played, Population: One has the polish and gameplay to finally stick the landing.
Remarkably, Population: One hasn’t changed a whole lot in the past two years. I first got the chance to play the game all the way back at CES 2019 on an HTC Vive Pro, but last month when I tried it on an Oculus Quest it played even better than I remembered.
The team tells me that they were actually prepping for launch on PC VR when I saw it last, but then when the Quest was announced that changed everything. They’ve spent the last two years working almost entirely on optimization for the Quest port and getting it to be as good and pain-free as possible. That goes a long way for VR.
For the demo Jamie, Ian, and I all joined into the game using our Oculus Quest 2 headsets. I’ve been told it will be fully crossplay between the Quest platform and all PC VR headsets. Since the game is six teams of three (18 total players) the three of us got to be on a team together. We played three matches and got third, second, and second — so first place still eludes us. Granted, maybe we will fare better once we’re not facing off against teams of developers.
Unlike most battle royale games, you’re not joining the same plane or flying bus to jump out as it flies over the map. Instead, you start on the edge of the map at a giant launch bay and can either jump off manually and glide down using your wingsuit, or pick a launch pod and eject into the sky until it lands or even jump out midflight.
Surprisingly, the wingsuit feels fantastic. All you have to do to use it is stretch your arms out to either side like wings while in the air and hold them there to glide towards the ground.
Once you land it becomes the typical mad dash for loot. I love how quick and easy it is to loot and how fluid controls feel. The looting process is actually very streamlined here since you don’t need to worry about weapon attachments at all. Instead, weapons are tiered and ranked based on quality similar to Fortnite.
Since the map is quite large (it’s a full square kilometer) you probably won’t see any other people immediately unless you specifically try and chase someone down. That’s a lot of space for 18 people split into six tiny groups. Thankfully, you don’t have to wait long though.
Eventually the zone will telegraph where it’s going next with a white safe zone barrier on the map and visibly in the world. Just like other battle royale games, getting stuck in the danger zone outside the safe zone will slowly kill you over time.
The building system works well, even if it is very basic. While playing you’ll come across a vague “resource” item that you can collect and you can then expend these resources to create walls as shown below.
They’re all built on a grid so they’re easy to connect but all you can make are walls and floors/ceilings — so just box-type structures. There are no stairs or anything like that, but since you can climb any surface they’re not really needed. Clinging onto the edge of a wall and peeking over the top to shoot is a good strategy.
One thing that I think could have used some more attention is the UI. Generally speaking it’s all very flat and plain. Numbers are in a large, obnoxious font and things like your health bar and ping icons are extremely large and bright. It helps make sure you don’t miss information, but it really takes you out of things when elements of the interface feel like they’re ripped from a mobile game and aren’t integrated into the world at all.
Onward is a very different type of shooter, but it does an excellent job of requiring realistic, immersive actions to deduce information. Population: One could have put health and armor info on a wrist watch or required you to pull the map out from your backpack. Instead, it’s lots of floating UI elements that are very clearly not designed with VR in mind. It makes me wonder if there are eventually plans to bring this to non-VR platforms.
The other note along the same lines is that long-range scoped weapons like snipers force your view into a full-screen mode that is just a giant black box with the scope as a circle in the middle. You don’t actually aim down the scope with a zoomed window like in a lot of other VR shooters.
Other than that though everything feels and plays great. The developers told me about plans for a progression system, battle pass system for unlocking new cosmetics, and ongoing support with map changes, seasonal events, and more. On paper, it sounds like the kind of VR game that’s worth returning to again and again. Hopefully it can live up to that potential.
Population: One (official website) releases on October 22nd for the Oculus Quest platform and PC VR headsets for $29.99. There will be full crossplay but there is no crossbuy between the Quest and Rift versions.
Let us know what you think of the game down in the comments below!
Star Wars: Squadrons is finally here and it absolutely delivers. From the incredible set piece moments, excellent new characters, and fantastic VR space combat, this is an adrenaline-fueled blast in the galaxy far, far away that you won’t want to miss. Here’s our Star Wars: Squadrons VR review with all the details!
I don’t typically play space combat games, space sims, flight sims, or any of that sort of stuff. Furthermore, I’ve never played a game with a flight stick for more than just an hour or two to test things out. All of that changed with Star Wars: Squadrons.
From the very first moment I booted it up I played the entire game with a VR headset and flight stick, specifically the Thrustmaster T.16000M HOTAS, and it was so good — so authentic even — I don’t really want to play it any other way. I’ve tried keyboard and mouse and gamepad too, both get the job done and it really feels great with a gamepad for my tastes, but I surprisingly prefer the flight stick or full HOTAS instead. For a game that’s designed for VR and non-VR across PC and consoles with cross-play on everything, this is perhaps the best compliment I can give: it feels madefor VR. And from what we’ve heard, it basically was from the very start.
Star Wars: Squadrons Story Mode
In Star Wars: Squadrons the story shows both perspectives and bounces back and forth between the Galactic Empire and New Republic. The Prologue is split into two parts, introducing both sides, immediately after Alderaan is destroyed during the events of A New Hope. Then it fast-forwards a few years and the rest of the game takes place after Return of the Jedi in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor.
Right at the start of the game you get to customize each of your pilots down to their face, voice, and name. I wasn’t expecting this considering you don’t really see them much, but these are the same avatars you’ll use in multiplayer so getting ownership of your identity across the game for both the Republic and Empire is a great touch.
The entirety of Squadrons takes place from a first-person perspective whether you’re talking to crewmates in the hangar or flying your starfighter during a mission; it’s a big reason why the VR support feels so natural. The only times the camera is not inside of your face are during the cutscenes that take place before and after missions.
For these moments, when the camera is sweeping across your squadron or zooming in on characters while they fly, you see a rectangular letterbox floating in front of you, sort of like the Cinematic Mode on PSVR. It’s absolutely immersion breaking, no doubts about that, and a bit of a bummer, but cutscenes like this are expected in non-VR games so this is a price to pay in order to get VR support out of a AAA project like this. Sacrifices needed to be made and I’d rather have a VR hanger and briefing room than 30 second cutscenes in VR.
The other sticking point about Squadrons’ VR support is that there is zero motion controller functionality here. You have no hand presence in the cockpit at all — it’s just a head tracking only game. Some die hard VR purists will likely be upset about this, but honestly, give me a great flight stick over inaccurate motion controllers that lack realistic resistance and tension any day. You’re sitting still when you play a game like this so all you need is head tracking. It works great, looks great, and most importantly, feels great.
Even if Squadrons was just its Story Mode and practice/training map and that’s it, this would feel like a complete game. My playthrough came in around the 10 hour mark, but it could probably go higher if you played on a high difficulty setting or replayed missions to get more medals. There are four difficulty modes to pick from so there is some replayability, but I imagine most people will spend the majority of their time in multiplayer..
Surprisingly, the cast of new characters is memorable and full of personality for both the Republic and Empire. Between missions there are opportunities to chat with all of them to learn more about their backstories and motivations that helps add a lot of context to how they act. One of the Republic pilots used to race previously and your squad mates poke fun at her for being a show off. Eventually, she teaches you how to drift in an X-Wing and it’s an exhilarating moment reminiscent of scenes with Poe from the new trilogy.
Most of the missions can be boiled down to taking out squadrons of enemy fighters, defending larger ships, eliminating big ships, and escaping or escorting. I’d be lying if I didn’t say this gets repetitive, but the way EA Motive mixes things up, shuffles these pieces around, and introduces one-off set pieces here and there keeps you on your toes. By the time you reach this midpoint of the story in Mission 6 things get pretty interesting with bombing runs in a Y-Wing and a big, bombastic finale that rivals the spectacle of the films themselves. Chase sequences were also some of the best moments and it made me wish for more time trials or flight trials to put my pilot skills to the test.
Star Wars: Squadrons Gameplay And Ships
In a lot of ways this feels like a dream game for Star Wars fans. We’ve gotten dozens of games focused on the Jedi vs Sith with lightsabers and force powers and there have even been a heavy share of ground combat games that require you to know your way around a blaster. But not since the 90s and early 2000s have we gotten a game that was really focused on space combat in the Star Wars universe. Until now.
The industry has made huge strides with technology in recent years and visually it’s hard to find any faults at all with Star Wars: Squadrons. The overall presentation quality is on par with DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront II. Each map has a similar layout — they’re all in space after all — but the planet backdrops are gorgeous to behold and various bits of debris add enough variety here and there.
In VR there have been some performance concerns. For me personally VR mode only worked if the game was windowed, but after a patch it works from Borderless mode as well. I notice some very occasional stuttering on Ultra with an RTX 2060 Super, i5-9600K, and 32GB RAM but it’s not enough to really impact the experience. I’ve heard of others having far more issues with crashes and freeze ups in VR but haven’t experienced that personally.
The hangar is the unexpected highlight of the package due to how immersive it is to chat with crew members and just watch people working in the background. You really get a sense for what the inside of a hangar might truly feel like, almost like waiting in line at a big Disneyland Star Wars ride. And Squadrons features an excellent score that swells in combat appropriately and punctuates every moment with just the right emphasis. And yes, it’s all functional in VR — including the hangar and briefing room, complete with NPC conversations.
Squadrons is a special kind of wish fulfillment in that regard. Every cockpit is painstakingly recreated here with insane attention to detail so that instruments and indicators are all in different places depending on which ship you’re flying. From the wide, open canopy of the X-Wing and A-Wing to the closed tunnel vision of the TIE Fighter, each ship feels and plays dramatically different.
As far as I can tell equipment loadout options are the same or on par across factions, for balance, but the choices you make will change based on the ship. Since the X-Wing has shields maybe you sacrifice a bit of its hull capacity for better acceleration or speed? Perhaps you want to beef up the TIE’s maneuverability even more to go all-in on a zippy ship that’s hard to hit? You can get really creative there.
Star Wars: Squadrons VR Review – Comfort
Since Star Wars: Squadrons is an always first-person VR space combat game, it’s impossible to eliminate all artificial motion. By nature you’re flying a ship in space, banking, turning, and rotating during combat. For some people it’s going to be uncomfortable no matter what, but some ships may be better than others. For example, the TIE Fighter has a very enclosed cockpit so the field of view outside of the cockpit is more limited than the more open X-Wing and A-Wing. Playing with a flight stick also helps to ground you and aid immersion which can combat sickness.
When you’re out of the cockpit you can turn on snap turning instead of smooth turning if you’d like for hangar exploration, or you can just turn your head around instead. Compared to other space combat games I’ve played, it seems quite smooth and comfortable but I don’t typically get sick so it’s hard to say. As long as performance is good, framerate is consistent, and you’re not seeing any major issues it should be okay for most people. No one on staff has been affected by playing. it.
The first three missions of the story after the prologue have you flying X-Wings and A-Wings, so switching back to a TIE Fighter in the next mission after that is a huge shock to the system. Not only do these fast and nimble fighters not have any shields, but they’re far more agile as well. Drifting in a TIE Fighter feels like you’re doing a donut in a street racer and watching the stars swim by as you flip around is extremely exciting.
Even though Squadrons isn’t a space combat simulator game, it’s more of an arcade-style experience, there is still a lot of depth here. For starters, you’ve got to manage your system’s power flow. For Republic, that means engine, lasers, and shields. By flicking the switch on the top of my joystick I can reroute power on the fly to whatever I’m doing at that moment. On top of that, you can designate shields for the front, back, or balanced during combat, boost, drift, and more.
At first it’s a lot to take in; there is a steep learning curve when using a stick essentially for the first time and being in VR, you can’t exactly see the buttons easily, but you eventually get the hang of things. I tried playing with a gamepad a little bit and the learning curve is far less steep. It feels really, really good with a controller in your hands and you don’t lose out on any functionality playing that way. I also tried out keyboard and mouse, but for me, that felt like a huge step backwards in terms of immersion.
After I got a feel for where each button was it all started to feel like second nature. Keyboard and mouse, as well as gamepad, have the same sort of muscle memory that kicks in after a while to a lesser extent, but after trying all three formats the HOTAS is absolutely my favorite way to play, followed by gamepad.
Star Wars: Squadrons Multiplayer
There are two main multiplayer modes: Dogfight and Fleet Battles. You can do a solo Fleet Battle with everyone else filled by AI allies and enemies, or invite friends in for a co-op affair against the AI as well. As far as I’ve seen there is no way to do a solo Dogfight match against AI or to have a co-op Practice flight, but you can spawn squadrons during Practice to sharpen your dogfighting skills.
You don’t even unlock Fleet Battles until your online rank is at least 5, so Dogfight is all you can do at first. There is a ton of map variety ranging from destroyed docking yards, massive relay stations with trenches and debris, or even huge asteroid fields that resemble obstacle courses. Not crashing becomes just as difficult as avoiding enemy fire. There’s even a giant, empty map that’s just a void of space. Keeping up with speedy TIE Fighters there is extremely difficult.
In Fleet Battles though, that’s where Squadrons really comes alive. In this game mode there are two armies with massive flagships anchoring their spot in space. First, the fighters battle it out in a game of tug of war to try and earn enough “morale” to wage an assault. From there, whoever wins the tug of war, takes the fight to the enemy’s two medium-sized capital ships. Once those are down you can attack the opponent’s massive flagship to win the match — but it’s not that simple.
At any time during a Fleet Battle the enemy can win back the morale tug of war and flip to the offensive, forcing you to go on the defensive. Once you’re attacking a flagship, like a Star Destroyer, you can take out its subsystems such as the shields, its power supplies, its turrets, and so on to slowly chip away until it’s destroyed in an epic ball of fire.
There is an in-game tutorial that takes you through all of this against AI, as well as the aforementioned AI enemies only mode you can play solo or with friends.
The biggest problem facing Star Wars: Squadrons though is a question of longevity. Once you finish the campaign all you can do is Dogfighting (Team Deathmatch) and Fleet Battle, that’s it. There are no plans for DLC, no plans for new maps, new ships, or anything like that. The developers have been very clear that Squadrons is sold as-is and will not be a live service game. It’s a great game already, but it could offer so much more had EA been willing to fund an ongoing support cycle. Instead, it’ll never grow beyond what it is right now. Hopefully there is enough interest to generate plans for a sequel that does get ongoing support.
Squadrons also contains a seasonal ranking structure, similar to most AAA online games, complete with ranks, rewards, daily missions, and so on. There are plenty of carrots to keep you moving along and coming back to earn juicy cosmetics since EA has stated there will be no microtransactions at all this time.
Star Wars: Squadrons Review Final Impressions
While I would say that Star Wars: Squadrons has exceeded my already lofty expectations overall, it’s not without its faults. It still manages to out-perform every other VR space combat game I’ve tried across the board for my tastes and offers a ton of nuance in its gameplay and immense entertainment with its full campaign. If you got a chance to try the brief, but magical, X-Wing VR Mission in the first DICE Battlefront game on PS4 with PSVR and wished it could have been made into a full game, then this is exactly that and so much more. Multiplayer is thrilling and extremely fun, but is lacking in options and variety a bit. There were some tiny performance issues and a lack of VR motion controller support, but all that is forgivable.
Minor gripes aside, for fans of Star Wars, fans of arcade-style space combat, and fans of just flat-out immersive VR, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than Star Wars: Squadrons.
For more on how we arrive at our scores, check out our review guidelines. This review was originally published on October 1st as a review-in-progress and has since been updated and finalized throughout.
Star Wars: Squadrons is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One for $39.99. VR support is included with PSVR on PS4 and any PC VR headset on PC through Origin, Steam, and the Epic Store. This review was conducted primarily via Link cable on PC with an Origin copy of the game using an Oculus Quest and Quest 2 via Link cable and Virtual Desktop. It was also tested on a Rift S.
Ilysia is an extremely ambitious upcoming new VR MMO from indie studio Team 21 that’s currently live with an already-funded Kickstarter campaign. The game aims to rekindle the old-school charm MMORPGs of yesteryear possessed with its massive, fully explorable open world and emphasis on deep, meaningful interactions.
If you’re reading this right now then there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Sword Art Online or .hack//sign — or at the very least Ready Player One — and have some concept of what people mean when they dream about the idyllic future of a world with well-made VR MMO games. The idea of being able to login as your character, embody that character, and exist in a digital world with full presence while going on adventures with others in a persistent, online world feels like what the founders of modern VR must have been daydreaming about while hacking away at headset prototypes in garages.
We’re already pretty close, admittedly. Orbus VR: Reborn technically is already a VR MMO. On paper it’s got a lot of the features people are waiting for with its class-based progression, motion controller combat, and moderately interactive world. But you’d be forgiven for not really getting hooked due to the rather unimpressive visual style and overall lack of deep, engaging content.
That’s where Ilysia wants to come in. On the Kickstarter page it’s described as having a “massive world inspired by the some of the best MMORPGs ever made” with the intent of bringing back “the glory days of MMORPGs again in VR.” That’s about as ambitious as it gets. After talking to the development team on a Discord call last week, I’m pretty confident they’ve got a real chance at making this a reality.
For starters, the Kickstarter page is very detailed and the stretch goals aren’t overly ambitious. Most of them are for expansions on existing features or things that were likely planned already to begin with. You can see the full list of the ones they’ve achieved already down below.
Ilysia is currently sitting at just about $100,000 at the time of this writing with about 6 days left to go on its Kickstarter. The original goal was only $60,000 so they’ve nearly doubled it. Stretch goals that have already been met include:
More starting character races
Mounts for multiple players
More starting zones
Pet breeding
Pet leveling and skills
Battle royale instance
Mount inventory with bags
What stands out to me about Ilysia is that the developers are very explicit about the type of content that will be included and it’s clear that they have grasp on what MMO players actually like to do. Making something that’s fun for the first 25 minutes isn’t that difficult, but making a game that thousands of players want to revisit and continue playing for 25, 50, and even 100s of hours is the tough part. EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Final Fantasy XIV, The Elder Scrolls Online — these are all games that have reached that sort of status. The long list of MMOs that are forgotten, abandoned, failed, or dead is much, much longer.
On the page they list things like fighting monsters, completing quests, exploring dungeons, beating world bosses, and so on which sounds great. Apparently the world itself is enormous — roughly 16km x 18km which adds up to about 288 square km, or nearly eight timesthe size of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s map. Wow. Hopefully they can fill it with actually interesting things to do.
One of the big tenants for Ilysia that the developers emphasized to me on our Discord call is a focus on exploration. And not just in the sense that you can go wherever, whenever (which you totally can by the way, basically everything can be climbed or manipulated like in Breath of the Wild) but also in the sense that you’ll want to go off the beaten path and explore. It’s a game about curiosities and discoveries.
Ilysia: The Future Of VR MMOs?
There are other VR MMO on the horizon too, of course, so Ilysia isn’t alone in the slightest. Zenith is a notable example, which raised over $280,000, but it’s being designed for both VR and non-VR players which inherently limits how ambitious its VR designs can be. Archgate has promise, but it’s a top-down perspective game from the third person which will immediately be off-putting to anyone yearning for a Sword Art Online-style experience.
Nostos was in the same boat and that one was never actually a real MMO — more of an online survival game with co-op features. Sword Reverie looks like it shares more in common with Nostos than an actual MMO.
At the end of the day consumer-grade VR headsets like the Rift, Vive, and PSVR are 4+ years old and we’re nearing the dawn of the Quest 2, Reverb G2, and more — all without a de factor VR MMO to sink our teeth into. If you’re after the social angle specifically, then VR Chat has you covered. But if you dream of an immersive VR MMO the likes of which anime creators have been fantasizing about for decades, you’ll just have to keep waiting.
If Team 21 can pull this off and actually make a VR MMO worth playing for months and years on end, then Ilysia will go down as my new personal addiction and as a landmark VR game we’ll be referencing for decades to come. That’s a big “if” though.
Ilysia is targeting what looks like a late 2021 full release timeframe for PC VR and Oculus Quest — cross-play between PC and Quest is already functional. They’re planning to release on PSVR as well. No exact timing is available yet, but it looks like Alpha and Beta testing is scheduled for throughout 2021 and early supporters on the game’s Discord server (invite link here) are already able to get in on a Pre-Alpha version of the game.
Let us know what you think of Ilysia down in the comments below!
[Disclosure]: After conducting this interview and writing this article, the author of this story, David Jagneaux, pledged to the Ilysia Kickstarter at the $50 ‘Alpha Squire (Early Access – A1) tier. This has not affected his coverage of the game.
Solaris: Offworld Combat, the next VR shooter from Firewall Zero Hour developers First Contact Entertainment, is out now for PSVR, Rift and Quest. Check out our impressions in our Solaris: Offworld Combat review!
Note: This review was originally published on September 26th, 2020. It’s now been updated to include the PSVR version.
Following up on one of the most successful and well-known PSVR games, Firewall Zero Hour, is no small task. Especially when your next game, in this case Solaris, launches first on different headsets (before the recent PSVR homecoming). But for all its differences and unique challenges, I think Solaris is still mostly a worthy follow-up to the breakout PSVR hit.
The big difference here is that Solaris is not a realistic-style tactical military shooter. At all. Whereas Firewall borrows heavy inspiration from the likes of Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon, Solaris is more like an alternate reality sci-fi version of Quake with its focus on pick-up-and-playability and quick-paced gameplay.
Everything in Solaris is about as streamlined as it can possibly get — for better and (in some small cases) for worse. For example, there are no game modes to pick from, maps to select, playlists to queue for, or anything like that. The main menu literally just says ‘Play’ or asks you to put on the helmet to enter a game. That’s it. From there you’re spawned into a match with seven other people in a 4v4 game to capture control points that move around the map, sort of like Headquarters in Call of Duty. It’s very quick and efficient and, above all else, very fun.
In addition to the four guns (starting pistol, automatic assault rift, grenade launcher, and rocket launcher) there are two equipment items: proximity mine and deployable cover shield. It’s enough gear to add some strategy to encounters, but does feel a bit light overall.
Another example of this streamlined approach is the lack of an inventory, weapon switching, or reloading. You walk over weapons to pick them up and then it auto-switches to that new weapon. You shoot the special weapons until they’re out of ammo and it switches back to your starting pistol. No reloading ever required. In this way the “weapons” actually function a bit more like upgrades since they’re temporary. It adds intensity because you can visibly see when others pick up the weapons and creates competition to see who can get them first.
Solaris: Offworld Combat Review – Quest vs Rift
Solaris: Offworld Combat is out on both Quest and Rift with cross-buy and cross-play support. So even if you only have one headset, you’re playing against and with people on both platforms at all times. Visually it’s extremely similar. So similar in fact, that other than a few particle effects and lighting enhancements you can barely tell the difference. Gameplay is functionally identical. The only difference I’ve ever really spotted from a performance level is at the start of a match on Quest, before you’re ever in combat, there is a little bit of jitter and stutter as things are initializing, but once you’re in the game and actively playing, that all goes away. Refer to the video below for a side-by-side comparison.
However, not all of the streamlining they’ve done is for the better. One great example of this is weapon handling. In Solaris, you literally cannot control your left hand at all. Every weapon in the game is essentially one-handed just like the pistol, which is fine in and of itself, Half-Life: Alyx did this as well, but in Solaris your left hand isn’t tracked at all. If you reach out with your left controller it doesn’t do anything, you’re only using it as a thumbstick to move around.
The issue with this is twofold: a lack of presence and immersion, but also a lack of gameplay opportunity. In games like Onward your left hand is equal to the right hand, you could pull your pistol with the left hand, cradle the gun on your left shoulder and even pull the trigger left-handed if you wanted to. But in Solaris your left hand is basically the left half of an Xbox controller in your hand without tracking.
All that being said — you will forget about it. While playing I tended to rest my right controller on top of my left controller to steady the aim regardless of weapon so it generally felt like I was using both hands in-game even though I wasn’t. I genuinely stopped noticing or caring about it during the heat of battle.
Solaris: Offworld CombatReview – Comfort Settings
Solaris: Offworld Combat should be avoided if you require teleportation movement to enjoy VR because smooth, direct locomotion is the only option. That being said, there are some settings you can tweak to make it more comfortable if you’re not extra sensitive. In the main menu options you can switch between smooth and snap turning or turn on/off the FOV vignette for turning and sprinting.
Another odd limitation is the restricted physical crouching. I know the Quest and Rift S are capable of accurately tracking me as I lay down on the ground, or even roll around, because I’ve done it in games like Rec Room and Onward, but there are invisible barriers in Solaris that only let you go down as low as the crouch button animates.
Probably more than any other shooter I’ve played in VR, Solaris is the most seamless to play. It’s pure entertainment that just works. You never have to fuss around with anything feeling wonky or off because all the things that usually cause those issues in VR just aren’t here. On the surface things can see simplistic, but in the moment they absolutely are there to ensure the game is as fluid and playable as possible from top to bottom.
Solaris: Offworld Combat Review Final Impressions
Solaris: Offworld Combat is more than just the sum of its parts. While it’s easy to nitpick some of the decisions made, like your left hand not really being tracked in the game or the lack of a party/friend system at all for launch, the fact of the matter is that it’s still just incredibly fun to play. Visually it looks great on both Rift and Quest and the gameplay has that quick and seamless feel of Quake mixed with a slick Tron-style aesthetic. Despite the issues, Solaris is easily the most accessible and streamlined VR shooter I’ve played in recent memory and scratches the arena shooter itch I’d forgotten I had.
Solaris: Offworld Combat is out now on Rift and for Quest with cross-buy and cross-play functionality across both platforms. This review was conducted using both versions of the game, but most time was spent in the Quest version. A PSVR version also release today, May 18th. For more on how we arrived at this score, check out our review guidelines.
Personally, my wife and I just sold our home. It didn’t involve any renovating or flipping, just packing and moving, but we’ve always enjoyed watching house flipper shows on HGTV and other channels. There’s an odd burst of dopamine when you watch other people do all the hard work while you sit back, relax, and watch the before and after shots. The drama in between is just an added bonus.
