Onward (2016), the popular VR FPS known for serving up its ‘no-frills’ squad-based action, is now in Early Access on the Oculus Store. The tactical mil-sim shooter, which aims to appeal to fans of traditional shooters like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, or Counter-Strike, now features cross-play between both versions of the game—purchased through either Oculus or Steam.
Onward has supported Rift through SteamVR since it moved into Steam Early Access back in August 2016, although admittedly the Touch optimization was less than ideal until recently, with Touch getting a fresh button remapping a few days prior to launch on the Oculus Store.
As a bid to appeal to traditional FPS-players, Onward doesn’t feature teleportation—a common method of traversing large maps in VR—but rather has what you might call a ‘traditional’ locomotion scheme: smooth forward movement is locked to the physical direction of your hand, leaving you with the ability to look in a direction regardless of where you might be headed. As a locomotion style built initially for Vive’s trackpad, it’s had somewhat of a mixed reception on both platforms; either you can stomach it, or you can’t. Onward also offers a front-facing mode for Rift players that mitigates some of the discomfort by allowing snap-turning, and also lets you control your forward, backward and strafe controls via hand position and Touch’s joysticks themselves.
Oculus rates Onward a ‘moderately comfortable’ experience.
Onward dev and founder of Downpour Interactive Dante Buckley, who remains the driving force behind the game, says the team tightened down on Touch’s button mapping after its free weekend two months ago.
“We took a lot of the feedback from the free weekend and used it to help us shape a better control scheme for Onward,” says Buckley. “This new default control scheme is default, and we’ve added in some options for players to further tweak the experience to suit their preferences.”
The Early Access game features objective based game modes in 5v5 online multiplayer, and solo/coop multiplayer vs AI. With 30 different customizable weapons available, there’s plenty of ways to support your squad.
As a game that requires players to use coordination, communication, and most importantly marksmanship skill to complete objectives, giving players on both platforms equal attention is fundamental to keeping things fair. While the locomotion scheme is still an acquired taste for many, the hardcore adherents to the Onward way of life will continue to proselytize the game for its ability to deliver a traditional shooting experience—something many big studios have shied away from.
Farpoint (2017), PSVR’s bug-shooting showcase for the mightily impressive PS Aim, has had one free expansion so far, the ‘Cryo Pack’, which added additional co-op levels and challenge mode. Now the game has just received its next free DLC in the form of ‘Versus’, an update that greatly expands the game with two different 1v1 multiplayer modes while bumping the game’s weapon roster up from 5 to 20.
Update (12/06/17): Impulse Gear has finally pushed the free update to PSN. which includes two truly game-changing 1v1 modes; deathmatch and a point capture mode called ‘uplink’. Both require players to have PS Plus memberships.
Impulse Gear co-founder Seth Luisi explains the new gameplay modes in a PlayStation blog post announcing the DLC’s release:
“A key part of the gameplay is capturing enemy spawn points. If you capture them the enemies will fight on your side. Each enemy type has a different function and abilities so choosing which one to spawn, and when, is a tactical decision. As an example, Grunt enemies will stay near you and act as body guards. Drones will scan and search for the other player. You can follow them to find out where the other player might be hiding. The Goobers act as artillery, lobbing acid balls down on the enemy player and enemy AI. You can only have a limited number of active allies at one time so you will want to be selective who you summon.”
Original article (10/31/17): The multiplayer mode is offering a few different game modes, including death match and a capture-the-point mode. There’s also a few different maps as well, although it isn’t clear at the time of this writing exactly what those will be. Keep your eyes peeled to the PlayStation blog for more information.
You’d be right to think 1v1 sounds pretty lonely, but Impluse Gear has thrown in map objectives to capture which summon a small army of computer-controlled enemies (the one’s you’re already familiar with from single player mode, yeech) who attack the opposing player for you. This adds a tactical element that a simple 1v1 can’t, and we can’t wait to try it for ourselves.
image courtesy Impulse Gear
When we spoke with the Impulse Gear devs at a special Sony event yesterday, they told us multiplayer mode was the number one feature requested by players—no wonder, considering informal death matches have been going on since the launch of the game back in May.
As for the weapons, the 20 weapons aren’t exactly distinct guns in their own right, as they’re more variants of the 5 original guns found in the game: Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Precision Rifle, Needle Gun, and Plasma Rifle. Simply put, you’ll be able to get your hands on four different Assault Rifles, four different Shotguns, etc, each with their own skins and stats.
There’s no word on exactly when ‘Versus’ will roll out, but we’ll be updating this article as soon as we know.
Sci-fi shooter Evasion from VR studio Archiact has been revealed, said to feature ‘next generation’ VR locomotion and ‘high intensity’ co-op multiplayer combat for up to 4 players. The game is due to launch for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in early 2018.
Described on the official website as “an intense bullet hell spectacle”, Evasion has been designed from the ground up for VR, featuring co-op multiplayer combat for up to 4 players, with multiple hero classes to choose from to suit “all play styles” – two of which are already detailed on the site.
As shown in the announcement trailer, the game features ‘bullet hell’ action combined with destructible environments. According to the press release provided to Road to VR, a core development goal was to enable “incredible locomotion freedom.” Players will be able to choose from a few locomotion types, including ‘free move’, that can be customised for “play style and comfort level.”
Evasion aims to deliver several cutting-edge technologies, including ‘next gen’ full-body avatars powered by IKinema’s inverse kinematics animation system, “best in-class physics and destruction” enhanced for Intel Core i7 and i9 processors, and high-quality visuals and 3D spatial audio powered by Unreal Engine 4. The game’s ‘Swarm A.I’ enemy behaviour system claims to add “a new level of tension, making tactical movement and teamwork critical to your squad’s survival,” resulting in greater mission replayability with “randomized objectives and enemy encounters.”
“Archiact has been crafting immersive VR entertainment since 2013,” said Kurt Busch, Studio Head at Archiact. “With Evasion, the team is using everything we’ve learned and weaving our experience into a truly genre-defining AAA title. With innovative locomotive movement and intense FPS gameplay, we’re convinced Evasion will prove a stand-out VR experience and we can’t wait for gamers to play it themselves.”
Skyfront VR, the upcoming multiplayer arena first-person shooter from Levity Play, is coming to Steam Early Access on November 10th, including support for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Setting it apart from more ‘traditional’ VR shooters, Skyfront VR boasts a unique locomotion style that supposedly offers a fast-pace, nausea-free experience.
Set in 2700 CE, when humanity has mastered the laws of physics, players battle in zero-gravity arenas made from the cities of old in a remembrance of a past civilization-ending war that took place 400 years earlier. In the case of the trailer, it looks like one of the first maps has you shooting it out among architecture lifted from a typical Greek island like Santorini or Mykonos.
From what we’ve seen, Skyfront VR’s locomotion scheme appears to have much more in common with arcade flight sims like EVE: Valkyrie (2016) than more ‘traditional style’ VR shooters like Onward (2016). The Superman-style flight mechanic is done by moving your hands, “translating to 1:1 movement in this virtual, zero-gravity space.” This, according to Levity Play, forces players to consciously guide their in-game movements with their physical body, which helps eliminate the sensory conflict that often occurs when movement is dictated by a joystick.
At Early Access launch, two arenas will be available including Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch gametypes, five different weapons, five special abilities, and a ‘Bot Shootout’ practice mode.
Full Game Features:
5 game modes including Single Deathmatch
3v3Elimination and Capture The Flag
5-6 visually stunning maps in different geographical settings
20+ destructive weapons and special abilities to choose from
An engaging progression system
Customizable character & weapon assets
Play against advanced AI opponents
No pricing information is available currently. You can keep an eye on Skyfront VR by signing up for updates via the Steam Early Access page.
Onward, the mil-sim tactical multiplayer shooter, has garnered a hardcore playerbase since it released on Steam Early Access a year ago, and if you want to know what all the hubbub is about surrounding what many are hailing as the end-all VR shooter, you’ll be able to get a taste from September 14-17 during the game’s free access weekend.
Onward isn’t your typical shooter. As a project developed by a single core dev, the mil-sim multiplayer has a character of its own, focusing on a brand of realism that emphasizes coordination, communication, and marksmanship skill. This is a strictly ‘no cross hairs and no HUDs’ experience, and the better you know your way around a firearm and the better you can communicate, the more effective you’ll be on the battlefield.
Onward, which currently sells for $25 on Steam, supports HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The 360 nature of the game though makes a third Oculus sensor a much better choice to eliminate occlusion of the Touch controllers.
Be ready for plenty of stiff competition too, because many long-time players have upgraded their controllers to include a physical stock, giving them a clear leg up as they can steady their shots more easily. The level of competition is so high, that some players have formed an unofficial Onward Championship League.
Its sole developer, Dante Buckley, is a new game designer at 20 years old, while the game is still a work-in-progress, it’s amazing what he’s done with pure determination in such a short time. UploadVR’sDavid Jagneaux details Buckley’s story of dropping out of college to teach himself game designing from scratch. Buckley told UploadVR that he works “continuous 14+ hour work days. It’s been worth it though.”
In the post announcing the free weekend, Buckley says there will be new content coming out in September and October, including new maps “and more”.
ARKTIKA.1, the sci-fi shooter from Metro developers 4A Games, is launching on Oculus Rift October 10th. Pre-orders are currently live on the Oculus Store, selling for a 10% discount off of the game’s $30 price tag.
Update (10/5/17): Developer 4A Games has released a new Arktika.1 launch trailer which shows the spookier side of the game (just in time for Halloween it would seem):
Nearly a century in the future – in the aftermath of a silent apocalypse – the planet has entered a new ice age known as the Great Freeze. Only the equatorial regions remain habitable, yet pockets of humanity still manage to survive in small numbers all over the planet. These regions of civilization sit on resource-rich, highly desirable territories to the north and south. As a mercenary hired by Citadel Security, you must protect one of the last colonies in the wastelands of old Russia from violent raiders, marauders, and horrifying creatures. Be the saviour. Give humanity a second chance.
Original Article (9/13/17): We got a hands-on with Arktika.1 back at GDC earlier this year, and from what we saw there, it’s going to be a game with a level of attention to detail and polish that you might say (for the lack of a better word) puts it in the ‘AAA’ category.
Climate change has world is plunged into a new ice age, and as a security employee of the Citadel, a Russian outpost in the year 2120, you find yourself hired to protect the colony in the wastelands of the Vostok region from raiders, marauders, and horrifying creatures.
Even for first-person shooters, the game is gun-centric, with a bunch of different futuristic pistols to collect and customize with a number of parts as you sweep the base for baddies.
With its node-based teleportation locomotion system, the demo played out to mostly forward-facing, meaning once you enter a room, all of the action happens in front of you. We published 25 minute gameplay session, so if you want to see more about how the locomotion system works, check it out here.
The game will also be launching alongside a companion eBook, penned by New York Times Bestselling author and script writer of the game Christie Golden. Called ARKTIKA.1: My Name is Viktoria, Golden calls the book the game’s “bible”. The eBook is available on Amazon for $1, and is slated to launch on October 10th.
Check back for our full review in the coming weeks.
Gunheart, Drifter Entertainment’s co-op VR shooter, launches today in Early Access on Steam for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
In Gunheart, you step into the shoes of a robotic bounty hunter looking for cash, something you can grab throughout each level as you squash alien bugs. But the key isn’t just shooting everything that moves and hoping for the best though (well, that’s a big part of it), because working as a team gets you special abilities to go along with an array of futuristic weapons.
Built by ex-Bungie & Epic developers, who worked on Gears of War and Halo franchises, Gunheart promises hours of bug-infested battles via the procedurally ‘remixed’ levels, something the developers say makes the bounties feel different every time you play. Another ‘remixing’ element also affects the number of alien combatants in your way between you and the end of the over kilometer-long level. The more players drop into the mission, the harder it’ll be to get to the end.
Locomotion is possible via teleportation or ‘strafing’ which can quickly let you slide across the field in any direction. A number of options are available, but mission maps are designed around teleportation (hopping from platform to platform), so you’ll probably end up using a mix of both. Check out this video for a full overview of the game’s locomotion system.
When paired with the PlayStation VR Aim controller, Farpoint’s first-person shooting dazzles, but lacks original ideas, and its insect- and robot-infested world doesn’t hold any surprises.
When Gear VR games are ported to the Rift, you usually end up with is more of the same; a game with nicer graphics and the added benefit of positional tracking, but more or less the same experience. However with Drop Dread (2017), Pixel Toy’s port of their critically acclaimed Gear VR on-rails arcade shooter, the addition of Oculus Touch has brought the game to whole a new level of difficulty and hands-on action.
Drop Dead Details:
Official Site
Developer: Pixel Toys Available On: Oculus Touch (Home) Reviewed On: Oculus Touch Release Date: March, 23rd 2017
I can hear you saying it: “Great, another wave shooter.” But hold on just a minute, because despite a few gripes, this one is actually fun.
Gameplay
Drop Dead plays on some pretty well-worn tropes; the evil German doctor (also somehow a Nazi when required) wants to create a master race, blah blah blah. He’s evil. You’re good. There are Zombies. The rub is you’re actually traveling through one of three discrete timelines and the apocalyptic future set before you can actually be stopped before it even happens. Each trip forward offers a new spin on the overall objective of the game: Stop the evil Doctor Monday from raising his apocalyptic army of zombies, get new weapons along the way, and blow up massive, and I mean massive amounts of zombies.
So while Drop Dead sounds a pretty basic in that respect, Drop Dead surprisingly boasts 27 single-player levels (throughout the three timelines), a broad swath of enemy units, and multiple guns to use (read: not keep or upgrade) along the way—not to mention some pretty good voice acting and a level of cheesiness to the story that’s entirely self-aware. Besides the obligatory online leader boards, single and online multiplayer survival mode also extend the game’s playability.
Graphics aren’t incredible, with the art style wandering somewhere into mobile game territory, but it is visually cohesive and overall very likeable.
the evil Doctor Monday
As for the weaponry, all of the game’s buffs and guns can be found in-level and no market exists in the game, so guns, grenades and slow-mo power-up drinks (very Call of Duty Nazi Zombies-esque) are only obtained temporarily during the level.
Shooting zombies can be repetitive at times, but that may just be a relic of the arcade wave shooter genre than Drop Dead itself. Whether that’s good or bad to you, there are some definite flaws that start to infringe on my personal expectation of “fun”.
No dual guns, i.e. you’ll drop a shotgun automatically if you go for your holstered pistol
Exposition is non-skippable, meaning you will have to sit through Doc Monday’s diatribes over and over and over until you beat the level
Zombies sometimes “stack up” and clip through each other, making it tough to get a clean shot
You can’t bat away incoming Zombies to get an extra second before getting mauled to death
I was tempted to add too things to the list; Drop Dead’s reload mechanic because of how fiddly I found it at first—sort of a count down marker that you can jump if you hit it just right, giving you a quicker reload—but after a while it eventually fades into the background as you get the hang of it. The second is the difficulty level. If you’re a pretty good shot, this may not be an issue, but the game doesn’t provide any gun sight upgrades, so there’s no assistance for those long shots besides iron sights—on Gear VR it is as simple as gazing and taping a button, but Touch controllers require more tactility, which can be good or bad depending on your skill level. No variable difficulty level is available, so it’s either shoot the best or die like the rest.
Immersion & Comfort
Between having to hit the reload marker on time and prioritize running, trudging and flying targets, you really start to get into a certain flow with Drop Dead. Like all arcade shooters though, which by definition rely on scripted baddies popping up, it can lead to a certain predictability, making it less scary and more like a real-time puzzle, except the puzzle pieces are 8 screaming zombies coming at you while you only have enough time to fire off exactly 8 bullets.
Cowering from the hordes when you miss, which come at you in a little over 180 degrees (make sure to look to your extreme left and right!), is all but useless, so hitting the reload marker, executing headshots, grabbing guns and slow-mo drinks in concert really makes this game a fast-paced romp that immerses by sheer chaos alone.
This, however, is where the overall comfort of the game breaks immersion. Because this is an on-rails shooter, you’re necessarily swept from position to position across the map, and the game accomplishes this in two ways; ‘normal mode’, which automatically transitions your POV to each shooting position, or ‘comfort mode’, a removal of the sweeping camera in favor of automatic teleportation. Neither are really great in terms of immersion, one less so, one more so.
If you haven’t guessed where I was going with that, I’ll just come out and say it. Normal mode is downright sickening. Oftentimes I found myself being moved laterally, forward and being stopped without warning—a recipe for nausea if I’ve ever seen one. If you happen to have an iron stomach and a penchant for non-controllable locomotion, this may not bother you as much as it did me, but I could only play a two 10-minute levels before I gasped for the relief of comfort mode.
While the automatic teleportation of comfort mode also infringes on immersion by not giving you control over your own movement, it is much less jarring even though it left me feeling uneasy about when and where I would be whisked off to next.
That said, Drop Dead was surprisingly fun despite these flaws, and is an easy game to pick up for short excursions into zombie carnage. Take a look at our ’10 minutes of Gameplay’ for Drop Dead to get an eyeball-full of the intense action of this on-rails wave shooter.
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
Raw Data, a first-person combat game from Survios currently in Early Access, is one of the most fast-paced and exciting games out for HTC Vive and Oculus Touch right now. Far from being a simple shooting gallery, Raw Data gives you an impressive range of abilities and physical agency, making you feel like you’re in real danger. And if you can master the controls, you’ll feel like a superhuman badass too.
Raw Data Details:
Official Site
Developer: Survios Publisher: Survios Available On: HTC Vive (Steam), Oculus Touch (Home) Reviewed On: HTC Vive. Oculus Touch Release Date: July 15th, 2016 (Vive) – March 16th, 2017 (Touch)
Note 03/16/17: The article has been updated to include impressions of the game’s recent support for Oculus Touch. You’ll find those impressions in a section at the bottom. The article is otherwise untouched, save the insertion of ‘Oculus Rift/Touch’ where needed. Because of the herculean effort of updating every Early Access review to reflect changes, you’ll see that initial impressions are left intact, but you’ll also find a section below discussing updates since the game’s July 2016 launch on Steam.
Note 07/18/16: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game only at its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score.
Eden Corp, your standard “we’re not evil” evil corporation, is oppressing the world, and it’s your job as a member of hacker group SyndiK8 to infiltrate them. Choosing your character—the gun-wielding ‘gun cleric’ Bishop or the katana-swinging ‘cyber ninja’ Saija—it’s your job to extract massive amounts of data and defend vulnerable data cores so you can expose Eden Corp for what they really are, a “we say we’re not evil, but in all actuality we’re super evil, and you probably should have known that already” type of company.
Oh. And they have killer robots.
Gameplay
Although Raw Data is essentially a wave-shooter, it’s anything but simple, as it presents an engaging blend of tower defense elements, special unlockable moves, and a multiplayer mode that will have you battling alongside your friends on Steam or Oculus Home. Yes, that’s cross-platform, folks.
There’s a real sense of immediate danger in Raw Data too. I don’t know if it’s the fact that the game’s robot adversaries are well over 2 meters tall, or that they creep forward with seemingly no regard for their own safety, or that they’re constantly firing lasers at my face, or that when they come up to you they start punching you in the face—but it’s safe to say that Raw Data put me in a real panic the first few times I played.
If you choose Bishop, it’s best to practice with your pistol back at the starting point before you jump right in, because once you’re in a mission the learning curve gets steep fairly quickly. Because robots. Are. Everywhere. And if you don’t immediately understand how to reload consistently, you’re due for a robo-beating.
Later on in the game I learned how to reload my pistols instantly by touching them to my hip/ lower back, but the early manual reloading—using one hand to pull out a magazine and slide it into my pistol—was pretty frustrating. Several times while ducking behind a barrier to hide from an onslaught of baddies, I ended up swapping my empty pistol into my non-dominant shooting hand somehow, which is super frustrating when you have a load of enemies firing laser and punching you in the face. It happened consistently enough to make me more aware of how to carefully reload, and also keep an eye on my bullet counter so I didn’t run dry of bullets in time of need.
Then again, if you do screw up somehow by reloading, you can always punch them. No, really. You can punch a robot in the face to death. This is great when it works, which isn’t all the time though, and the same goes for Saija’s swords.
Using the sword should probably be the easiest, and most gratifying of the two, and Saija’s energy katanas sound good on paper if you’re the sort of person who wants to dispatch your enemies up close and personal ninja-style. I didn’t feel like they always worked as they should though, as slashing at a target sometimes didn’t register a hit. Thankfully you can also fire range weapons like ethereal shurikens, and even toss your swords like boomerangs, which are both reliable. If only up-close combat was.
Whether you’re slicing or shooting though, detaching an evil robot’s head from its body and seeing purple fluid spurt out gives me a clear sense of accomplishment. And getting through all four, which took me well over 3 hours, was an even bigger one, requiring me to recruit the help of a friend to accomplish.
Since it’s in Early Access, there are currently only two heroes (see update section), but Survios told us that at least two more are coming out with the game’s full release. They also gave us a better look at the individual abilities and weapons in our deep dive with the Raw Data devs if you’re interested in a more detailed look at the game.
Immersion
As far as VR first-person shooters go, Raw Data is probably the most feature-rich out there. The world is cohesive and clearly approaching what I would call ‘AAA level’ of polish. That said, there are a few things that may thwart your attempts at feeling fully immersed in the space, all of which are no real fault of the game itself.
Avatars in multiplayer are kind of wonky. Because both the Vive and Oculus Rift only has three tracking points (the headset and two controllers), Raw Data is essentially making its best guess at the position of your full body. It does this by using inverse kinematics (IK)—a method of predicting how your joints bend—and then cleverly blending animations to smooth out any accompanying strangeness. That doesn’t always stop elbows and knees from bending the wrong way though in VR, making you look weird to your friends in multiplayer. This is however pretty much unavoidable when dealing with full body avatars using the Vive’s provided gear, so you certainly can’t knock Survios for putting their best effort forward.
Robots sometimes clip through you. On one of the levels (I won’t say which as to avoid spoiling the fun) you’re introduced to crawling, zombie-like robots. Their beady glowing eyes stare at you as they crab-walk in from the darkness, predictably scaring whatever bejesus you may still have retained from the previous level. That is until they jump at you and clip through your body, breaking the illusion. It’s clear that AI just isn’t good enough yet to guarantee that enemies will react to your physical movements, or anticipate where you’ll be next.
These are relatively minor gripes when talking about immersion, and aren’t unique to Raw Data.
Comfort
Teleportation is one of the best ways to get around in VR in terms of comfort, and Raw Data has a special take on it that has some interesting trade-offs. You don’t actually blink-teleport, but rather you quickly glide to your chosen spot. Because the game uses plenty of particle effects, and the transition is quick enough, danger of motion-induced VR sickness (aka ‘sim sickness’) is pretty minimal, but more than you would experience with blink-teleportation. This, I felt, keeps you more present in the game by letting you keep an eye on the action as it happens around you so you can better plan your next split-second attack.
With the exception of Saija’s jump move, which launches you in the air for high-flying downward strike, the gameis surprisingly comfortable for what is shaping up to be one of virtual reality’s greatest first-person shooters.
Oculus Touch Impressions
According to Survios, the Oculus version of Raw Data—which for now only seems accessible through Oculus Home and not Steam— has been “completely optimized and reengineered specifically for its two- and three-camera tracking and Touch controls.”
If you have three or more sensors, you’re likely to experience the game’s room-scale glory just like the Vive, letting you turn around and slash and shoot with nary a care for your IRL direction. However, if like most people you only have two sensors, you’re in for a bit of a learning curve to get past the Touch controller’s biggest out-of-the-box limitation: occlusion.
To combat this, Survios has enabled a 90-degree snap-turn, aka ‘comfort mode’ to go along with the game’s frenetic teleportation scheme as well as an ‘arrow guardian’ to help you recognize when you’ve turned completely around and are about to lose Touch-positional tracking. The arrow guardian isn’t at all annoying thankfully—i.e. no audio cues, or big ‘TURN AROUND’ signs to block your line of sight so you can take a quick shot at an incoming robot. It simply flashes a neon arrow to get you turned back around, something that may seem garish in any other game, but works well in the high stress, 360 environment of Raw Data.
Raw Data is still in early access, meaning small things like button mapping aren’t final. That said, I had trouble with this aspect of the Touch-compatible game.
To snap right, you press the ‘A’ button on your right controller; and to snap left, the ‘X’ button on your left—logical and simple. In the thrill of the fight though, I kept instinctively wanting to use the joy stick for this like many other games. Also, because the left snap is mapped to ‘X’, I kept accidentally mashing ‘Y’ which brings up a menu screen, effectively rendering my reloading hand useless until I could figure out what I did wrong. I concede that sometimes I have what is called in the medical field as ‘dumb baby fingers’. Again, three sensor setups won’t suffer my dumb-baby-fingered plight, as you can play the game with the knowledge that your Touch controllers will be tracked in room-scale.
Despite the dumb-baby-finger learning curve and having to pay closer attention to the new arrow guardian, Raw Data on Oculus Touch can be just as fun as the Vive version.
Updates
Survios has pushed several updates for the game while still in Early Access, including a new shotgun-wielding hero (‘Boss’), greatly improved multiplayer, and a new mission called Cataclysm which the studio promises is “the most challenging level to date.” According to Survios, players on both platforms also gain access to several brand-new features, including a balancing of new and reworked abilities for heroes Saija and Boss.
Summary:Raw Data is a heavy-hitting, fast-paced game that’s more than just a simple wave shooter. While it presses all the right buttons with atmosphere and feel, the game is on the bleeding edge of virtual interaction, which sometimes doesn’t work as well as it should. Despite its technical flaws, it’s one of the best VR shooters for HTC Vive and Oculus Touch out currently.
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
