As a first-person mash-up of the 1980 arcade games, Pac-Man and Berzerk, and the aesthetics of the 1982 movie, Tron, the developers of Trakker are clearly not shy about taking inspiration from some of the best creations of the early 1980s. And like those video games from simpler times, where you could figure out the mechanics shortly after dropping in your quarter and beginning play, Trakker puts a premium on accessibility.

In the game, you’re cast as one of the guardians of the digital realms, called TRAKKERS, where you patrol maze-like node structures to defend against virus-like intruders out to consume all life. Much like Berzerk, where you could choose to stay and fight or simply exit to another robot-filled room, Trakker gives you the option to collect files to slow down the attacks, go for the ultimate victory and try and save the complete system, or simply escape the maze.

Trakker is a standing, room-scale experience for the Vive or Vive Pro. With the Vive controllers, you press the trigger to fire the blaster, which requires time to recharge, and, in an interesting twist, move by pressing the Grip button and swinging your arms in a running motion. You turn by physically turning your body. Gameplay consists of Pac-Man-like running through each maze and collecting blue blocks, shooting the virus-like enemies, and finding the exit.

There are eight levels to explore and three different difficulty levels. Each node has the trio of objectives to strive for, which includes finding the exit, destroying all of the intruders, and securing the files. You can accomplish some or all of those goals each time you play a maze and are free to go back and try again at any time.

Visually, the game resembles Tron, with simple shapes and bright, glowing colors set against dark backgrounds. This minimalist aesthetic works well with the sound design, which features synthwave music by Milwaukee artist, DASHCAM, aka Donny Jankowski. Although I’m not sure if I’m supposed to know who DASHCAM is, his music does provide a professional sounding, pulse-pounding backdrop for the cyberpunk motif and a great excuse for a cool synchronized visualization effect that lines the maze walls. Sound effects serve their purpose, but take something of a back seat to the music, with only very simple sounds reminiscent of older arcade games present.

While not the deepest of experiences, Trakker does provide short doses of satisfying action-oriented play that recalls early 1980s arcade games without slavishly copying them. And frankly, these shorter gameplay sessions are even more welcome because of Trakker‘s unique movement controls. After all, there’s only so long you want to be pumping your arms like that, even with the incentive of hearing more of the stellar soundtrack.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars.

Trakker is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: Trakker appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

As anyone who owns a good virtual reality headset knows, there’s no better way to immerse yourself in a great video game experience. The sense of “being there” and directly performing actions is unmatched by any other form of digital play. And when it comes to horror, virtual reality can both delight and terrify in ways that even the scariest and most well-crafted movie experiences can’t even think about matching.

Of course, as with anything, there are clumsy virtual reality implementations that stumble in important areas like visuals or in maintaining terror, relying, for instance, on too many jump scares that eventually lose their impact. Fortunately, having previously developed the well-received A Chair in a Room: Greenwater and The Harbinger Trials, the team behind The Exorcist: Legion VR are certainly no strangers to what goes into a good, sophisticated virtual reality fright.

Set in the world of William Peter Blatty’s famous The Exorcist series of novels and movies, which dates all the way back to 1971, The Exorcist: Legion VR, casts you as a Boston homicide detective tasked with investigating a series of ritualistic murders. Each of the game’s five chapters can be played individually, or as part of a larger story.

While The Exorcist: Legion VR is one of the pricier virtual reality titles, at least if purchased outside of Viveport, you do get all five chapters, rather than just one, for the complete experience. Since each chapter lasts less than 30 minutes, you’ll have around 2 hours or so of total gameplay, or the equivalent of a particularly long horror film. Each chapter, which includes First Rites, Idle Hands, Skin Deep, Samaritan, and The Tomb, offers its own unique setting, secrets, and demonic boss enemy to confront, preferably when armed with the right artifact.

In First Rites, you investigate a blood-covered place of worship where you find a notebook filled with writings of demonic possession and the ritualistic murder of a priest. In Idle Hands, you visit Lucie Moss, a mentally ill school teacher whose dabblings in the occult have made her a victim of a malicious entity. In Skin Deep, you investigate a wave of infant deaths that appear to have a supernatural connection. In Samaritan, you investigate an unknown plague in a failed quarantine zone in Haiti. Finally, in The Tomb, you’re transported deep into the mountains of Upper Mesopotamia to face Pazuzu, a demon who will put all of the skills you learned from the previous chapters to the test.

Designed for Vive, Vive Pro, or Oculus Rift owners, The Exorcist: Legion VR is a room-scale experience that can be played seated or standing. While you have lots of options, the most immersive way to play is standing, armed with both Vive controllers and the default control scheme. With this setup, you can more easily investigate your surroundings and find and use the right equipment against the various demons. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that this setup gives you the illusion of more control and freedom of movement, which is a big plus in a game that can wear down even the heartiest of constitutions with its truly terrifying theatrics.

The Exorcist: Legion VR‘s audio-visual quality is top-notch. Detailed, realistic environments and ambient lighting come together to create one of the better-looking virtual reality experiences, topped off with demonic character models that give even the most iconic movie monsters a run for their money. The sound design is arguably even better, with genuinely creepy ambient sounds and positional audio that will send chills up your spine and have you constantly looking over your shoulder, if not completely turned around in terror.

While The Exorcist: Legion VR suffers a bit from shallow gameplay, where your biggest challenge is managing and using your inventory at the right time, if you’re looking for a good fright, the journey is still well worth it. While it would have been nice to have more than a few hours of total gameplay, even accounting for its optional puzzles and alternate objectives to achieve a 100% rating in each chapter, this relatively short length does help keep the virtual reality experience more comfortable for those of us who literally have trouble stomaching lengthier play sessions. And it’s especially hard to fault each chapter’s concise nature when the terror is so expertly crafted, never giving you a sense that any part of the experience is filler.

Score: 5 out of 5 stars.

The Exorcist: Legion VR is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review – The Exorcist: Legion VR appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

For the uninitiated, escape rooms are live action adventure games where a group of players solve a series of puzzles through a combination of strategy and simple trial-and-error. According to a recent article in USA TODAY, which referenced the Room Escape Artist blog database, there were only 22 escape rooms in the US in 2014. By the summer of 2017, the database estimates there were almost 2,000 escape room facilities. As you might expect, such a popular live action competitive game soon made its way over to videogames, with virtual reality the most natural fit for the concept. Space Panic VR (Room Escape) attempts to stand out in an increasingly crowded competitive landscape by making its puzzles literally out of this world, set aboard a space station in the not-too-distant future.

Space Panic VR (Room Escape) can be played either standing or seated in a room-scale environment. It makes use of both Vive controllers and three key actions: Teleport, Grab, and Use. Teleport is a way to quickly move about the space station. Grab allows you to take hold of an object and move it. And Use lets you utilize one object with another. There’s also simple inventory management via an item belt if you need access to more than two objects.

Visually, the game is bright and clean, with well-modeled graphics when set to the game’s higher quality settings. Unfortunately, if you don’t or can’t set the game to one of its highest graphical quality settings, it can be difficult to have enough visual clarity to solve some of the puzzles. This is an important limitation to keep in mind if your particular computer is on the lower end of the recommended specifications. 

Environmental and object audio sounds suitably realistic. While there’s no background music, there is a constant hum from the normal functions of the space station, which some may find a bit annoying.

In general, the puzzles are fair, although not every challenge fits well with the futuristic space-based setting or is particularly inspired. For example, there’s a sliding tile puzzle that’s about as generic as it gets and really makes little sense as to why it would even appear on a space station. Unfortunately, this lack of cohesion and somewhat haphazard puzzle placement is the norm for the game.

If you don’t mind that the setting seems like an afterthought at times and there’s little rhyme or reason to the puzzles being what they are, you can still have fun trying to escape the space station. And if you’re particularly good at solving puzzles, there’s a nice Panic Mode that adds a time-based element that many competing escape room games lack. Unfortunately, this example of thoughtfulness is missing in many other places in the game. As such, it’s a shame that the developers weren’t able to elevate the overall experience to as high of a level as some of their growing number of competitors in virtual reality escape room games. As it is, Space Panic VR (Room Escape) is strictly middle-of-the-road.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars.

Space Panic VR (Room Escape) is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: Space Panic VR (Room Escape) appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

Although it seems like eons ago in technology years, playing music video games with semi-realistic plastic instruments was a really big deal as recently as the mid-2000s. Despite their popularity having waned dramatically from their fad-driven peaks, the core concept of playing a musical instrument, or singing, to a popular song still holds a lot of appeal. Thankfully, with Riff VR and the power of virtual reality, we can do away with the plastic peripherals and enjoy a self-contained, less hassle-prone guitar, drums, or vocal experience.

After selecting one of its three difficultly levels, Riff VR starts you in the rehearsal area, where you’re joined by your virtual bandmates. As you improve and hit certain score targets, you can advance to a garage, TV studio, and, eventually, a stadium.

Riff VR is designed for Vive, Vive Pro, or Oculus Rift owners. It’s playable as a seated or standing room-scale experience. Naturally, playing guitar and singing are best-suited to standing, while drumming is best-suited to sitting, but you’re obviously free to perform any way you’re most comfortable. In fact, the drum kit’s height is fully adjustable.

Using both motion controllers is intuitive and natural, with color-coded areas to hit on the right beat. For guitar, your right arm strums, while your left arm moves on the virtual fingerboard (support for left-handed players is promised in a future update). For drums, you move both controllers in a drum banging motion. For vocals, I was under the impression you were supposed to hold one controller near your mouth like a microphone as you read the words on the screen karaoke style, but that option, or the on-screen words, ever appeared for me. Other bugs, like a missing left controller or incorrect guitar height occasionally cropped up as well.

As of this writing there are 20 licensed songs built-in, as well as one unlockable bonus song, broken into three main categories: Modern Classics, Classic Metal, and Classic Rock. For Modern Classics, there are songs like “Kryptonite” from 3 Doors Down and “Breakfast at Tiffanys” from Deep Blue Something. For Classic Metal, there are songs like “I was made for loving you” by Kiss and “The Final Countdown” by Europe. For classic rock, there are songs like “Rocky Mountain Way” from Joe Walsh and “Hold on Loosely” from 38 Special. In short, while Riff VR doesn’t have the most expansive library, it does pack some well-known, fun-to-play songs.

A nice touch is that you can use the integrated streaming option to record your performance to YouTube, Twitch, or Facebook, as well in OBS or LIV formats. There’s also a free companion app for iPhone users, Riff AR, with an Android version due at a later date. With this augmented reality app, you can place the virtual band in your own real-world environments, among other features.

Beyond just playing music, you can also use the Creative Hub to design your own environments to play in. This is a fairly robust drag and drop creation set, letting you place, move, and scale objects, change the lighting, and more.

Visually, the game goes for the type of hyped up, semi-realistic look common to this genre of video game. The graphics are nothing special, with uneven motion captured animations that often fail to impart any connection to the current song. It goes without saying that the audio quality is top-notch thanks to the use of real hit songs.

Riff VR goes a long way to showing that there’s still life left in the music video game genre. By doing away with the need for extraneous peripherals, it’s easy to enjoy the core mechanics of the experience. Although I ran into my fair share of bugs with this version of the game, it still proved to me there’s a reason why these types of games used to be so popular.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars.

Riff VR is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: Riff VR appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

Charades, the classic multiplayer guessing game where a single person acts out, mimes, or otherwise tries to silently interpret each syllable of a word or entire phrase while the rest of the group guesses, has origins dating back to the 18th century. Although this still popular party parlor game and its many variations, which depend so much on live interaction, seem like a poor concept to base a virtual reality experience on, Puppet Fever comes at the problem with a clever solution.

Instead of directly acting out the charade, the player uses puppets and props as proxies, creating an ad hoc puppet show in the process. One simple example with the assigned phrase of “fight fire with fire” is to select an angry ball, light it on fire, then select an angry guy with a torch and light the torch on fire. Then, move the angry guy around like he’s fighting with the ball. In the time the puppeteer is doing all of this, the other players try to guess the correct phrase. 

Puppet Fever can be played seated in any size room and makes use of both Vive controllers to select and control the puppets and props. If you’re playing local hot seat multiplayer, you’ll also need your computer’s primary display available to the other players. While local multiplayer supports up to three other players in addition to the puppeteer, there’s also built-in support for Mixer live streaming for those who want to play and interact with larger, remote groups. Of course, there are bots to play with if you ever find yourself alone, which is definitely serviceable, but is not really where this type of party game experience shines.

There are hundreds of English word cards to play, including tips on how you might act out the words or phrases. And if you happen to understand Swedish, the developers have included hundreds more phrases in their native language. There are also hundreds of puppets and props, ranging from humanoid characters and animals to set pieces like tables and mountains, so there is no shortage of content to play puppet master with. Of course, with such an excellent foundation in place, it would be great if the developers could release even more content in the future.

With all of the content and possibilities for puppeteering fun, the developers have also thoughtfully included additional options beyond the game proper. You can not only take photos and videos of your own dramatic puppet productions, but can also share them on social media. For creative types, this feature can justify the price of entry all by itself.

For all that Puppet Fever offers, perhaps its most impressive accomplishment is taking a classic real-world party game that relies so much on a visual connection between the actor and guessers, and making it seem like it was designed with virtual reality in mind in the first place. This is a unique, high-quality experience that truly showcases the amazing potential of virtual reality to successfully interpret even the most challenging concepts.

Score: 5 out of 5 stars.

Puppet Fever is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: Puppet Fever appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

As its name implies, PractisimVR is a practical pistol shooting simulator. But what exactly is practical shooting?

Practical shooting, which is also referred to as dynamic or action shooting because of how active it is, is a set of handgun-based shooting sports where competitors compete on the principles of precision, power, and speed. The goal is to score as many points as possible in the shortest amount of time, up to a maximum time set. Each course is called a stage, and each shooter tackles a stage individually. The active part comes into play because a shooter must move and shoot from several different positions, as well as fire over, under, or through openings in obstacles. Because there are no set stage designs, finding thoughtful and inventive ways of shooting as many of the targets as possible, while still missing as few times as possible, is what makes practical shooting place almost as high of a value on quick strategic planning as it does on good aim.

Once loaded, PractisimVR inexplicably starts you out on the second floor of a building in an old west ghost town, at night. From this location you change various settings and preferences, play one of the game modes, enter the tutorial, or select the Stage Designer. You can also target and shoot some of the town’s props, like barrels and bottles, before selecting one of the main options.

At present, there are seven game types and 35 stages to choose from, but the developers continue to work on the game, so there are still regular content additions. Courses are structured in a way that you’d typically find in USPSA, IPSC, and Pro-am sports. And for those familiar with the sport and its organizations, there are also eight official stages from the Steel Challenge discipline. For those not as well-versed in the sport, all this really means is that there’s a high degree of accuracy within the simulation versus what you would see or experience in real matches.

The courses feature many different types of prop targets that follow a reliable physics model. Although you might not know what poppers, plates, plate racks, texas star, swingers, and other props are, when you hit one of these targets, it definitely reacts like how you would expect them to in real life. Using one of over a dozen well-modeled handguns and reliable targeting, you can definitely get an appreciation for the challenge and fun to be had from the actual sport.

You’ll want to play in a larger room to play PractisimVR in an optimal way. Moving quickly from target grouping to target grouping requires extra space and the type of freedom of movement best served by a room-scale setup. There’s location warping, of course, but that’s really only workable from the Stage Designer.

It’s with this Stage Designer that PracticismVR really starts to separate itself from other target-based shooting games. You have access to every in-game prop and a generous build area. Selection and placement of prop elements is simple and intuitive, and you can quickly test out any layout. As a nice bonus, these stages can be saved and shared, and then subsequently reloaded to tweak or play with again.

While the actual gameplay is well-done, there is a certain lack of polish in other areas. The person doing the voice-over is a bit monotone and seems to stumble over a few words here and there, and sometimes lacks clarity. The worst, though, is the live action tutorial video, which is about the lowest resolution and washed out video you’re likely to ever see in a commercial game. This poor quality is compounded by being blown up to big screen VR proportions.

Outside of the mediocre voice-over, the simple environmental sounds, including gunshots and target pings, are well-done. Visually, everything is crisp and clear, although less care was given to other, more superfluous environmental geometry and textures like hills and grass, which are greatly simplified.

Despite being a simulation targeted to practical shooting enthusiasts, there’s definitely fun to be had here for a broader audience. If you like the idea of having to quickly evaluate the nuances of a course to quickly take down the most targets in the least amount of time, and want to work at improving your score, then PractisimVR will definitely satisfy.

Score: 4 out of 5

PractisimVR is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: PractisimVR appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

Perplexigon is defined by Urban Dictionary as something that becomes complex as a result of over-thinking, obsessing, and evaluating. In other words, something that is overly complicated. Perplexigon the game lets you use blocks to design just about anything you can think of, from the simplest contraptions to the most complex – and complicated – creations. And unlike most virtual reality experiences, you can do it all with multiple players.

There are three types of blocks to choose from: Structural, Mechanical, and Action. Structural blocks include cubes, wheels, pyramids, rhombicuboctahedrons (Archimedean solid with eight triangular and eighteen square faces), plates, poles, and spheres. Mechanical blocks include hinges (elbow joints letting connected blocks swing about a central axis), linear compression springs letting you create shock absorbers or bouncy bits, axles (allows two sides to spin freely), and ball joints (connects two blocks with a full range of rotation between them). Action blocks include clockwise and counterclockwise remote activated motors, thrusters (applies a continuous force to whatever it’s attached to and blows away anything in its wake), and bombs (trigger an explosion remotely or link several together to really shake things up).

Additional in-game elements include guns and wires. The three types of guns are Save Gun, which can be used to save or load objects you’ve made, Teleport Gun, which can move you around the environment, and Delete Gun, which can remove individual blocks and break any wire links for that block. The wires are just like they sound, links or connections between blocks. You’ll know a wired connection between blocks has been made when you see sparks.

This wide range of blocks and actions can be enjoyed either seated or standing in any size room-scale environment. Both Vive controllers manipulate the blocks and other in-game elements within the single space-based environment. The controller’s Trigger picks up or creates blocks while in the Block menu, the Grip picks up guns or points your finger, the Menu button toggles between the Action and Block menus, and the Touch Pad selects blocks in the Block menu or activates blocks in the Action menu. Despite a very high initial learning curve with all of its available options, the control setup is intuitive enough and can soon become second nature with enough practice.

Although more environments and actual puzzled-based missions are planned for the future, right now, Perplexigon features just a single sand box environment to play in. You can use the various blocks to build whatever you’d like, then toggle gravity, trigger action blocks, or create sequenced items. For the online multiplayer mode, each of your friends (or strangers) will of course need their own copies of the game, and then you can all build things collaboratively. This is a refreshing change from the usual single-player virtual reality experience, although it will still be a challenge finding other people to play against.

While it would be nice to judge a game on its future potential, it’s only fair to evaluate what’s currently in-place. What Perplexigon delivers right now is a virtual set of building blocks, the ability to create contraptions, and the option to blow it all up. If that sounds appealing, then you’ll find a lot to like about this game. If you’re looking for something more, however, it may be best to wait to see if the additional features get added.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars.

Perplexigon is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: Perplexigon appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

Merry Snowballs [NOTE: As of this posting on January 27, 2022, Merry Snowballs has been delisted on various services] takes the familiar gameplay tropes of the omnipresent first person wave shooter genre and applies a wintry, cartoon-like Christmas theme to the experience. Billing itself as the “best snowball fighting game ever,” this stylish take on the old-fashioned shooting gallery attempts to channel the Christmas spirit and not leave us feeling cold.

Like any good wave shooter, Merry Snowballs features a variety of levels to fight through, with crazy gadgets and powerups to help augment the standard snowball throwing fun. Although the basic conceit is an over-the-top snowball fight against neighborhood kids, battles progress to include more fantastic elements like angry gingerbread men and even a Bad Santa, who makes the perfect foil in the epic final battle.

This is a standing, room-scale experience for the Vive or Oculus Rift. Because of the frantic, athletic nature of the game, you’ll want some room to maneuver comfortably within your play space. Both Vive controllers are required to throw and shoot snowballs and to provide defensive capabilities. While you start out with just a snowball in one hand and a garbage can lid in the other, you’ll soon move on to some actual weapons like a snowball cannon. As the levels progress and the challenges increase, you’ll definitely need the extra firepower, defensive capabilities, and health pickups on offer.

Each level has a certain number of kids or other enemies to take out, time bonuses, accuracy bonuses, and a target score to reach to get the maximum star rating of three out of three. With more than two dozen levels to battle through, it will be a long time before you’ll be able to maximize your score on every level. Fortunately, despite some repetition in its basic gameplay, it’s still fun to keep replaying many of the levels over and over again in hopes of bettering your score.

Merry Snowballs proves a nice change of pace from the typical blood, guts, and gore of other games in its genre. While you do hurl snowballs at your opponents, and are even encouraged to aim for the face, it’s all done in a fun, cartoony manner, with exaggerated rag doll physics as those hit crumple to the ground. There are also plenty of other fun touches to discover, like being able to knock the hat off of a kid’s head.

While the developers liken the visual experience to that of Pixar, the graphic and sound design don’t quite reach those heights. Fortunately, the game still looks and sounds great even without being comparable to what Pixar can achieve. And even if it’s not Pixar quality, Merry Snowballs still has a nice animated feature film feel to it and stands as one of the better looking virtual reality experiences.

Despite being available for most other major virtual reality systems, Merry Snowballs does a great job of taking advantage of the Vive‘s capabilities, unlike many other multi-platform experiences. It’s a game that proves both fun to play and a great virtual reality showpiece in general. Despite being yet another entry in the overcrowded first person wave shooter genre, Merry Snowballs pulls off a Christmas miracle and rises to the top of the pile.

Score: 5 out of 5 stars.

Merry Snowballs is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: Merry Snowballs appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

ThoughtCatalog has described cats as the “unofficial mascot of the Internet.” Although a seemingly outrageous statement, if anything, this declaration doesn’t give the importance of cats in popular culture enough credit. It’s no surprise then that cats are a regular subject for virtual reality experiences. Kitty Rescue VR is one such experience, with not only much to enjoy for cat lovers, but also a little something that might even please cat haters.

The premise of Kitty Rescue VR is simple. The cat, conveniently named “Kitty,” is always getting herself into trouble. It’s up to you to defy the odds and rescue Kitty from ridiculously high places.

While some virtual reality experiences try for longer play sessions, Kitty Rescue VR focuses instead on short and punchy, with the whole game broken up into three scenarios and a bonus level, taking just 5 to 10 minutes or so to complete. The three scenarios are: Window Washer, Walk The Crane, and Girder Jump.

In Window Washer, Kitty has walked onto a window washing rig that was closed for repair and is now swinging about 200 feet in the air. In Walk the Crane, Kitty wanders onto a rickety old plank at the top of a crane. And in Girder Jump, Kitty had fallen asleep on some girders and woke to find herself trapped high up on a ledge.

Each scenario builds up in intensity from the last, with Window Washer tasking you with reaching out across a void to rescue Kitty, Walk the Crane tasking you with walking across a plank and grabbing Kitty, and Girder Jump requiring you to jump from crane-to-crane, and back, to return Kitty to safety. If you have a fear of heights, this will definitely play to that, but the thoughtful scenario progression can also help you overcome it, at least within virtual reality.

Once you complete all three scenarios, the Bonus Skill Level unlocks. To play, at the scenario selection screen, you grab Kitty to begin. Targets appear and you then have to try and throw Kitty at each target in a race against the clock. Although like in the main scenarios there’s never any violence depicted – Kitty vanishes whether you miss or hit a target – it can still be cathartic to give Kitty a hearty toss if cats really aren’t your thing.

As you might expect for this type of game, Kitty Rescue VR is played standing, preferably in a larger room-scale setup because of the walking requirement in the various scenarios. Of course, you have to be careful not to walk in the wrong spot and fall down, ending your game. Each Vive controller represents a hand and is used both for grabbing Kitty in the scenarios and tossing Kitty in the bonus level. If you accidentally release the trigger when holding Kitty in the main scenarios, the cat will fall, also ending your game.

Visually, Kitty Rescue VR has a clean, clear look, with a nice mix of realistic and more cartoon-like graphics. There’s also a convincing sense of height when trying to rescue Kitty. The animation is OK, but Kitty herself is rather stiff and robotic. Music and sound effects, including Kitty’s meows, suit the overall theme.

Although Kitty Rescue VR errs on the shorter side and only features three scenarios and a bonus level, what’s there is definitely fun. It’s just a shame that this excellent foundation is not further enhanced with additional whacky scenarios to rescue the hapless Kitty from.

Score: 3 out of 5 stars.

Kitty Rescue VR is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: Kitty Rescue VR appeared first on Armchair Arcade.

The 2013 film, Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, was a convincing dramatization of how a near future low Earth orbit space disaster might unfold. By focusing on how the astronauts dealt with each increasingly dramatic event, the filmmakers brought a welcome personal touch to a movie that could have credibly stood on the magic of its special effects, and use of 3D, alone.

The much earlier 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, on the other hand, while having similarly impressive special effects relative to its era, had a more epic, sweeping story, dealing with themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and artificial intelligence (AI) along the way. It’s perhaps this latter theme that the film is most known for, where a rogue AI, HAL 9000, makes life unbearable for those onboard the spacecraft, Discovery One, which is bound for Jupiter.

By taking inspiration from both of these iconic films, Homebound has big shoes to fill. The game takes the overcoming-a-series-of-disasters theme from Gravity and mashes it up with the AI “companion” theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. As a way to make these themes more its own, Homebound introduces something that was mostly missing from those films, touches of humor, including a much-appreciated The Simpsons reference.

Designed as a seated or standing experience, you use both Vive controllers to navigate through the three different set pieces, or levels: Deep Space, Earth’s Atmosphere, and Earth. Each level takes about 10 minutes of play time, for a total of around 30 minutes of total gameplay. There are also time attack and free roam modes. In time attack, you try to beat your personal best time or challenge the best times of others. In free roam mode, you can explore the environments at your own pace.

Homebound definitely proves more experience than game. There are limited opportunities for interaction, including trying to orient yourself correctly, pushing some buttons, and moving some levers. Fortunately, as an experience, Homebound proves attractive. The visuals, save for a few disappointing textures here and there, are downright beautiful. Of course, you’ll need a fairly powerful computer to experience this game at its highest fidelity.

Unfortunately, it’s not the visuals, level of interactivity, its inspirations, humorous touches, or anything else that really defines Homebound as much as its potential for motion sickness. Floating in space, the general jerkiness of just looking around, etc., simply don’t lend themselves well to the general disconnect with what your body is doing in the real world. As such, If you’re at all prone to virtual reality motion sickness, steer clear of this one. I know I had my ginger candies working overtime for this one, even when I just stuck to playing individual 10-minute sections.

Ultimately, while Homebound does a great job of bringing the hands-off experience of watching Gravity to the more immersive potential of virtual reality, the concessions made along the way make it a difficult recommendation. Controls can be imprecise and the disconnect between what you’re doing in-game and what your body is doing in the real world can be brutal on the stomach. If you can tolerate the motion sickness and treat this mostly as a slightly more interactive short film, you may still find value here, particularly since the visuals are genuine stand-outs. For everyone else, the price to pay for experiencing this eye candy might be a bit too much.

Score: 2 out of 5 stars.

Homebound is available on Viveport or with a Viveport Subscription.

The post HTC Vive/VIVEPORT VR Review: Homebound appeared first on Armchair Arcade.