Pat PilcherPAT PILCHER becomes a giant squid, survives a lethal prehistoric world, battles sword-bearing robots and more in this special gaming roundup.
Tentacular
Tentacular puts you in the shoes (er, tentacles?) of a giant squid, the last of its kind. You explore a cartoony virtual world and interact with various objects and creatures. It’s a laugh-out-loud example of VR interaction done well.
Gameplay involves using tentacles to grab objects, move around, and interact with other characters. I liked its easy-to-learn controls. They made exploration a lot of fun. Learning to drive my virtual tentacles saw me slapping around objects and people, often leaving me chuckling as I did so.
One part of Tentacular that grew on me as I played through it was its engaging storyline. You’re the last of your species and are trying to find a way to not become extinct. While not the most in-depth plot, it adds enough emotional engagement that I became more invested in the gameplay.
Tentacular’ s sound design is well-crafted and makes good use of the PS5’s spatial sound capabilities, extending the feeling of space and immersion. Its sandbox design, humour, accessibility, and engaging story give it wide appeal.
Demeo
Demeo is a turn-based dungeon crawler that supports one-to-four players. You’re thrown into a fantasy world where you must master standard D&D gameplay by battling monsters, finding treasure, and solving puzzles.
Demeo’s eye candy is impressive. In-game environments and characters are richly detailed. Its excellent graphics are helped along by a solid sound design that delivers suitably atmospheric music. Crucially for a dungeon crawler, the controls are straightforward too.
The standout feature of Demeo is its co-op mode. Teaming up with other PS5-owning friends for a nerdy dose of Dungeons & Dragons nostalgia was fun. Turn-based combat feels well-designed and doesn’t get in the way of gameplay. Where Demeo wins is in its sheer playability. You can pick it up and play, even if you’ve never played other dungeon crawlers.
Runner
If you’re an anime sci-fi fan, you’ll love Runner. You play a courier who delivers packages in a futuristic city (more on that later). While the plot is thin, the city environs deliver gorgeous VR eye candy. Gameplay is also fast and addictive.
Put simply, you must get to the end of each level without dying. The game is set on a planet whose sunward side is incinerator-level hot. In contrast, the other side is cryogenically cold. Because of this, its population lives in a temperate zone between both sides. If the anime cyberpunk thing smokes your kipper, you can download a mobile companion app for added depth. The in-game story is sparse, so you’re left to fill in the blanks. This also allows for more gameplay and less boring NPC blather explaining everything.
As a courier, you ride a bike, controlling it with your controller’s thumbsticks. Your bike and weapons can be upgraded. Some power-ups charge up your shields, give you more missiles, or even beef up the gun mounted to your bike as you ride.
You also have a sword for deflecting incoming projectiles. In terms of actual gameplay, it’s fast, furious, hard, and utterly addictive! I kept coming back for more. It took me over two hours of play (and note-taking) to complete all seven stages. Once done, I went back for more.
Song In The Smoke Rekindled
Song In The Smoke is the PSVR2 version of the surprise hit survival game. You’re in the prehistoric wilds where anything and everything wants to kill you. It starts with a tutorial showing you the basics, such as collecting song stones. Get the three stones in each level, and then you and a boss are fighting.
You have a map, a bow, and a club to get you started, but you have to find other items to create fire and shelter so you can survive the night. Nights are short, and preparing for them takes time. Time management skills are crucial as a day/night cycle is just 20 minutes.
Eating is a biggie. You can eat berries, mushrooms, or meat, even if meat means hunting. It doesn’t just end with hunting, either. You’ll need to butcher the animal, eat the meat, and use the intestines to replenish your bowstring and the skin for clothes/warmth.
Creating fire is a must. To do this, you must gather wood. Given the sheer volume of things you collect and use, managing your inventory plays a big part in the game. The other thing you’ll be doing is fighting to survive. Fighting adds some adrenaline and makes the game feel less of a slog, but it could have been given more nuance.
The game also uses the PSVR2’s eye tracking and haptics well. You can examine objects or climb ledges just by looking at them. Haptics helps to give the world a solid feel. They’re subtle, but they add enormously to the overall immersion.
Altair Breaker
Altair Breaker is a visually impressive sword-fighting game set on a floating island overrun by sword and gun-wielding robots. You must eliminate many of them with nothing but your wits and sword.
While the graphics had me uttering “oh wow!” and Altair Breaker did indeed sound promising, there are issues. The entire game revolves around the same single level. Sounds good, right? The trouble is the whole level is done in 15 to 40 minutes, and that’s it. You can take your character up to level 20. That’s 20 repetitions at one level, and (in theory) you get a special sword, and that’s it. Bummer.
After reaching level 20, I could not get the funky XXL Ginsu knife. Raising this issue with other players, it became clear that this is a known issue with no workaround.
If that was the only bug, that’d be unpleasant but fine. Sadly, there’s more. The multiplayer experience has NPCs that leap and then respawn, making them impossible to fight. Speaking of which, when I did fight, NPCs proved unrealistically hard to kill. While these issues are minor, getting that fancy pants sword after level 20 is a showstopper that should’ve been fixed before Altair Breaker launched.
This is a shame, as the visuals popped; hand tracking for fighting felt intuitive too. Sadly, bugs and a rushed launch have wasted Altair Breaker’s potential.
