GAME REVIEW: Vader Immortal Ep1 (Quest)

(Rome - Ratatat)

One of the biggest hurdles that virtual reality had to get over was people looking at it like it was a gimmick rather than a legitimate entertainment platform.  This wasn't helped at all by a number of people who tried to cash in on VR in the early days by making said gimmicks disguised as games.

These days, that hurdle has been overcome with monster titles like Beat Saber, SuperHot VR, Moss, and Arizona Sunshine.  They're all legitimate titles with the potential for tons of gameplay and they were all either designed for VR or have been converted for it in a way that takes full advantage.

Now we get to the part where I started seeing trailers for a Star Wars VR game that came with lightsabers and force powers, AND a lightsaber training mode where you got to fight with laser droids and lightsaber droids and IT'S STAR WARS!  Even better, after its launch, Vader Immortal started getting really great reviews and showing up on people's top 10 lists for VR games!

So of course I downloaded it almost immediately once I got my Quest up and running and found out very quickly.

Then I started wondering if I downloaded the wrong game, because Vader Immortal Episode 1 is very, VERY clearly...a gimmick.  It's a very pretty, very well-made gimmick, but it's a gimmick non-the-less.   

VI tells the story of a random smuggler and their stereotypically plucky droid named ZOE3 on a random mission doing smuggler things.  They're suddenly pulled out of hyperspace and back into realspace above Mustafar, which Star Wars stalwarts will recognize as Darth Vader's home base.  Things go sideways from there, as you would assume they would.  The majority of the game is moving through corridors, climbing, and...moving through corridors again.  There are a few combat-related sections of the game that are very much the highlight of the entire experience, but they're brief. 

Graphically, VI is one of the prettier games in the Quest's arsenal, but that's a rather low bar where Star Wars is concerned. A lot of Star Wars is airbrushed and smooth metal, so there isn't much work for the Quest's admittedly out of date Snapdragon to do.

The gameplay and interaction with VI is one of those areas where you really have to grit your teeth a little because of how...well, good it is.  Someone put a -ton- of work into the interface and the functionality, and it was wasted on the overall experience.  The level of precision and ease with which you can navigate the world and the game menus is just incredible, but it sort of...doesn't matter because of how limited the game itself is.  This is never more obvious than during a particular section of the game where you find a lightsaber.  The next few minutes of gameplay made me shout, "Worth the price of admission, right there!" into my living room.  My wife was confused.  So were my cats.  Then I regretted jinxing it a few minutes later because...well, the game got dull again.

That, right there, is what Vader Immortal is banking on, methinks.  Walking around, climbing, hacking, fettling with hydrospanner ports, it all feels GREAT, but it's nowhere near enough.  

"But Steve," you cry, "What about the Lightsaber Dojo?"

The Lightsaber Dojo is a part of the VI experience where you can walk into a room, pick up a lightsaber, and practice various skills against Jedi training remotes or droids holding variants of faux-lightsabers.  It may be the single biggest wasted opportunity in the entire game.  The tutorial for it is very brief and poorly explained.  Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but it could have been so much better:

- There's no way to select what enemies you want to fight against, at least not in the version I played.  What if I don't want to play against training remotes? What if I only want to play against droids?  What if I want to fight stormtroopers?  What if I want to duel another Jedi?  You can't control any of it.

- There's no real skill involved beyond facing the right direction and swinging in a vaguely correct manner.  Want to deflect a laser bolt back at a training remote?  Block enough of them and it will eventually happen, but there's no precision there, no way to get good enough to make it happen on the first shot.

- The drones attack with the same speed and patterns virtually every time.  There's no mystery, and because of that, no real challenge. 

Again, it's fun, but I can't help but feel like it was also ... tacked on.  A gimmick.

In that respect, I guess it fits the rest of the game perfectly.  Alas.