Overall, this is a game inextricably VR-linked in soul if not body, but that's no bad thing. Massively VR-enhanced arcade multiplayer dogfighting action limited only by small single player offering.
'Get back to your damn desk and add more particle effects now!!!'
If you know VR, you know this one. On the eve of the dawn of VR, Valkyrie finally dropped out of alpha space like the flagship it was, as a free preorder launch, and ergo one of the most highly visible, titles for the Oculus Rift. It released later for PSVR and Vive. It was one of the bigguns, for sure. A real showcase for the first generation.
Flash forward to now, it's perhaps the most 'covering all bases' VR release yet. With the release of the Warzone update last year there is now concurrent crossplay between all platforms and it's been non-VR ported to boot. Come one, come all, to the great neutral zone gaming bonanza!
You know the way this story goes. Multiplayer games are time bombs. They need that initial spark and an irrevocable end. Except they don't usually end on a bang, but more of a whimper. Perhaps they're more like the resulting radiation of a nuclear bomb with its slow decay. Just like Sparc, the population is currently struggling, but not to quite the same extent. Their efforts haven't been without some success. Pick your moment and you might get a handful of players, maybe a scattering. I wish I had seen peak population whenever it might have been, but it sounds like the game struggled somewhat all its life - this culminating in the studio disbanding. VR multiplayer will continue to walk the playerbase tightrope for the coming years, I think. Hell, battle royale in the dominating place it is, multiplayer in general is a nightmare space.
It's not all gloom and doom for Eve, though. The AI is more than competent for perfectly fun matches. They're programmed so that they don't hold off on activity - they'll capture points, they'll attack cooling nodes on your carrier, they'll pick up the deliverables, etc. It's great quality of life stuff. When you do encounter others, the mix of the two keeps you on your toes. I found I was being killed by the AI more than anyone!
One way to best get a sense of the game at this point, I think, is to slip out of VR for a trice. I think like Sparc the presentation here is such purist fare, I'm always slightly taken aback! The dramatic, gravelly voiceovers narrating your quitting the game - 'the fight will never end! - the photorealistic slant, the serious story snippets, etc. It actually has its own charm to me at this point. The game outside of VR feels very exposed. Its space dogfighting arcade action starts to feel unduly standard fare and loses much of its identity. It feels perhaps it was too nestled in the arms of VR to form a confident, independent identity.
The best part.
Yet, when you're in VR, it all hits you. The smoke and lights of the magnetic launcher rush into the battlefield every spawn, your death animation wherein glass shatters out and the inside of your ship freezes a deathly blue, the presence of ships around you, and your head-tracking control of weapons. It feels like the perfect VR entry game. A good dose of some of the overly familiar to settle you in, but a spoonful of VR sugar to show you the difference. That's why the non-VR release maybe feels so homeless.
That's not to say it has no independent appeal of VR. What they've expanded on with the Warzone expansion strikes a wonderful Overwatch chord. A huge wealth of class-based ships outfitted with support, defence and offensive abilities with very different primary and secondary weapon capabilities. It's wonderful stuff, complete with individual ship progression and customisation. Balance, be damned, though, since upgrades are straight up modular XP-bought enhancements in ability timers, shield and weapon improvements. At least microtransactions of the loot crate variety are easily avoidable. Still, exploration of the ships is perhaps the biggest boon the game has. Each even has a pseudo-history lovingly written for them. It's massive fun and you'll find your favourites. Namely, Hydra and Shadow for me. Both take advantage of the wonderful head-tracking aiming in VR with very heavy munitions, the ability to use anti-missile ECM and temporary invulnerability for the former, and stealth abilities in invisibility for the latter. It only makes me long for full head-tracking for all of the ships. To have to rely on whole-ship manoeuvred aiming feels unwieldy after seeing the other side and it would have allowed it to take yet more advantage of VR and feel truly unique.
When everything comes together, it's the arcade shooter I've always wanted. Awesome production in its fidelity and voice acting offerings, accessible but tactical class-based dogfighting - it's the complete 'come back for more' package in the gameplay loop it provides. I won't say it feels like you're actually in a ship, since that should be reserved for more games with more sim-like sensibilities, I feel. I think most of us have got over those heady days of first encountering VR and can just say with confidence that VR helps an arcade shooter like this truly realise something new beyond its standard purview. The presence VR delivers alongside the booming sound of laser blasts and striking visuals makes for a better game feel - nothing more, nothing less.
The multiplayer modes are a wonderful, if predictable assortment of capturing points, team deathmatch, and the standout - carrier assault. I love the almost Star Wars quality captured from assaulting either side's Star Destroyer like fleet ships. You capture points, and whichever side prevails gets the enemy ship's shield taken down temporarily. They can then target cooling nodes before, in a small nod to the trench run, braving the innards of the ship to hit the core. It's a great multi-step mode, but can feel lengthy when assaulting a ship with all its defensive turrets and the other team's ships on your case make for a lot of unproductive suicide runs! The maps themselves are fairly small but densely packed with debris for interesting to fight in spaces and colourful nebula. As with many dogfighting games, combat all demands you be rather close to be in range, so the placement of capture points and these great structures you can weave around are actually crucial to granting some ability to avoid and get the drop on your enemy.
I hate when lasers and missiles leave a crack in the windshield.
There is a single player offering here, but the chronicles story mode lasts all of an hour. It might be of some interest to those intrigued in the lore, but it's rather meagre pickings for everyone else. Survival mode is a fun aside, if not really delivering more story. Exploration mode removes dogfighting entirely in place of a freeform seeking out of 'place of interest' nodes for story context in each of the multiplayer maps. It's a fun distraction but exposes how slow your ships can feel when you haven't got a target in sight. At least it injects some personality into the maps. Again, one for lore fanatics, maybe! Alongside the fully realised histories of the ships, there seems a decent offering for that particular audience.
Overall, this is a game inextricably VR-linked in soul if not body, but that's no bad thing. An arcade multiplayer space dogfighting game set in the Eve universe that offers slim pickings on the single player front, but is massively enhanced and engaging in the light of VR. It might not be a big VR success story, but it was one of the first games to show us VR's potential and still does. Its additions in the Warzone expansion turn it into an interesting class-based shooter in its own right. Still well worth a look if you're looking for this kind of experience in VR and can look past the somewhat time-dependent playerbase. It remains a truly unique experience in the space that you can't really get anywhere else.
