Poly Runner VR Review

Poly Runner VR is a free game at the moment  developed by Lucid Sight Inc. It's a flying game that can be controlled by the headset itself or a controller. The point of the game is to avoid obstacles as you fly across the surface of a world.

The graphics in this game are very basic and when you crash you have to restart back at the beginning again. This is a bit annoying as you only ever see the environment for the first stage and hardly ever make it far enough to see the few other worlds in the game. I grew bored of this game quite quickly. Once I made it to a certain point then crashed, to start at the beginning again I had had enough. To control the ship by tilting the headset was the best and most interesting way to fly I found.   

I give it 4/10

Hyper Bowling VR Review

Hyper Bowling VR is an indie bowling simulator game developed and published by Blaze Forward Games. It was released in 2016 for the HTC Vive.

When you begin you are located in a room where you customise the game before you begin. Look to the left and there are a row of cubes and a platform in the middle. These are the bowling alleys that you can choose. You can choose from a mansion, a disco, an icy place, a green alien alley, a beach and more. You just pick up that cube and put it on the round platform . Then you choose your bowling ball and walk to the door and pull the trigger button.

You are then loaded into the bowling alley. Hit the menu button to choose your music and away you go. You won't find the same sort of atmosphere as the real thing but the music is good. It is quite relaxing. I thought they could have added a simulation of people bowling in the alley next to you. That would have added to the atmosphere. It is a one player experience so I would recommend to play it for a relaxing time by yourself.

The visuals are good and the environments are good enough to make you feel you are somewhere nice. The bowling mechanics are very real meaning that is easy to bowl a gutter ball at first until you get used to moving your arm to make the ball straight. Everything about the experience is quite realistic. You have to step over to the area where the ball is and pick it up, then walk down to the line and bowl the ball.

If you are not a fan of ten pin bowling I would not recommend this game as you would tire of it quickly. But if you are I would say there is some fun to be had choosing different alleys and music and settling in to the environment and having a bowl. You can bowl like you would normally, (with a limited run up) or you could just stand there and move your arm. I liked to take a couple of steps and land sideways to bowl. I found that would make the ball straight.

All in all I would say that it is a good bowling simulator. The price to purchase the game is not high and it is a good indie game if you like bowling.

I give it 6.7/10

The Gallery Episode 1: Call of the Starseed Review

The Gallery is a virtual reality game that launched in April 2016. It was developed by Cloudhead games.  Call of the Starseed is the first episode in whats meant to be a four episode series. 

Call of the Starseed begins on a beach. Your name is Alex and you are looking for your twin sister Elsie. This is where your journey begins. The gallery is an exploration and adventure game with puzzle solving. To move about the environment you use the touch pad and a compass like pointer appears on the ground. You move your head and release the touch pad to jump to the next area. You can walk around a little bit if you have a big enough room but you will teleport to move around most of the time. I got quite use to this and it seems to be a common way to move around in VR games. Once you have the head set on you are in another world. You often forget where you are in relation to your room. Call of the Starseed is very immersive this way from the way your hands move in front of your face to the visuals and sound. You can pick things up to examine them, throw objects and interact with them like putting popcorn on a camp fire to pop.

The puzzles in this game can be quite hard to work out if you don't look for the clues. For example I spent a long time wandering around underground tunnels until I pulled my torch out of my backpack and shone it at the walls where there were markings.

The game uses the unity engine and the visuals are quite impressive. The acting is good but the story is quite short and leaves you wanting more. At the moment it is one of the best games available for the HTC Vive. 

I give it 8/10

Fruit Ninja VR Review

Fruit Ninja VR is a Virtual Reality game based on the Fruit Ninja games developed by Halfbrick for mobile platforms. It was released in 2016. Once you put on the head set you are transported to a court yard surrounded by Japanese buildings. In front of you, in place of the controllers are two swords. You use the swords to select the game mode to play. The four modes are: arcade, classic, zen and survival. The object of the game is to chop the most fruit that you can. This is a lot of fun and the tracking for the controllers are very accurate and with the vibration makes it feel like you are holding real swords.

In the classic mode you only have three chances when you miss a piece of fruit then the game is over. The zen and arcade mode have a time limit so you have to chop as much fruit as you can before time runs out. Being careful not to chop the bombs that occasionally appear.  The survival mode has a helicopter shoot fruit at you instead of it coming from pipes in the ground. As you progress more helicopters come and shoot fruit at you until you miss enough for the game to be over. When they shoot a bomb at you, you have to use the side of the swords blade to knock it away rather than jumping out of the way. My favorite game modes are arcade and survival.

This game is short and sweet but keeps you coming back for more. There are many hours of fun to be had by this game. It is so much fun to play.

I give it 8/10