It’s been a long time coming, but solo developer Zach Tsiakalis-Brown’s sci-fi spectacular Vertigo 2 is finally hitting PSVR2 next week!
That’s right, on January 15th, PSVR2 owners will finally get the chance to try out this bespoke VR adventure for themselves. Vertigo 2 has already received overwhelmingly positive reviews from players on Steam, so it’s easy to understand why PS5 owners have been so eager to get their hands (and heads) on it.
Aside from a peek at the PC demo a while back, I’ve been saving Vertigo 2 for this very moment, and for this week’s episode of VR Corner (below), you can watch me wisecrack my way through the first 5 chapters of the game.
That chunk of gameplay took me around an hour and 20 minutes to play through, and with 18 chapters in total, Vertigo 2 looks like it should give you a decent runtime for your money.
As far as first impressions of the game go, based on what I played above, Vertigo 2 definitely lives up to the promise of feeling like a Valve-esq VR adventure. It doesn’t have anywhere near the production value of Half-Life: Alyx, but it certainly has some of the inventiveness and, just like Stress Level Zero’s Boneworks, the dark humor that runs throughout feels like it could be tumbled straight out of a portal from Aperture Labs.
In terms of PSVR2 compatibility, movement and interactions worked perfectly; however, there did seem to be noticeable framerate drops when moving from tight corridors to large open areas – which is something I try to demonstrate in my video.
The PSVR2’s haptics seem to be fairly underutilized, too. Not all weapons give you haptics in the Sense Controllers when you fire them, and even then, it’s rather gentle. And, in regards to headset haptics, if they are there, I certainly didn’t feel them whilst recording my video.
There are buckets of gore in Vertigo 2, but it’s set to ‘off’ by default, so don’t forget to turn it on in the graphics settings menu if you want to see stuff like this. Hot crumpets with jam, anyone?
As an extra boost to immersion, your virtual hands and weapons are solid, so they will react to walls and objects when you touch them rather than pass through them as they can do in other VR games. However, this nice touch is canceled out by the fact that if you hit the scenery with your hands or weapons, there’s no noise at all. No wet slapping sounds from the hands, and no ‘metal on stone’ clunks when you tap a gun on a wall.
These are all little nit-picks, of course. Considering the size of the development team, the overall quality here is incredible, and I can’t really give you a good reason why you shouldn’t make Vertigo 2 your next PSVR2 purchase.
It’s only January, and Vertigo 2 feels like it could already be a high point in this year’s PSVR2 release schedule, so if you’ve been looking for a nice, chunky, sci-fi adventure game with plenty of humor and some very nicely modeled butts in it, look no further than this!
