I can understand why a developer best known for quiet, choice-filled games bordering on interactive cinema would be so interested in turning them into arcade-style rail shooters. No, but Supermassive Games has taken another crack at just that. Help with the new PlayStation VR2 headset. Like Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR focuses more on action than storytelling, with mixed results. Blasting ghouls and bats along the way is fun, but this spin-off suffers from many of the same problems as its predecessor, including a disappointingly short running time.
Switchback VR’s story feels like an afterthought, putting you in the role of an unnamed protagonist and riding a hellish rollercoaster through 10 different stages. Mostly places featured in her first season of The Dark Pictures Anthology, but not much is said about why the main characters are visiting there, or the few supporting characters they meet. This is partly because Switchback VR is so short, taking only about four hours to complete, but considering how good Supermassive usually does at providing depth to its backstory and characters, it’s an utter shame is.
But what it lacks in story, Switchback VR mostly makes up for in gameplay. The on-rail nature of its action limits where you can move naturally, but in VR you can move your head to look around in any direction. It was fun to turn quickly whenever I heard eerie screams and enemies creeping up in the background. That situational awareness is important as enemies can sneak up to the left or right of your peripheral vision.
There are always two guns to fend off, each controlled individually by the PS VR2’s Sense controller. You start every level with the default pistol, but you can pick up ammo-limited alternatives such as revolvers and machine guns by shooting red boxes that appear in convenient sections of each stage While it’s annoying that these special weapons are locked to the hand that shot the crate first, it’s still fun to switch strategies a bit when you find them. You can quickly eliminate nearby enemies and fire pistols at distant enemies to save ammo. Other weapons like flare guns are required to solve certain puzzles and progress. You don’t have to think much to solve it, as you just need to shoot certain objects to keep the truck moving forward, but this is a nice change of pace to just shooting hordes of enemies.
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The fire mechanic itself has been simplified for VR, with both fire and reload mapped to two buttons on each Sense controller. This is not a bad thing, as on-rail shooters are more focused on throwing as many enemies as possible in a short amount of time than subtle firefights. Still, shooting with the Switchback VR is responsive and aiming with motion controls is very accurate.
The heads that pop vary from stage to stage, ranging from regular zombies to flying vampires. Most of these enemies will be familiar to anyone who’s played any of the first seasons of The Dark Pictures Anthology, each faithfully recreating the monsters from those games. Killing enemies or destroying inanimate objects such as bottles, empty crates, and skulls will increase your level score. This is a good incentive to deal as much damage as possible. There are also local and online leaderboards to compare your score against other players, but it’s a shallow practice if you don’t measure important factors like accuracy. It feels like
Switchback VR delivers the spooky atmosphere and tension of each level, from the dark, abandoned WWII freighter in Man of Medan to the sandy underground ruins of an ancient empire in House of Ashes. nail down. Unfortunately, using cheap jump scares too often can quickly overshadow the building suspense that a particular location offers. The first two of him were pleasantly surprised but didn’t take long.
But while the jump scares did little to keep me on the edge of my seat, the few sections where the Switchback VR utilized PS VR2’s eye tracking were actually impressively unsettling. In the area of , enemies are approaching every time you blink. This is an incredibly new experience for a game that left me wanting to see more of it. A great showcase for the potential of this new technology in future horror games created for the set.
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While Supermassive has successfully incorporated some of PS VR2’s new tech, Switchback VR still feels technically unpolished in some places. T: Some background textures, like tree branches, appeared randomly when the cart approached them, and there were three instances where the screen froze for a few seconds. It didn’t completely derail the ride, but it was still noticeable and annoying on such a short trip.
Despite its short length, the Switchback VR offers rock-solid replayability from run to run as you can descend a variety of routes. Most of these decisions are made by shooting at specific gates that can change the course of the kart. This is a great way to blend that choice into the action.A full view of the route was given at the end of each stage, allowing us to follow a different route so we could go back and see what we missed. That said, the slight variety these routes offer is less memorable when you can still see everything Switchback VR has to offer in a couple of playthroughs It is not a thing.
In addition to changing routes, some stages offer the option to save, kill, or abandon survivors that appear in some stages. Each survivor is associated with an optional puzzle that gives time to the objects in a specific order. However, like most of Supermassive’s games, most of these small decision points have little to no impact on the overall story.
Some stages also include boss fights at the end, but their execution leaves much to be desired. For example, the final form of the sailor girl from Man of Medan. Most of the boss fights end up being boring and unremarkable, like busy work that slows you down rather than the epic obstacles you have to overcome to complete a stage.
