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Fracked

Fracked

In the real world, things have been fracked up for quite some time now, but in virtual reality, we can finally frack back.

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Sorry for that introduction, we just wanted to set the right mood for the new game from nDreams, which feels like a playable B-movie and doesn't let a chance for one of their stupid puns go to waste. Of course, fracking is a drilling technique, that is in this case used by an evil mastermind, who exploits our unsuspecting planet and controls a whole army of expendable henchmen in order to stifle any opposition. And this opposition is us of course - as a loner who just wanted to get away from it all, we now have no chance but to singlehandedly take on these forces of doom. With our friendly pilot Rosales, who works as the genre's seemingly unavoidable exposition machine, we exchange friendly one-liners, while letting our guns do the talking when it comes to our purple-faced adversaries.

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Before we get to that though, we engage in a totally crazy descent on skis, where we have to outrun an avalanche. Controls are perfectly simple here and work through tilting our head. Later on, we came to understand, this was done so that we have our hands free for shooting. Next, we are introduced to the shooting controls and its clear right from the start that these have been tailored to the aging Move Controllers, which are mandatory for playing. Controlling our direction by pointing and tilting the off-hand controller for speed feels really natural, a double-tap on the Move button makes us sprint and we can turn using the somewhat subpar action buttons, but overall, these controls work surprisingly well here. This is one of the few PSVR games with free movement where we don't have the feeling that fighting the controllers poses a bigger challenge than attacking enemies. No, the action feels fluid and fun at all times.

A nice balance has also been struck for reloading, which is done by only pushing a new magazine a few centimetres into our gun and then cocking it, which is a nice compromise between complicated "realistic" weapons handling and "1-button-reloading" which would not do a VR game justice. Lastly, the cover system feels surprisingly thought out: Instead of using our full body to duck or peek around edges, we grab the edge of an object with our off hand and can then drag ourselves into an optimal position. This way, the game is well playable while seated - in fact, this is even advised by the developers.

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In terms of graphics, the game and its snowy-industrial environments pull no punches either. The look has some touches of cel-shading and reminds us a lot of the Borderlands franchise. Especially on PS5, the resolution and anti-aliasing are top notch and really make the visuals stand out. We happily shoot, ski and zip-line through the levels, which are a mixture of corridors and more open areas, where we are often asked to fend off a couple of waves of enemies. Unfortunately, they all look the same, except for the usual outliers of "screamers" and "tanks" - literally screaming, diamond-encrusted crazies who want to get to us before they explode - and huge brutes with fuel tanks on their backs, who have to be brought to their knees first, so we can hit their weak point. Of course, there is no prize for innovation to be won with these, but everything is nicely balanced with some climbing, which works really well, and these odd levers that needs to be pushed or pulled here and there.

A bit of an issue is the game's difficulty. We get a choice of easy and hard, but the main difference on easy is that our gun now has a laser pointer. This doesn't really help much though, as the guns we can find are a bit bulky and sport an accuracy of the "spray and pray" type. After taking a couple of hits, we are soon done for, with enemies often coming from all sides. Also, there are lots of situations where enemies will spawn indefinitely until we have found the right part in the level to interact with, which sometimes feels like it could be communicated better. At other points (when replaying such a situation, for example) we can go straight to the place we need to be, but won't be able to proceed before we haven't shot a bunch of bad guys first. Sometimes they happen to spawn right before us, or somehow manage to hit one of the many exploding barrels which kill us instantly when we're too close. All of that is no big issue, as the game is tremendous fun and repeating a couple of the shootouts more often than necessary doesn't hurt.

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What seems like an oversight though, is that quitting a level before it is finished always sets us back at the very beginning - checkpoints are there, but they don't work when we exit the game, and with a fast-paced VR game that could make you a bit dizzy after playing for a while, it's not really nice to force players to see a level through till the end. Fortunately, the console's Rest Mode can help us out here.

Thus, there is only one major gripe with the game, and that is once again, that it feels to short. Of course, you always want more when you're having fun, but it took us only about three and a half hours to beat the game, and since it's so fast-paced and fun, it left us wanting more. In the end, all we could do was go back to collect the hidden coins in all levels or try the game on "Hard" difficulty, which adds permadeath... Developer nDreams' previous VR game, Phantom: Covert Ops, had a similar play time, but that title with its stealth gameplay had a totally different pace and somehow left us more satisfied. Still, it's absolutely clear that Fracked is a blast to play, and it's great that with the announcement of PSVR2, Sony's VR efforts have picked up once again. For people who own a PS5, the system is a great, very affordable way to get a glimpse of the great immersion that virtual reality has to offer, especially with a polished, well-rounded title like Fracked.

08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
+
Smooth controls with PS Move, great graphics on PS5, action-packed gameplay
-
Short play time, difficulty settings tend to frustrate
overall score
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Fracked

REVIEW. Written by Kalle Max Hofmann

In the real world, things have been fracked up for quite some time now, but in virtual reality, we can finally frack back.



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