VR Invaders

The journey to see what VR is capable of is only at its beginning, and promising titles like Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Farpoint are right around the corner aiming to demonstrate the qualities of the platform, but until we get our hands on those games it's up to the indies to fill the gap. With the Complete Edition of VR Invaders, PSVR recently received one such game.

The story of VR Invaders takes us to the year 2046, a time when virtual reality has been an established and popular concept for a while. For most people, it's an escape from the daily grind and a place where many people can get lost, and we mean this quite literally, as there are viruses that can capture the user. It's then up to the members of the VR Rescue Force to fight against the cybernetic evil, and here's where the player comes in, as you slip into the role of Thomas Hall, who finds himself in a battle against aggressive strains of artificial intelligence.

Equipped with a big gun and a gladiator's shield, you block the enemy's ranged attacks in a neon arena, those enemies being a variety of drones and robots, and some of these enemies even drop a power-up when defeated, which boosts your health or weapons. Besides Lasers, Shotguns, and machine guns, slow motion is your best friend when dealing with hostiles, and you can take advantage of this with the PS Move controller that works as your shield, whether it be to avoid enemy fire or even shoot projectiles in mid-air. At the end of a level, there's always a large boss that needs to be dealt with in a particular way, which adds another layer of challenge.

Even if we restarted certain areas a couple of times we reached the end of VR Invaders in almost two hours, and in terms of the places you'll see during this time, most of the locations are rather pretty, feature a unique style, and the environments are even destructible. The music also supports the tension the game's going for, but even so, there's a notable lack of variety, and VR Invaders can get a bit repetitive even in a two-hour play-through.

Theoretically, on the easiest difficulty you can shoot your way through the game without even evading, however, if you just sit back motionless in your chair much of the fun VR Invaders provides will get lost. Much as the case is with Steam title Space Pirate Trainer, the game requires full use of your body, and it's a lot of fun to jump to the left or right in order to avoid hostile fire. On the one hand it would be nice if we were pushed towards different styles of play, especially during the boss sections, but on the other hand, it's also relaxing to just sit back and play the way we want.

Altogether VR Invaders is a very pleasing game that brings together its components into a well-made journey. Leaderboards, survival, and even a horde mode offers quite a bit of content, but ultimately it's still quite short, and even for its cheaper price we'd like to have seen a bit more. Regardless, VR Invaders is an enjoyable experience for the PlayStation VR that makes good use of its features, and we had a good time playing it.