Official Review Virtual Reality Updated

Review cover Fracked (Virtual Reality)
Official GBAtemp Review

Product Information:

Game Features:

Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative
With PSVR still struggling in its fifth year, can a fresh new IP show this aging hardware any new tricks?

attachFull273662

Fracked is made by nDreams, a publisher and developer who craft larger-than-life experiences to the masses via virtual reality hardware. From Phantom Covert Ops to Far Cry VR to Shooty Fruity, nDreams have cultivated a legacy of incredibly rich, and playable games since their devotion to VR titles in 2013. Combining innovation with excellence, nDreams provide experiences on large scales that allow the VR fans to have group matches, team bonding sessions in gaming arenas across the country.

Firing up Fracked, you are immediately immersed in what I can only describe as toon-shaded awesomeness. You pick up and fire a flare gun, your eye in the sky tells you to keep calm and do as she says. You don a pair of skis and a hat with a headset built-in so that you can maintain communications with her. You then start the downhill journey, using your headset to tilt left and right, carving your way down the slopes, and watching the alpine background whizz past you in a rather incredible mixture of 1080 Snowboarding and XIII in terms of fluid kinetic movement paired with stylistic graphics. As you look around, taking in the whole escapade, you notice an avalanche, this is it, you need to outrun the powder and get yourself to the relative safety of the next outpost and it's utterly exhilarating!

attachFull273745

Review imageReview imageReview imageReview image

With no on-screen HUD and very little obscuring your vision, Fracked gives you the purest FPS adventure I have experienced in a long time. Though this title aims for quality over quantity, what it does accomplish is a superb feeling of motion and connectedness to the main protagonist. You essentially downhill ski from one destination to another, tilting your head left or right to bob and weave through trees, you climb hand-over-hand across treacherous scenery, and you have shootouts with waves of enemies. The climbing consists of environments such as a dilapidated ruin of an outpost, with no floor so to speak, so you have to climb the walls, navigate the beams and surfaces, and effectively monkey-bar across ravines to reach the next checkpoint. At one point you're on a cable car that you are piloting to the top of a mountain, but there is a destroyed section of the track ahead of you, you try to slow down, the car creeps toward the perilous edge, you spot an emergency door release and you pull down on the lever. Grabbing the door with one hand, it swings open, pulling you outside and as you grip on for dear life you spot a handhold, and then another, before long you are traversing the outside of the vehicle like a spider monkey. The car slides over the edge, changing the orientation from horizontal to vertical, so you now have to look up above you and pick your hand placement to scale upward towards the top of the car. The feeling of exhilaration and the level of endorphins pushed around you are incredible. The whole time all you see is your gloved hands; reaching out and gripping each glowing yellow ledge it's utterly enthralling and entirely captivating. Though the game gifts you a few, small, interactive puzzles to negotiate, such as pulling a lever cranking a shut-off valve, or driving a crane to reposition haulage containers, but there is no real meat to these small sections of the level, which is a shame. It feels like a really well-made rail shooter, smattered with low-level simplistic puzzles, but you get to choose the direction and pacing of the gameplay.

Aiming your gun and pulling the trigger is super intuitive, and reloading requires you to slam in a fresh magazine, pull back the bolt, draw the slide back and release to chamber your next round. Though I chose easy, many parts of this were not so straightforward, and anyone thinking easy mode would be a cakewalk has another thing coming when it comes to dispatching the more senior enemies. Grunts usually take a hit or three, but a lovingly placed headshot produces a satisfying cloud of purple blood, and you get to watch their interdimensional corpses drop lifelessly to the floor. There are just a couple of enemy types in this game, basically machine gun grunts, a QCB shotgun-wielding version of the grunts, a suicide bomber, and a giant one that appears to take a billion hits to destroy if you don't know what you're doing.

attachFull273743

Review imageReview imageReview imageReview image

It's worth noting that the game simply recycles these four enemy types into waves and punctuates each wave ending by throwing in a giant one as a kind of boss battle. As I mentioned before bosses take a battering, and unless you understand that the game is about flanking and retreating, then you stand next to no chance in a one-on-one shoot-out. The first time I met the giant brute with the backpack I got absolutely, and rather unfairly, decimated. There was an obvious method to beating him, which I won't spoil, but this method is used throughout each "boss battle" and it gets a little jarring having to irritatingly encounter the same one thing over and over again. A little variety would have gone a long way, but thankfully the fantastic core gunplay of Fracked gets you through it.

The weapons feel great in Fracked; in fact, they feel nigh on perfect. Machine guns clatter away, requiring a sliding bolt to be pulled in order to engage the next round magazine and the recoil feels the right side of controllable, your sidearm is your last stand, faithful, trustworthy and it just feels great slamming in a fresh clip and prepping for the next encounter. However, and this is a big one, weapons variety is just not there. One thing I couldn't understand was why when you find a more advanced gun than your pistol or the SMG, they had to vanish once spent. Why we couldn't have a weapon system akin to every other FPS on the market is beyond me. I wanted to run around and gradually upgrade my guns at each new area, but for example, when you finally locate the six-shooter, after six shots it melts in your hand and there was no option to reload or retain it for use later on. Rocket launchers are the same story, one shot and gone, and the automatic shotgun feels awesomely powerful but vanishes in the heat of battle. Surely these weapons could have been made interactive, snapping the shotgun in two, pumping it for the next round, or handling grenades and inserting them into the launcher? Feels like a slightly missed opportunity to expand on a set of permanent weapons with mechanics that are otherwise fantastic. You don't have a duck button so in order to take cover you can simply place one hand on a crate or windowsill in front of you, click grab, and pull yourself down behind it, all the while trying to defend yourself with a gun in the other hand. I found this rather odd at first, unnatural, and I ended up taking a huge amount of damage from being unable to cover myself properly, but once you get to grips with it, it becomes second nature to bed down into the scenery and it becomes the norm to know how to remain unexposed when under fire.

attachFull273747

Review imageReview imageReview imageReview image

I had an absolute blast playing Fracked and as PSVR FPS titles go, this one seemingly came out of the blue and really made an impact on me. The visuals are fantastic, the aiming system is surprisingly accurate and well-tracked, and the interactive sections are thoroughly engaging. Blended with the thumping soundtrack and the sheer ease of use getting into playing this game, Fracked is an explosively engaging romp from start to finish, with James Bond-style ski action, fluid climbing mechanics, and excellent gunplay that encourages you to keep an eye on your ammo, remember to get behind cover, and prepare to realistically reload. Highly recommended for any VR fans out there, I just really hope that there is more planned, with more taxing puzzle elements, and a wider variety of guns and enemies in the next installment.

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Incredibly tactile experience
  • Fantastic level of immersion
  • Incredibly fun to play through
What We Didn't Like ...
  • Repetitive enemy types
  • Short game overall
8
Gameplay
Gripping gameplay makes for a very fun experience when you are not battling with overpowered and repetitious "boss fights". More variety of enemy types, more weapons, and more individual bosses would have elevated this game up a notch or two in my honest opinion.
8
Presentation
Visually this doesn't aim for realism, instead, it goes for toon shading and purple glowing-eyed spacemen. I love the Borderlands-come-XIII aesthetic and the level of detail it provides whilst maintaining a silky framerate is easy on the eyes. The entire experience feels well put together and the style and approach of every element shine through.
7
Lasting Appeal
The game only last around four hours, so there is not much else to do once all is said and done. There are only 15 collectables to find, and 26 trophies to unlock, which isn't a vast amount, but what is here is a solid well made package to work through.
8
out of 10

Overall

I'm a huge fan of PSVR because it is the ultimate vehicle for first-person shooters. Fracked transforms the typical first-person shooter by blending adventure and a novel cover system to create an immersive escapade that is incredibly enjoyable regardless of the storyline.
  • Like
Reactions: AlanJohn, AkiraKurusu and Mama Looigi
Review cover
Product Information:
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative

Reviews

  1. PlayStation 5

    Alone in the Dark (2024)

    Alone in the Dark is a Survival Horror game available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.

  2. Computer

    Rauniot

    Step into post-apocalyptic Northern Finland in Rauniot, Act Normal Game’s debut point-and-click title. Let’s click away!

  3. Computer

    Broken Roads

    Australia-based indie developer Drop Bear Bytes’ debut title, Broken Roads, launches today on PC and consoles. Does this new cRPG have what it takes to stand toe-to-toe to its contemporaries?

  4. Computer

    Ereban: Shadow Legacy

    Ereban: Shadow Legacy is Baby Robot Games’ debut title that merges classic stealth mechanics with a fast-paced ability to merge with shadows. Should you allow it to sneak into your PC gaming library?

  5. PlayStation 5

    South Park: Snow Day!

    South Park is back in the gaming sphere with the followup to Obsidian’s hit duo of RPGs, South Park: Snow Day!

More reviews

Site & Scene News

Go to forum More news
General chit-chat
Help Users
    Xdqwerty @ Xdqwerty: @BakerMan, I have a piano keyboard but I never use it