Preview: Reach
Reach, the new action platforming VR title from developer nDreams, is looking to be a pleasant surprise as it successfully integrates parkour and climbing mechanics into virtual reality, infusing them with a box-office-worthy level of action. Hardcore Gamer had the chance to play the upcoming game, stepping out of the boring, real world and into the front seat of an intense foot chase straight out of the movies.
Parkour and Firefight Your Way Out
Integrating established gameplay ideas into virtual reality is hard to get right, given the massive change in control scheme and easily-overwhelming nature of the platform. That being said, it’s clear that Reach is being made by the pros, with smooth and intuitive gameplay at the forefront of the experience. Parkour and climbing are the main focus of the demo, and while we started with slow and cautious platforming performances, by the end of the demo we were jumping between buildings and sprinting along the level like Ethan Hunt.
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Climbing is a simple-yet-rewarding activity, with the first-person point of view making the task that has previously been mundane and boring in other games (looking at you, Uncharted) much more intensive and fulfilling. Reach‘s strongest choice in approaching climbing mechanics is giving the playable character tremendous amounts of strength, allowing players to launch themselves across gaps and along railings at faster speeds by pushing down on the ledge they’re holding on to like a contestant on American Ninja Warrior (not unlike the often-spammed moves of Nathan Drake).
More grounded parkour mechanics pair perfectly with climbing, using the motion of a player’s arms swinging forward to initiate a jump instead of a button press, with another simple movement of the arms used to vault over objects. Momentum, which is usually the cause of disconnect or motion-sickness in most VR titles is executed perfectly here, and the game always knows how fast and far you’re trying to jump (whether it be on foot or hanging off of a ledge).
Becoming the Next Action Hero
After learning the basics of platforming, you enter a room with a strange bow sitting at a research station. The bow aims so responsively that you need to close one eye to get a properly-aligned view of its aim, which works beautifully and is perfect in its precision. While we never got a chance to use it in the field, we fired an arrow from the mystical-looking bow into a wall at one point, and were able to use it as a grabbing point for climbing.
Next come the enemies, who fall in a single shot to the head, but force you to crouch when they fire back (which has its own control mechanic that is much easier on the knees than normal crouching). Reaching a rooftop patio presents a handgun which is perfect timing for an onslaught of more adversaries.
While we started with slow and cautious platforming performances, by the end of the demo we were jumping between buildings and sprinting along the level like Ethan Hunt.
The ensuing firefight is epic, with a chopper coming in and blowing out the ground, leading you to fight from the first floor until a military truck bursts through a locked gate, which can be climbed on top of as you parkour your way up the balconies and cracks of the building above it. The chopper finds you again and chases you as you vault and climb obstacles and leap across the rooftops (eventually leading to a goosebumps-inducing homage to the window-jump scene from The Bourne Ultimatum). You enter a tall building full of windows, which are fired upon, opening up a wall where you make a huge leap across a massive gap, grabbing onto a zipline and then landing on an inclined slope that you slide down, then jump off of again to hit the final target and complete the level.
Even thinking back on it now gives us a heart-racing feeling, as our experience pulled off the action and speed that VR has been seemingly incapable of up until this point. The team at nDreams is clearly committed to getting everything right in Reach, which could very well set a new standard in VR action gameplay when it releases later this year.
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