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It’s not often that technologies come along that drastically reinvent the way we play video games. While the Nintendo Wii certainly promised that a few years ago, it proved to have little impact beyond having families come to blows over games of virtual tennis every Christmas. Virtual reality, however, does seem to be the next big leap in how we view video games and indeed entertainment as a whole.
The PlayStation VR, the most reasonably priced of all VR setups, still comes in at about €450, excluding the Move Controllers. That’s on top of whatever you spent on your base Playstation 4 system. Once you do put down the cash though, there are a host of VR experiences of varying sizes available, and Robinson: The Journey is among the biggest.
The game places you as the lone colonist of a distant planet with a wise-cracking robot friend to keep you company as the world unravels around you. While not dissimilar from Portal 2’s Wheatley, Robinson lacks the same charm. The prospect of exploring a rich alien world in 360-degree virtual reality is certainly an appealing one, and Robinson largely delivers on this. The limitations of the Playstation VR’s graphical capabilities do rear their ugly head if you, say, get too close to the foliage, but the experience of being immersed in a world so deeply is totally new and totally absorbing. The world around you feels alive and the urge to touch your pet dinosaur Laika once she is introduced to you is overwhelming – being able to look around with your own eyes lends an immense amount of weight to the game environment, and this is makes exploration the key driving force of Robinson. You move through the game collecting data and being awe-inspired at the flora and fauna of a foreign world.
However, the moment to moment gameplay of Robinson simply isn’t very interesting, and this becomes even more apparent once the novelty of VR starts to wear off. The gameplay hook that drives all great exploration based games is simply not present in Robinson. There are cool aspects to the game – something as simple as climbing up ledges in VR is more fun than it has any right to be, for example. There are puzzles to solve, but they aren’t overly intuitive or satisfying to complete.
Secondly, motion sickness can become a real problem. This is an issue with VR as a whole, but no game churned my stomach more than Robinson. Moving with the left stick like you would in a normal first person game, but turning with the right stick and simultaneously angling your head with the headset is more than enough to make most give up their dinner. I found it difficult to play for more than about 30 minutes at a time.
Altogether, Robinson is a promising but disappointing venture into VR. While it’s certainly one of the prettiest experiences available on the system, the technology of VR needs more time to settle before producing a breakthrough classic, despite Robinson’s valiant effort.
