Arktika 1 [Oculus Rift] Full Game Review

creativity101 (57)in #gaming • 6 years ago (edited)

Arktika 1 is the kind of game that makes you glad you bought a VR headset. It's the kind of game that makes you glad you shelled out so much cash on something that most people just write off as a gimmick. Developed by 4A, it's a game with a similar premise to the Metro franchise set in a post-apocalyptic future where the world has entered a second Ice Age as a result of global warming. However, humans don't live under the surface in Metro tunnels hiding from aliens, but the game is still in an Eastern European setting taking place across a frozen wasteland and its surrounding environments.

THE GAME PLAY

Working with a woman named Victoria who's wearing an outfit that looks like it's been painted on, you'll complete various missions defending yourself and the Citadel against a guy named Jack and his gang of Marauders. Completing the odd puzzle here and there as well as exploring the mysterious origins of creatures called the Baba Yaga. Sadly, though Arktika doesn't really explore any kind of moral dilemmas or make us question our existence or humanity, instead it's just mostly about shooting things. It does delve into Victoria's history and give a bit of a backstory to Jack as an antagonist but that's nothing more than just exposition.

I said before that this is the kind of game that makes you glad you bought a VR headset and I really do stand by that statement for a number of reasons. Mostly just because Arktika always manages to make really good use of the oculus touch controllers in a unique and creative way, giving you lots of ways to interact with objects in the environment from simple things like pulling levers and pressing buttons on a computer or control panel but also in the ways you can dynamically affect the environment.

There's a couple of times when you're in a pitch-black area for instance and you need to grab these glow sticks from a dispenser before physically shaking the glow stick to make it active, and you can throw it in front of you to light the path ahead. During combat segments, you can quite often grab a nearby object and turn it into a makeshift shield against enemies peeking above it to take shots at them before popping back under. Reloading weapons depends on the type of weapon you're using, for revolvers you flick the revolver to the side to open the cylinder then flick it back shut again.

Probably the trickiest is the break action revolver because you kind of have to flick it downward really fast then flick it back upwards to shut it again which is kind of finicky. With pistols you bring the pistol down to your hip and snap it back up again to simulate reloading the magazine and you're free to equip whichever you prefer in your left or right hand, and once you get the hang of this you'll be shooting and reloading in a flash like some kind of post-apocalyptic John wick. Combine this with the various attachments and weapon upgrades that allow increased damage, ammo capacity as well as perks like laser sights in being able to highlight enemies through solid objects.

Then considering there's over a half dozen guns all of which leaves a fair bit of customization on offer for the player. Even after I found a combination of guns and attachments that work for me, I still wanted to butter around with the other guns just out of curiosity to see how they handled which I think will also add a good amount of Replayability. I wish they had a bit more variety here though in terms of weapons, I mean they are after all just basically pistols or revolvers but I think this might have been done for balancing because using automatic weapons probably would have made the game a bit of a cakewalk.

Outside of shooting things though even the basic puzzles make really good use of the control is requiring a bit of thinking outside of just pulling levers and flicking switches. Arktika is probably got the best implementation of the touch controllers I've seen in an oculus game yet and it's constantly thinking outside of the box with ways you can complete the task at hand no pun intended. Movement is limited entirely to teleportation but it's teleportation to fix the points kind of like how it was in the bullet train tech demo.

Once you've teleported to a point you're free to move your body around and duck down for Kivar Lenny round corners and all that, but you're not given any control outside of these points there's just a bunch of them that are preset and you pick the one that suits you the best. Now I can't understand how this might be an issue for certain people, I know a small demographic of VR gamers prefer locomotion controls which I just don't understand because that makes me want a bath within minutes, but I actually don't mind this control scheme.

There is the odd moment when you're on some kind of moving platform or in an elevator and this could kind of bring out the motion sickness in some people, but it is pretty minimal stuff and considering I'm an absolute pussy when it comes to this kind of thing and I was fine I mean I think most folks to be fine too. The fact that once you teleport you're already looking exactly where you need to be looking means there's no fumbling around or the potential for teleporting facing the wrong direction. You're faced exactly where you need to be faced and you can just go right into shooting things.

There is also 2 I think a bit of skill and timing in choosing these points as some points offer you a better vantage point to ambush enemies but at the expense of having less cover as a means of protection. Arktika isn't really the hardest game in the world though the abundance of weapon upgrades you get may you pretty much unstoppable like even early on and there's not really any kind of enemy type that proves to be a nuisance outside of maybe the snipers. Throughout the entire ten missions, I didn't even die a single time nor did I even really come close.

Strategies for the boss flights are obvious within seconds and the teleportation mechanic makes it just too easy to just sit back and forth between points before the boss can even realize what's happened.

For starters, I don't like how there's no kind of main menu once you load the game up it just throws you right into the action without so much as a loading screen. The options menu is also extremely barring particularly the graphics options and this is something that VR games just need to stop doing. We need VR games to have more inclusions for settings to tweak like you know PC games have been doing for decades, simply having graphics options falling under like 3 or 4 preset settings just doesn't cut the mustard. I also don't like the lack of any noticeable checkpoint or autosave notifications now unless I miss something, the game just never tells you when it's saved to progress.

After playing one mission for about 15 minutes, I had to quit out of it to go and get dinner, thinking it would have saved my progress at some point but when I loaded the game back up it put me right back into the starting area and I had to play the entire mission from scratch. I also had to replay the lengthy prologue sequence because even after I'd assumed it had finished it still didn't save my progress at that point. Arktika does have a decent length to it though for a VR game anyway, you're looking at about four or five hours all up with 10 missions in total and after you've finished you are able to go back and replay any mission to complete all the challenges and obtain the best possible rank.

Some people can plan him at the length of VR games but I think this is about as long as it needs to be, considering you're standing up like an asshole the entire time. I don't really want to be standing around for 8 to 10 hours it's not my idea of a good time if we wanted to do that I'd go back to working in hospitality.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Arktika looks amazing at times with superb lighting effects, great looking particle effects for water, snow and just really good animation across the board. The way that enemy’s kind of trip and stumble for cover as you're firing on them just looks awesome.

The sound too is just really top-notch, from the satisfying sound effects when you're firing weapons the enemy chatter during combat is they shout to one another in the overall soundtrack which ramps up or down depending on the circumstance. It is a very similar game visually to the metro series with lots of banned stole enemies decked out in shooter military-looking attire, and then you've got grouse into for mutants with a backdrop of dimly lit tunnels and condemned buildings.

But it all just looks really awesome and the amount of detail on offer here really trumps anything else I've seen in a VR game, but look at anal sunshine and roses though there were a few things that I kind of didn't like about the game.

OVERALL REVIEW/RATING

Graphics 7/10
Sound 7/10
Gameplay 7/10
Controls 7/10
Effect 7/10

OVERALL REVIEW

7\10

Languages: English Russian Ukrainian
Supported player modes: Standing, Room-scale
Supported tracking modes: Front-facing360°
Category: Games
Genres: Action, Arcade, Shooter
Developer: 4A Games
Publisher: Oculus
Space required: 21.51 GB
Version: Rev_416462
Website: http://www.arktikauniverse.com/
Supported controllers: Oculus Touch
Developer Privacy Policy: https://www.oculus.com/legal/privacy-policy/
Developer Terms of Service: https://www.oculus.com/legal/terms-of-service/
Recommended processor: Intel i5-4590 / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X or greater
Recommended graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 1060 / AMD Radeon RX 480 or greater
Recommended memory: 8 GB
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RELEASE DATE

October 10th, 2017

CONCLUSION

Overall, Arktika is a pretty damn good experience, it's a times action-packed it's a time scary and tense but it never loses its momentum and always manages to keep throwing new things at the player. It's a shame most people are gonna probably write this thing off as just another boring looking interactive shooting gallery because they're missing out on one of the better shooting games available for the platform and just a pretty kick-ass shooting game in general. If you haven't played anything with your oculus lately, well this is definitely worth dusting off the headset for and check it out.