Movement is a tricky thing in virtual reality. If you move too quickly, you risk getting sick and disoriented. Because of that, most developers have opted for teleporting in VR games: the act of pointing to a spot that you can see, and instantly warping there. It’s an easy solution, but it also ruins the immersion of VR. Vindicta, a room-scale HTC Vive shooter from Beirut-based Game Cooks, has another idea for movement: just swing your arms.
Holding down the Vive’s touchpad buttons gets you moving slowly in the game, and if you want to move faster, you just need to swing your arms as if you were running in place. It’s a bit odd at first, but it didn’t take long for me to get the hang of it. Your direction depends on where your head is pointing, so you could be moving to your left without actually turning that way. And to move backwards, you have to turn around completely and swing your arms.
That mechanism, combined with decent gunplay, makes Vindicta unique among a torrent of VR shooting games. The game’s setting, which involves taking out evil robots in the future, is a bit more generic. But Game Cooks could hone all of that down the line. In my brief time with the game on the E3 show floor, Vindicta played very well as a shooter. Being able to move about with my own volition, instead of just warping, made the experience feel more immersive. I did deal with some tracking interference, though, since the E3 floor is full of other companies showing off their own VR games.
If you have a Vive setup, you’ll be able to play the game soon: Vindicta is launching on Steam Early Access on June 20th for around $ 30.
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