Espire 1: VR Operative Breaks VR Ground
Espire 1 hopes to be for VR what Metal Gear Solid and Goldeneye were for stealth and first person shooters respectively. In a word – revolutionary. One thing was clear as soon as the game booted up; this is one of the most immersive VR experiences to date.
How you traverse through the levels is entirely up to you. In the demo that we played you had the option to scale the rafters, drop down below or stay on the level where you started in an attempt to clear the room of bad guys and move on to the next area. You can go in guns blazing and expect a lot of resistance or stealthily move from cover to cover, taking them down one at a time.
You’ll start with a single shot tranquilizer gun and need to search for more weapons. As you drop targets you’ll be able to loot corpses and pick up new weapons. You can carry up to three at a time on your person which you can grab, aim, and fire at a moments notice. Reloading the weapons is as realistic as we’ve seen in VR so far. Single shot pistols require you to cock the gun after each shot in order to fire again. Automatic weapons will have you reaching for the new clip on your belt and jamming the gun down in order to reload and continue the fire fight.
Grabbing weapons and ammo from the gear that you carry feels great and, in no time at all, you’ll be switching between weapons, reloading, and repairing your equipment. Your health does not regenerate so you’ll need to use the repair tool resting on your shoulder to patch up vulnerable areas on your gear and guns. Also be sure to stay on high alert because you cannot fire while in this state, but they can sure shoot at you.
Often you’ll find yourself in areas where you need to climb walls and ladders and guess how you’ll do that? You guessed it. You have to reach above your head with the controllers and physically pull yourself up until you reach the landing. Players have to push both hands down to their waist in order to pull their body onto the ledge above, allowing them to continue on their way.
Though the emphasis is on stealth and gunplay, you’ll have plenty of gadgets to use along the way. This includes a nifty camera that allows you to peak around corners.
We had the opportunity to try the game on both the Oculus Rift and Quest and, while the latter definitely lacks in the graphics department, the game feels the same on both. This was a huge point of emphasis for the team – they wanted players on every console to have the same experience and they seem to be right on target.
