The first time I heard anything about Arvore’s title Pixel Ripped 1989, I thought it was one of the weakest concepts for a virtual reality game I had ever heard. I was wrong.
To quote the developer, Pixel Ripped 1989 is a wacky multi-dimensional homage to the early days of gaming. You begin the game in a 3D 8-bit world following a character named Dot (who is literally a dot, or single pixel at various points during the game) and soon learn that she is being controlled by Nicola. Pixel Ripped 1989 is both the name of this title, as well as the title of which Dot is a part. Dot’s world is being torn apart by a dragon riding goblin who goes by the name of Cyblin Lord. Cyblin Lord and Dot break out of the handheld console into the real world where you discover you are actually controlling Nicola, a second grade student playing a handheld gaming device.
Pixel Ripped reminds us a lot of the concept of the blockbuster hit Inception. The difference is that instead of dealing with dreams within dreams, you’re playing a video game inside of a video game. There are real world problems surrounding you (which we’ll get into in a bit) and you’ll also have to battle your way through various 8-bit levels to defeat the evil goblin.
SETTING
Pixel Ripped 1989 is set in, you guessed it, 1989. The entire aesthetic surrounding Nicola as she plays through the device on her handheld lives and breathes the world of the late 1980s. From the carpeting in certain settings down to the dress of non-playable characters, you’ll believe that you are in a different time period.
Nicola plays Pixel Ripped in a variety of settings, but they mostly revolve around a school classroom and playground. Various obstacles await you, such as a cranky teacher that isn’t so happy about your character playing video games in class. This game within a game plays heavily into the way you’ll succeed or fail in Pixel Ripped 1989.
STORY
As mentioned before, Nicola is a young student who seems to have recently gotten her hands on a handheld gaming console. The game (or the actual console itself) is called Pixel Ripped and you control Nicola as she controls Dot, a superhero fighting off bad guys. You’ll need to guide Nicola through battling both real world and game world challenges.
GAMEPLAY
The simplest way to describe the gameplay in this title is to say it’s platforming in VR, but that doesn’t do the game as much justice as it deserves. While you’re helping Nicola guide Dot through the world, you’ll also be battling elements around Nicola’s in-game environment. In the first level Nicola is in a classroom with several other students and a terrifying and gigantic instructor. Not only will you need to navigate Dot through the levels, but you’ll also need to find a variety of ways to distract the fun-killing teacher.
All of these distraction methods include a rather innovative mechanic – spit wads. If you want to shoot a spit wad, just glance at the straw for a few moments and then aim at what you want to shoot. The teacher will get distracted for a bit and you can platform your heart away until she snaps out of it. Each target of the spit wads has a cooldown time period, so timing your sabotages becomes an integral skill as well.
Although Nicola is mostly playing the handheld, there are occasions when Cyblin Lord and Dot actually break into Nicola’s world – an incident that no one except for Nicola seems to notice or perceive. During these breakouts gameplay continues in a similar platforming way on top of Nicola’s desk or the environment in which she is, almost as if it is augmented reality.
There are only a few mechanics inside the game that Nicola is playing. You can walk, run, jump, and shoot. Outside of the handheld are the aforementioned spitwads and a special “Bad Ass Mode” where you actually aim and shoot at objects with the gaming device as to help you aim and find the enemies.
PERFORMANCE & OVERALL EXPERIENCE
For the most part, Pixel Ripped 1989 performs incredibly well. There are almost no mechanical issues and we believe the one we did find is set to be patched with a release day update. The game doesn’t have the highest resolution, but neither do most VR devices, specifically the PSVR platform on which we played.
There are a few sequences that repeat over and over, almost annoyingly so. For instance, one of the NPCs is listening to a Walkman, singing/humming, and dancing on the teacher’s desk while the teacher is fast asleep. This sequence is repeated ad nauseam over the course of three to five seconds. In another instance other students are wowed over Nicola’s gaming device and talk about how cool it is or how good/bad she is at the game. The phrases they say are nearly instantly repeated at times. It’s clever the first few times, but begins to get tired out within minutes.
Some of the NPCs are oddly proportioned and move around with a bit of jank. This is actually kind of charming and we couldn’t tell whether it was intentional to convey the types of characters they were, or was actually an issue.
RECOMMENDATION
We highly encourage anyone who is currently a VR user to pick up Pixel Ripped 1989 as soon as possible. It’s a solid experience and did something that few other virtual reality games have ever done to me – make me forget I’m in virtual reality. The gameplay is fun (even if a bit more difficult than you’d expect at times) and the concept is great. It’s a tad longer than most other VR games out there, and comes in at a very reasonable price.
NOTE: Pixel Ripped 1989 will have more installments in the future if it does well financially and critically.
Pixel Ripped 1989 release on Playstation VR, Oculus, and Steam on July 31st, 2018. Check out our interview with developer Ana Ribeiro from PAX East 2018.
For more PlayStation VR content, check out our PSVR podcast – Into the Deep!
*Pixel Ripped 1989 was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
