Vertigo 2 on PSVR2 is exactly why you buy a VR headset. It does nearly everything perfectly, and is quite honestly one of the best VR experiences you’ll ever have.
PSVR2 has had a string of upsets recently, but Vertigo 2 ends that streak and finally makes us remember why we got the headset to begin with. Potentially the best VR experience on PSVR2, Vertigo 2 excels at everything from sound design to visuals.
VERTIGO 2
Publisher: Perp Games
Platform: VR, PSVR2 (Reviewed)
Release Date: January 16, 2024
Vertigo 2 does a terrific job of telling the story via gameplay, with short cutscenes and dialogue with the characters you meet as you progress through each chapter. So while playing the first game will help you get a jump on the story, you won’t be lost at all if you choose to just jump straight into the 2nd game. (Plus we are welcomed with a quick option to learn the backstory if needed) This is what makes the game so fantastic. It’s a true story driven adventure and not just an arcade shooter with random levels and events thrown at you.
Instead it takes inspirations from Half-Life, or Valve in general, with not only story driven aspects and creatures, but also easter eggs that nod at Valve games themselves. You’ll find things like the Portal gun hidden in secret rooms, along with new weapons, which makes exploring the areas all the more fun. One thing that the game does phenomenally well is the fact the world is always interesting to look at. There is always something above you, below you, or off to the side that is worth getting a close up look at. Then the game quickly moves you from varied environments to keep things new and interesting at all times. So finding these little nods, or new weapons, are always fun and interesting.
Adding to the interesting environments is phenomenal sound design. Using both my headphones and home theater, the game does a fantastic job of being room aware of where sounds are coming from. Big explosions will alert you directly to where the sound came from and have you swinging your head in the perfect direction to see it. Another fun perk of the sound is listening to enemies as they move around the room. You can quickly hide behind objects or walls and listen to the enemies making noise and know just when they are about to pop around the corner, meaning you can fire you gun at the absolute perfect time.
Speaking of weapons, all the weapons in the game are insanely fun and creative to use. Each gun basically has unlimited ammo, but you need to press a button to release the guns specific cartridge and then reach down to grab a reload and slam it into the gun. Most of the guns animations are automatic so you don’t need to worry about stressful mechanics like other titles. To me this is enough involvement to make it feel authentic, and fun, and gets just hectic enough in tense situations with tons of enemies. And all the guns are unique too. So some guns might release the cartridge from the front, while other guns will pop open at the top.
Another interesting aspect is that all the guns have an auto-reload feature where if you don’t use the gun for a short amount of time, it will auto reload itself to max ammo. This is fun for two reasons. The first being that if you fight a big group of enemies and carried forward, you sometimes forget to reload, but this feature fixes that scenario and lets you jump right into a new gunfight. The second is that during those hectic moments you can switch to a new gun, take out a few enemies, then switch back to the other gun and have ammo again, keeping the combat moving pretty fast.
This is pretty easy because all the controls in the game are extremely well done. Motion tracking is spot on in almost every regard, so holding a gun with two hands is pretty thrilling, and pumping shotguns really gives it that oomp you expect from such a strong gun. Aiming takes some getting used to because I feel like you need to hold guns “up” more than they need to be to keep the barrel straight, but overall the learning curve was rather easy. But other aspects like switching guns is also insanely easy. No reaching down into a crowded waist band, instead you press a button and a weapon wheel pops up, you point at the gun you want and it switches, but it’s so easy and well done that switching weapons is actually fun to play with.
Visually the game isn’t too “stunning” when it comes to animations, but the cartoonish nature and music really elevate the game beyond expectations. I seriously love the music soundtrack in the game, and the visual effects are so friggin awesome in VR. There were a few hiccups I ran into visually, but most of them didn’t impact gameplay, like a projector screen didn’t turn on. Other times I did find it odd that the world seems to “turn” without you, especially when in moving platforms, so you have to physically move in real life to adjust yourself to center again.
Enemies are fun and unique with each one not only attacking you in different ways, but visually are interesting and fun to play with. The biggest thing about the enemies is that it reminds me a lot of when Doom first released. During this time when games were in FPS, it was interesting that enemies shot directly at the screen and it made people bob their heads in real life to dodge them. Vertigo 2 does that same thing in VR that Doom did, because enemies have a lot of attacks that are slow moving projectiles so you dodge them by bobbing your head around, or by jumping behind cover. The fact the game utilizes the full room setup for PSVR2 makes it even better because you can walk out, lean around objects, or even duck down to get better shots.
Lastly I have to note how dedicated the team is to making sure this is a proper experience. I normally don’t take this into context for a review, but ever since I got the review code the team has constantly been updating the game and providing updates on improvements the game is seeing. Any issues I’ve had were quickly addressed before I could even say anything, and the updated version of the game I played this past weekend is damn near perfect experience.
If there is one thing I had to critique it’s just overall performance. There are some rendering issues as it doesn’t seem to have dynamic rendering, and overall there are a few spots where frame rate drops are noticeable. It’s also another game that isn’t fully utilizing all the features of PSVR2 such as the headset rumbling and eye tracking. But these are totally nitpicky things that I think could eventually be improved in future updates.
