Are you ready to gaze upon skyscraper-sized behemoths, fight your way through the terrors of Shardfall, and power wash a time-traveling DeLorean?
Last month, that's what I've been doing with the help of my Meta Quest 3 (and the new Quell immersive fitness system), and I'm here to review my experience playing them all. Small spoiler, this month's VR games and apps were excellent. I highly recommend you pick up at least one of these as soon as you can.
So let's get into what I thought about Behemoth, Power Wash Simulator and its Back to the Future DLC, and the new Quell game, Shardfall. But first, something a little different.
Batman: Arkham Shadow
I usually reserve this column for games and apps I've played at some point in the last few weeks. But after that explosive Summer Games Fest trailer, we have to talk about Arkham Shadow, the Batman VR game that will come exclusively to Meta Quest 3.
Ahead of the trailer reveal, I had the pleasure of chatting with Ryan Payton, the studio head of Camouflaj (the team behind the game), to find answers to my most burning questions.
Payton revealed that the main villain is not Ratcatcher as we expected; instead, he is simply a follower of the real big bad, the Rat King. He described the gameplay to me in great detail, calling Arkham Shadow a VR translation of everything that made Arkham Asylum the smash hit it was: from exploration to story to characters to dynamic combat. Payton also described why this game had to be exclusive to Meta Quest 3.
You can read my full talk with Ryan Payton on Arkham Shadow for a more in-depth look at these topics, but know that I'm even more excited about this game than I already was. Its 'Holiday 2024' release date can't come soon enough.
giant
Last month I was lucky enough to try out one of the first Behemoth demos. The roughly 15-minute portion of the game introduced me to some of the enemies, weapons, puzzles, and monstrosities the game has in store for players.
My victory over the Behemoth in the demo was slightly reduced when I was told that the boss was a bit weakened by experience. However, the team tried to cheer me up by explaining that this was because the players would normally face it after a few hours instead of 10 minutes, so they would be prepared for a tougher fight. I guess I'll have to try out the full game so I can prove myself in a full-fledged rematch… and I can't wait.
You can think of it as a virtual reality version of Shadow of the Colossus (to be a bit reductive). You're on a quest to hunt and kill towering giants that roam the lands, and the boss fights feel more like action-based puzzles than a typical fight.
That doesn't mean you won't get your fill of medieval-style duels. As you progress through the adventure, you will face many human-sized enemies that will try to finish you off before you have a chance to spy on one of the beasts you are searching for.
Yes, they're much less imposing, but fighting these smaller enemies is still challenging and exciting thanks to Behemoth's sandbox combat approach. You have access to a good variety of swing weapons, as well as link-up techniques like blocking, parrying, and hook stunts, to find interesting ways to decimate your enemies.
Alternatively, you can become enraged, deliver tremendously powerful blows for a limited time, and simply blow away your enemies.
Speaking with Shawn Kittelsen, Skydance Interactive's vice president of creative for Behemoth, after the demo, he explained that after working on The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners, the team basically wanted to make the complete opposite of that game.
“The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners has all these intimate, dark spaces, and you never know if a Walker is waiting around the corner to grab you. We thought, what if we took our arc of motion physics that players love, our experience designing different weapons and enemy varieties, and applied it to something completely different: an epic fantasy game with open-ended settings?
When the team considered what enemies players would encounter in these large spaces, the answer was clear: Behemoths. From here, the team designed these antagonistic puzzles to make players better by giving them some nasty tricks, such as player responsiveness. This means that instead of simply alternating between attacks, these monsters will react to your actions.
This is something I noticed in my demo, as my decision to run underneath the monster to avoid the giant ball and chain it was wielding simply resulted in it choosing to kick me.
If you're interested in trying out Behemoth when it launches, it's coming to Meta Quest 3, Oculus Quest 2, PSVR 2, and PCVR.
When discussing the power difference between these hardware systems, Kittelsen assured me that while the PS5 and PC experiences will offer better visuals (and some additional immersive features like PSVR2's headset noise), the Quest 2 experience will feel the same in terms of gameplay. and with a smooth frame rate. He added: “It was important that we didn't leave Quest 2 players behind.”
PowerWash Simulator and Back to the Future DLC
After my experience with Lawn Mowing Simulator, I was a little reluctant to try another housework simulator; my girlfriend even laughed at me when she heard that I would be spending my time doing virtual tasks for the second month in a row. But PowerWash Simulator manages to offer everything you expected from Lawn Mowing Simulator and more. It's a cathartic cleansing experience that I've become strangely addicted to since downloading it a couple of weeks ago.
Yes, the main game is very simple. With enough patience and a little help from the in-game checklist and dirt viewer, you can run your cleaning wand over every surface and easily get your van/house/playground dinosaur looking like new. But there's something meditative about meticulously climbing over surfaces in search of the last particles of dirt you need to clean.
For those of you looking for a bigger challenge, some modes task you with re-clearing each level under a time restriction and water restriction, respectively. I've tried these modes, but feel like my cleaning prowess is still not up to par – water tests are particularly challenging and require a level of cleaning precision that I currently lack.
To continue my training, PowerWash Simulator offers additional bonus levels. Some are included in the base game, while some licensed locations are available through paid DLC, such as the recently released Back to the Future pack.
While it's not the immersive Back to the Future experience that fans of the series might have hoped for, if you enjoy what PowerWash Simulator has to offer, these themed levels are a delight. I hope we see more.
Although my reaction was the opposite of what I felt about Lawn Mowing Simulator, I admit that this monotonous task simulator will not be for everyone. Trying to compare it to an action-packed hit like Behemoth almost seems a little boring.
But at the same time, I've found PowerWash Simulator to be deceptively delicious. Every time I try to put it down, I want to put Meta Quest 3 back on and clean it again.
Suffocation and falling fragments
Okay, so Quell isn't a Meta Quest 3 game. It's not even a virtual reality game. But I needed to talk about it here because I think it's a great alternative to the VR fitness apps I've been talking about since I did my month-long VR workout challenge in April.
This fitness-focused gaming platform offers a lot of what I've fallen in love with about VR apps like Supernatural. Instead of exercising just for the sake of it (something that can be a struggle for motivation), there is a gamified element.
In the case of Quell, those are the enemies you face in his first game, Shardfall, a high fantasy adventure. It's not just an upper body workout. You also have to jog, run, crouch and jump to overcome obstacles that occupy the space between fights. Because this adventure is not in virtual reality, the team was able to incorporate these elements without as much risk of the player getting hurt or feeling nauseous.
Resistance bands have also been added, with three levels of difficulty, making the hits more challenging. When I first tried Quell, I was surprised by how much more effort I was putting into my shadow boxing.
For a more in-depth look at this new immersive fitness experience, I recommend checking out my full article on my experience with Quell. But TL;DR, I really enjoyed using it, even though I occasionally had the frustrating issue of the tracker not syncing perfectly with my movements.
If you've been struggling to get into virtual reality fitness or more traditional workouts, then Quell might be what you're looking for. But think about whether Quell is definitely for you before you buy it, as it's a bit pricey: $339/£299 (unfortunately not available in Australia), with an additional subscription costing $9.99/£9.90 for month or $79.90 / £79.90 for one year. However, when it comes to dedicated fitness equipment, this is not an unreasonable amount.
