For the purposes of transparency, this review was created using a code provided by the company or their respective PR company. The use of a review code does not affect my judgement of the game.
One thing there is an abundance of on the VR medium is arcade wave shooters, and a number are already available on the PlayStation VR based in the western setting. Well Guns’n’Stories has rode over to the PlayStation VR from PCVR, but does it do enough to stand out in the populated genre?
The game’s story is told from the perspective of your Grandpa remembering the story of rescuing his first love Charlotte from the slavers. However, this is some years later and his whiskey soaked tale plays it’s part in the game. But, this is more just to give the reason you are going on this murderous spree, and his memories make up for the most fun part of the gameplay.
As previously mentioned the main gameplay of this is an arcade style wave shooter, but the story being told between waves means the level can change at any point. Where you start each level with the trusty revolvers, Grandpa might soon remember having different guns… and as if by magic these are now in your hands. This brings in some imaginative guns that have clearly been down to the fact he’d drinking whiskey throughout the three act campaign.
This allowed the team at MiroWin VR the chance to keep the gameplay and gun play fresh throughout the waves you take on each act. Now, this is where one the issues I had with the game came into play. Although you are switching out to the new imaginative weapons, it still started to feel a little stale because of the length each level played out in each act. I think the reason for this is because you are stuck to one position and looking at the same scenery, I think this could have been removed by moving you about in each acts scene – For example; rather than just looking straight down the street at the salons, may be giving you the option to jump to one of the balconies.
The final element of the gameplay is around dealing with the enemies incoming fire be it bullets, dynamite or rockets. You can deal with this in three ways, these are deflecting them with your guns, shooting them out of the sky or by dodging them by physically moving. This brings in some tactics as you will have to think what is the best way to deal with these for your own survival.
When it comes to the presentation the level designs are well done, and all feel like a new place in that area of the world per act – but, again not without some issues. The main issue is comes with the settings and enemies in the distance. Where the parts that are close to you are in good detail, I would say anything outside of 20 foot in front of you in the world are majorly blurred and suffer from some terrible jaggies – which really remove some of the immersion, putting both of those together.
I was running this on the PlayStation 4 Pro, meaning you expect to be the better version of the game in this department. What really is disappointing is that the game looks very clear on the HTC Vive, which means it could have been down the steps needed to make it optimised for Sony’s hardware.
The game uses audio a lot better. With each fictional gun and your revolver all sounding different, and the sounds also suit the what the weapon is supposed to represent. But, where it really excels is the voice over work, as the story is being told to you over the wave shooting. They have done a great job in making you feel you are living this tale as it narrated to you.
In order to play the game you are going to need two PlayStation Move controllers, with each one representing the gun in each hand. It can be played seated or standing, but I would recommend where possible to play it standing, this makes it so much easier to dodge the bullets than when seated. In both standing and seated I had a few issues losing tracking in some of the waves, and especially when using the two-handed weapon on the last wave on act one – but, this was soon sorted and didn’t cause too many issues.
To play through the three acts you get around one and half to two hours of gameplay. At end of each part of the acts you will get scored for that level out of five stars, which you can go back to and try get better scores and results. Where some people might be able to add longevity doing this, the aforementioned issues with the length of the waves making it possibly feel stale for some players – means you might find this hard to go back to.
Pros
- Weapon design is great
- Humour and references
- Use of audio
Cons
- Lacklustre visuals
- Can not switch weapons in story mode
- A few tracking issues
Conclusion
Guns’n’Stories: Bulletproof brings some great moments with the story telling bringing new weapons and mixing up the gun play, but, also has it’s issues. With no option to switch weapons in the story mode, it means with the length of the waves it can still start to feel a little stale. The game also comes with some lacklustre visuals that can take away some of the immersion in the title. Although, if you are one that can look past the imperfections, you could have fun with this game.
Also available on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality
Developer: MiroWin VR
Buy Guns’n’Stories Bulletproof VR on PlayStation Store
