For the purpose of transparency, this hands-on was completed using a code provided by the company or their respective PR company. The use of a free code does not affect my judgement of this product.
Please note this hands-on was created using a product that is currently in Early Access, meaning some of the issues could be resolved over time.
Wanted Killer officially started out on mobiles, not a mobile VR game – but just a standard mobile game. The team at Playsnak have now made it available on the PC VR platforms. However, does the transition work?
In the game you play as a character called Rick, who had apparently died in an experiment to transfer consciousness to another host – something he was unwillingly part of after being captured. Now, you want to take down this corporation that did this, this is where you campaign is going to start.
In order to do this you are just going to have to take on waves of enemies, or defend the point from waves of enemies for a set time until you can move on. You can unlock four starting weapons, which are called Burst, Dead Eye, Freeze and Shield – all of which have a secondary fire that matches the name of the weapons. In order to unlock these you use the stars from your level ratings to buy them. As you would expect in order to gain these stars you need to finish the levels, then if you want more of them you need to complete the secondary objectives. Now, where this offers more to the game, it also becomes a small issues, this is down to you sometimes having to slow down the rapid gun-play in order to aims for head shots.
However, if you really can not be bothered doing all the side objectives to unlock the guns quickly, you wont really miss out. Personally I found the automatic rifles that the enemies use the best gun on the game, so you can just go in with your starting pistols take out some enemies and collect/use their guns. Which is what I found myself doing more often than using the pistols.
As well as the campaign you are going to get a Survival mode to unlock, which as you would expect is just taking on waves of enemies until your dead – rinse and repeat.
In both the modes it is really your choice in how you approach what you are doing, you can move fast and play it very much like a bullet-hell action game, or take it slower by hiding behind cover and a more careful approach. Either way the gun-play handles really well, it’s all just down to your preference.
The final part of the gameplay really comes from the games movement system, this really is what helps the title stand out. It works on a teleport mechanic, where you can point at the areas highlighted pink; be it enemies ghosts after you have killed them or highlighted areas. You can either quick teleport to these or go to them in a slower bullet-time mode killing enemies on the way, and switching paths if you want to. Now I know people hear teleport in this medium and instantly bork at the fact, for those the game does offer free locomotion, but by using this I find that you are taking away the games charm. Yes you can still jump via the teleport areas in free locomotion mode for a fast get away, but for me it was wasting the games unique and best mechanic.
The visual style of the game feels very much Borderlands inspired, but that is not a bad thing. I wouldn’t say the visuals are going to impress you as much as other shooter titles, but they do look nice when in the game. He characters in the game are voiced and will throw out lines during the levels, with my favourite of course being the bubble gum reference from They Live.
Obviously with this still being in early access you will come across some bugs in the game, with the main one I encountered being losing your path, which really broke up parts of the flow in the gameplay. This was down to the pink teleport points disappearing or changing during the level, however, where this did break to flow at times, it did not make it impossible to continue or is in noway game breaking.
Conclusion
Wanted Killer VR is showing a lot promise at this early stage of it’s development. It really does bring a lot of bang for your buck, costing £6.99 and offering fifteen missions, that will last you a few hours. Even at this current stage of development the game feels like everything is already coming together smoothly, and there is still plenty of time to work on it with it’s planned release being near the end of 2018.
Also available on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift
Developer: Playsnak
