Preview: Operation Warcade

Operation Warcade brings an interesting spin on your VR wave shooters, with it being treat like an arcade machine. People who frequented 90’s arcades will feel a lot of nostalgia when playing this game, with it bringing back memories of games like Operation Wolf – but does this spin work?

As you would expect from a game like Operation Warcade, there isn’t really a story to the game, it’s just like any of your other military based wave shooters. The idea of the game is just to take out the enemies that are approaching you. So, the game doesn’t really need any sort of story to achieve what the game is trying do.

Gameplay wise, its your typical VR shooter, with a little twist. Like mentioned in the first paragraph its like an arcade machine and depending which mode you chose depends on the experience. The game has you moving sideways along the level, and this is where the nostalgia and true arcade game shooter clichés come into place. The reason for this is you are taking on endless soldiers, that will just towards you like they have no reason to live, loads of explosions and exploding barrels, and very easy to damage vehicles and helicopters (which can be destroyed very easily by your Uzi).

You main weapons are your Uzi and grenades, but again the game shots in some little extras. You will find that you have some power-ups like double Uzi’s and also can get special grenades that have different effects. Then in some areas you will be teleported into the game, by shooting the icons as they appear. This can see you using vehicles, being placed in the game with different weapons. You are also granted a gravity gun, which you use from the normal view. But this gun in so much fun to use, as you just drag soldiers, vehicles and parts of the level towards you and fire them at the enemies.

As aforementioned, there is two modes to the game, you have 3D mode and 3D Immersive mode. 3D mode makes the game from the view of your usual arcade game experience – the only difference being is you shoot through and throw grenades through the screen. In 3D Immersive mode you are then placed close to the screen and you lean in through the screen to see what is coming your way. I really found myself playing the most of the time in 3D immersive mode, it seemed a lot more fun that way.

At first the gameplay and different views seemed to suggest to me that the game was going to an enjoyable experience for a long time. But, after a while it all started to become slightly bland, and I did find myself going back to just play it in very short spurts, rather than getting totally engrossed in the experience.

Now one area that lets the game down is the visuals are not very strong at all, but, the charm of this game is the old school arcade game feeling it gives off. I just feel they could have been better visual wise, even if was made just a bit more crisp and clear with a stronger colour palette. At the moment it seems all a bit bland and ugly-looking.

A great thing about Operation Warcade is the game does offer a lot of replay value, and a reason to go back. The game comes with 36 Levels that are made up 108 missions. Each mission comes with three goals, you have to collect these medals in order to progress and unlock other levels/missions and also upgrades for your weapons. With this in mind I would recommend reading them before you start each mission, at times I just jumped straight in, and then went back and had to try to get these medals to progress. Needing to carry out the goals to progress might annoy some people when the challenges are more difficult, however, I feel this adds to the reason to go back and play the game, giving it some extra replay value.

Operation Warcade has joined the overpopulated genre of wave based shooters for the VR platforms, but at least attempts to offer something different. It comes in at the price point of £14.99, and given the twist and amount of levels/missions on the game it’s not bad when it comes to value for money. However, it all depends if you are in the need for another wave based shooter, or don’t want to cough a little extra for a more polished product like Raw Data.

* Please note this hands-on has been completed using an Early Access version of the game, so improvements and extra additions may come in the future.