Dick Wilde Review (PSVR)
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.
There is a huge amount of gallery shooters currently gracing the Playstation VR. What does Dick Wilde do to try to make you pick this over the others?
There isn’t really any story to Dick Wilde. The game keeps it simple, and basically sees you take on waves of animals in different outdoor locations. As you would expect from the fact it’s a gallery shooter, there’s not much to it other than taking out the waves of enemies/animals to progress. But, Dick Wilde does offer a lot to keep in different and entertaining.
Even though the gameplay is similar to others, what stands out is the choice of weapons that are made available to you; from you standard guns like shotguns to nail guns to a bow and arrow. To be honest I was quite surprised by the amount and the variety that were available. Each weapon also comes with its own form of alternate fire, with my favourite being the shotgun, which with a simple press of button becomes a long ranged rifle weapon. Taking the variety and the alternate fire you will find your own favourite once you have tested them all out a few times.
With the variety of the weapons, you will also find two options regarding the control method of the game. You have the choice of two Playstation Move controllers or the new Aim Controller. Now each control scheme become with positives; the Move controllers allow you to duel wield weapons, but the Aim Controller offers a lot more accuracy. So, really if you have both options available, as with the weapons you will find your favourite. Personally I found that the additional accuracy from the Aim Controller suited me best and helped me get further in the game.
Visually the team at Bolverk Games have gone the root of other VR games, and rather than going for realistic graphics opted for the bold cartoon-like look. While this does not always work, Dick Wilde is one the games that uses it well. The strong bold colours, mixed with the clean and crisp style makes everything easy to pick out.
One of the issues I have found was although they have chucked in some red-neck humour into the game’s dialogue, it’s just not varied enough. Meaning although this was probably added to try to make you enjoy the game, you soon become sick of the game lines over and over. It also seems the lines they deemed the funniest have been coded to be said more, meaning sometimes you get the same line a few times in a row. An easy way around this would to have been maybe include more lines, and have them rotate and be mixed more often.
The game has nine stages available, as you would expect they all become more difficult as you progress. Each stage is made up of ten waves and a boss battle, but, when completing a wave you get the choice to replenish some health, or some weapon power-up like rockets or a support turret. I found myself needing to heal most of the time (will touch on this soon), but in the cases I wasn’t needing the heal the turret was what I found more useful, due to the fact it handled the more annoying smaller enemies.
Now why did I need to heal most of the time? Even on the easier levels Dick Wilde has a very punishing difficulty. Now, I am sure you’re asking why is this an issue? For me Dick Wilde is a very family-like party game, so you’d expect the earlier levels to be more simple; because most games like gallery shooters are interesting to casual gamers. For me by doing this you are removing a big audience from the title just by doing something like this, but, the players who like a challenge will lap it up, meaning it is sort of win-lose situation either way.
Now lets finish this on both a negative and a positive note. On the negative note there just isn’t enough to the game to make appealing for a long time if you are playing the single player element. But, Bolverk Games have included a 4-player mode. This is couch co-op and not online. This works by passing the headset on to the next player, which in turn makes it not available to everyone – but was a nice inclusion at least. But, the longevity of the game could have been improved by putting in some online feature into it.
Also available on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality
Developer: Bolverk Games
This article was originally created for http://www.gamesbulletin.uk
