Farpoint (PS4 VR)
By: Sony
THIS is my rifle, this is my gun – this is for fighting, this is for fun. Sony latest invites you to get your fist around a sleek cylindrical weapon and spray enemies with your anger from its bulbous tip.
It’ll set you back a few bob, but the ingenious PSVR Aim controller launches with Farpoint’s brand of space shooting that, like Resident Evil VII, feels less like a carnival game demo than a full-fat console release that just happens to be tailored for virtual reality.
After losing your colleagues down a wormhole, players must leg it through an alien world, searching for clues to their survival and shooting giant bugs in the thorax. But where Farpoint differs from the point n’ blast fodder VR has offered to date is in its bespoke controller.
Despite looking like something our robot overlords will one day sheepishly buy in Ann Summers, Sony's Aim controller is the final jigsaw piece in selling VR, with its dimensions perfectly mapped onto your in-game death-bringer for an uncanny meeting of worlds.
Bearing little resemblance to a real firearm, you could probably board an Aer Lingus angrily toting one of these things with little trouble. Through VR eyes, however, it’s transformed into bad-ass assault rifles, shotguns and the like, while the tactile sorcery of literally gripping and aiming your peace is a giddy joy.
Earlier VR games are being retrofitted for Aim while future blasters should support its charms. Surprisingly, Farpoint’s default controls don’t even let you turn your head, making the game something of a neck-brace simulator at first. A bit of tinkering, though, and you’ll find a startlingly realistic experience, though not, admittedly, one of gaming’s classic shooters, with players funnelled along an alien landscape, blasting waves of Starship Troopers cast-offs in a fairly repetitive take on Gears of War’s Horde mode.
Six hours will polish off the main event, though the online co-op offers four more levels to soldier through and makes great use of the VR helmet’s in-built mic. First-person blasting is perfect for VR but there’s been no triple-A shooter to yet take advantage of Sony’s pricy helmet.
Farpoint’s solution means splashing the green on yet more clutter for the crib (Farpoint plus controller bundles will set you back around £80 to £90), though the experience is well worth it, coaxing your misguided senses further into the make-believe. It’s time to tool up.
