I’ve gotta give Velan Studios credit – it likes to keep things interesting. Following the criminally short-lived competitive dodgeball game Knockout City and two of the coolest augmented reality games out there, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hot Wheels: Rift Rally, the studio's next game is yeꦛt another unexpected and fascinating pivot. Bounce Arcade is a VR game that combines elements of pinball, brick breaker, and tabl𓂃e tennis to create a totally unique arcade experience that’s as easy to pick up as it is hard to put down… or take off? We’re still figuring out VR slang.
As 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a recently converted pinball guy and one of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:virtual reality’s bravest soldiers, Bounce Arcade arrives at the exact intersection of my very specific interests, but I thinkꦅ the appeal is pretty universal. Ball comes, hit ball, watch ball bounce all around. There’s fun noises, lots of lights, and even if you have no idea what you’re doing you can still rack up millions of points on the scoreboard. This is the beating heart of pinball and the reason t🅠he game has endured for nearly 100 years, and Bounce Arcade nails the energy and excitement of slapping a ball and watching it zoom around smashing into stuff.
Bounce Arcade isn’t just virtual pinball in the way that Pinball FX is though - it’s pinball-inspired. The playfield on each map is a large, thre♓e-dimensional space where the ball can freely fly around, and with each hand you control a paddle you can use to bounce the ball away and keep working towards the various objectives. There 🤪are four levels in the full game, but for the preview I was allowed to play the first two: Gunpowder Gulch and Asteroid Outpost.
🐎 Metro Awakening Was My Most Religious Experience At Gamescom 🦩
We explore the subterranean maze in the new VR entry of the Metro series. This is🍨 what we found in Awakening.
Both maps are a lot of fun and offer some different kinds of experiences. Gunpowder Gulch is an Old West-themed level whereဣ your goal is to rob a bank and commit various other Old West-y crimes. Progression is a lot like regular pinball: you use your paddles to hit the ball into marked targets to complete objectives, causing the field to change in some mechanical way that opens up new challenges.
One of the things that makes Bounce Arcade different from regular pinball is how much influence you have over the ball. Every time you hit the ball you can move your paddle to influence the direction it travels, kind of like the way you can move a floating bobber by yanking your fishing pole. This is Bounce Arcade’s version of tilting the table, and once you learn how to use this technique it makes completing objectives a lot easier. You also haveꦇ the ability to attract the ball to yo൩ur paddles, which is useful when it starts moving too fast and out of control. You can kind of think of this as Bounce Arcade’s version of trapping.
Both Gunpowder Gulch and Asteroid Outpost - a sci-fi map where you’re tasked with repairing a space station - have a lot of cool features that could only ever work in VR. Gunpowder Gulch has a bunch of mini-games where your paddles are replaced with six-shooters and you rack up points by shooting cardboard cutouts of the town sheriff. One version is an old-fashioned duel where you have to shoot the targets as soon as they turn around - being careful not to accidentally shoot civilians instead - while another version turns the entire map into a classic shooting gallery. The gameplay variety keeps things fresh and inter൩esting, and it's cool to see how the play field transforms as you progress through the objectives.
Asteroid Outpost has a more linear progression path. You start by electrifying the ball by hitting it into charged objects, then using the ball to power up the generators. Completing each objective changes some aspect of the space station until eventually the background breaks up and the vastness of outer space becomes part of the play field. At that point you’ll use the ball to break apart asteroids and collect the rare, ball-shaped materials that fa🎐ll out of them. The core gameplay mechanic is always some version of hitting a ball with your paddles, but ꦓit's cool to see all the different ways that task can be complicated and recontextualized in one level.
Velan Studios is definitely onto something with Bounce Arcade. Unfortunately, like a lot of VR games, it isn’t muc𝓰h to look at. The maps are very simple and visually uninteresting, and the lighting is flat. I can usually get past the visuals in VR if the gameplay is compelling enough, but when you’re staring at the same drab background through an entire play session, it's hard to ignore that everything looks kinda bad. Pinball is all about overloading your senses with lights, colors, and sounds, and I don’t think Bounce Arcade can effectively capture the feeling of activating a multi-ball and watching the table turn into a laser light show.
Bounce Arcade is coming to Quest headse💮ts on November 21 with four different tables, so I’m looking forward to seeing if the two I haven’t seen are more visually interesting. Its interpretation of pinball is clever and I’m having a lot of fun with it so far, but I’m not sure it's the kind of experience I’ll want to come back to over and over yet the way I come back to my favorite pinball tables. On the other hand, if Velan manages to secure the licensing for an 80s hair metal band, I’ll be all in.
Anoth𒆙er Sony State Of Play, Another Month Of Disappointment For PSVR2 Owners
Sony is nev𝐆er going to make a game for 𝔉its own VR headset, is it?
