[ Review ] Edge of Nowhere

[Vector-]

 

Game Informations : 

Developer: Insomniac Games

Publishers: Oculus VR, Insomniac Games

Platforms: Microsoft Windows

Initial release date: June 6, 2016

 

 

What excites me most about virtual reality gaming  are the opportunities that open up for new and innovative styles of gaming that were never before possible. But despite being an Oculus exclusive, VR-only game, Edge of Nowhere is not that kind of game. It’s a very conventional and unexciting blend of third-person platforming action, light survival-horror, and typical stealth that feels like it would’ve worked completely fine on a traditional gaming system. Blocking out the real world does add to the sense of isolation it’s going for in its bleak Arctic environments, at least, but it doesn’t change the way you play enough for Edge of Nowhere to stand out

 

 

The only VR feature that’s made extensive use of is head tracking, which is used for camera control, directing your flashlight in dark areas, and aiming your shotgun and thrown rocks. Most of that works well – especially the aiming, which feels about as accurate as a mouse, and much better than the gamepad you’re forced to use. The camera, on the other hand, makes going back the way you came for any reason (such as to pick up ammo or health you might’ve passed momentarily) an ordeal. You have to physically turn around in your seat to see where you’re going, which isn’t very convenient for what is otherwise a comfortable seated VR experience.

 

That said, Edge of Nowhere’s levels are so tightly linear that going backwards isn’t something you need to do very often. There are no secrets to find or alternate paths to seek out, which prevents any sense of exploration you might expect from an explorer-themed game and offers no reason to want to replay it. In a roughly six-hour story campaign that bears more than a few similarities to Dead Space 2, generic protagonist Victor Howard must battle his way through fleshy, bulbous monsters and grotesquely mutated humans as he searches for his missing fiancee (who is also an explorer). It’s given some extra depth by calling Victor’s sanity into question (also like Dead Space 2) by distorting the world around us in strange ways, to the point where it’s uncertain what’s real and what’s in his head.

 

 

Those flashback hallucinations do a good job of temporarily transporting you to other locations, which is otherwise exclusively in creature-infested ice caverns and snow-covered Arctic tundra. If not for those, there’d be very little to establish that the story is set in 1932, as snow hasn’t changed much over the last 80 years. Those are the most visually impressive areas - especially the jungle scenes - but on the whole Edge isn’t a terrific-looking game. Some of the environments look extremely low-polygon and jagged, which doesn’t look all that convincing even for big chunks of ice.

 

A couple of routine boss fights change things up a little every once in awhile, but never do much to stand out. There’s typical “wait for the monster to open up to attack” fight and the “avoid the giant monster’s searchlight” sequence. I appreciate them for adding to gameplay variety, but neither is memorable or original.

 

 

Action scenes are competent but rarely surprising. There’s a lot of running forward as the floor collapses behind you and ice platforms breaking off or falling over as you jump on or off of them, lots of clambering over obstacles, and a whole lot of climbing ice walls with your ice axes. Those climbing sequences are the most overdone - or maybe they just feel that way because the movement speed is so slow and the hazards of the ice breaking out from under you are so often repeated. I soon adopted a quicker but unrealistic method of repeatedly leaping upward and digging in with my axes like some sort of weird superhero, just to speed things up. To its credit, there are a few sequences in the latter half of the campaign I enjoyed, when all of the different hazards are thrown at you at once and there’s a time pressure to keep moving. I fell to my death fairly frequently, but the save checkpoints are so close together and the loading times so quick that it didn’t matter much - in fact, I was far more reckless in my platforming than I normally would be because I didn’t fear death.

 

 

Between platforming sequences and hallucinations are the stealth and combat against a small variety of enemy types, nearly all of which are literally blind and detect you based on sound or within a radius (which is visible thanks to Victor’s unexplained Detective Vision ability). If that reminds you of The Last of Us’ Clicker zombies, it should: these stealth sequences seem pulled directly out of Naughty Dog’s playbook. Most of them are navigated by tossing rocks to lure enemies away from your path, and optionally tossing another rock to activate a nearby spike trap to impale them like hors d'oeuvres on toothpicks.

 

Alternatively, you can try to fight your way through with your ax and the satisfyingly powerful shotgun, but its one-shot-per-load and long reload times make that a method of last resort. Victor can only take a few hits even from the enemies that don’t instantly and graphically murder him when they catch you, so it’s best to keep your distance. These stealth sequences are at their best when ammo is scarce enough that you have to make use of the environment to deal with as many monsters as possible before going loud. If that’s your style, I encourage you to play on the highest difficulty level, which decreases the amount of supplies available.

 

 

Verdict:

Edge of Nowhere stands out in the current library of VR games only because it’s one of the longer and more polished games out there, but compared to the conventional third-person action-stealth games it closely emulates it’s competent but unremarkable. If you’ve played a game in this genre before, Victor’s platforming and sneaking will do very little to surprise you, other than the way the sense of isolation you get from putting on the Oculus Rift enhances the setting.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------

System Requirements

Minimum:

OS: Win 7 64
Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz / AMD FX-8350
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 290 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB
System Memory: 8 GB RAM
Storage: 15 GB Hard drive space
DirectX 11 Compatible Graphics Card

 

Recommended:

OS: Win 7 64
Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz / AMD FX-8350
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 290 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB
VRAM: 4GB
System Memory: 8 GB RAM
Storage: 15 GB Hard drive space

 

 

Quote

Official Trailer