I know that I played Duck Hunt as a kid and had extraordinary amounts of fun demolishing loads of ducks. However, I’m a bit older and I guess I could call myself more mature and I need a relaxing version for my VR headset. This is what Frontier VR is in my books but let’s review it and see if you think it’s worth the buy.
What is Frontier VR?
Frontier VR is an open simulator with an environment that is akin to what you would see if you were to plant your path on the “frontier”. With this in mind, the objective of the game is really that there is only hunting and exploration. This game is supposed to be a physical and visual art that brings some sort of nostalgia. You are supposed to feel as though you are on a voyage into the frontier.
Graphics and Visuals 4/5
This game pulls off the artsy style of the wilderness very well and is incredibly detailed while also removing unnecessarily hardware intensive graphics. The animals are fully interactable models, which provides a real sense of interaction with the animals until you pick up the dead bodies. The dead bodies feel a lot like jelly. My personal favorite is the snow level, simply because it looks the best and if you turn down the air you can feel like you are in the actual snow.
Hardware Requirements 4/5
This game doesn’t really need a lot of space or RAM as it needs 200MB of space and 2GB of RAM. It’s also relatively easy on the processor by just recommending you have an i5 processor or higher along with a GTX 980. This game has the lowest needs of any VR game that I’ve seen lately.
Fitness 2/5
Once again, we have an outdoors game that really has no outdoors thrill. You are simply standing in a single spot as creatures run up to you and you can choose to shoot them or not. Other than the small move required to slowly turn to your enemy, there’s really no threat in this game that requires fast movement. Although, the relaxing nature of this game suggests that this was intentional.
Gameplay 3/5
The game controls rather well and everything is intuitive, but the game is rather limited. It feels like a really impressive flash game or a standard hunting game you can find on Facebook rather than something that should be on the Steam store. The scenery is beautiful, the artwork is exquisite, and the feeling truly is nostalgic but the gameplay takes a nose dive with a lack of anything that’s really challenging. For $4.99, we can’t ask that much from the game though.
Overall Rating: 3/5
I’m not going to act like the game isn’t fantastic at its purpose, but this is an example of a team not taking it far enough. Sure, you are supposed to hunt on the frontier, but there’s a lot more than hunting when you’re out that far. For example, in the desert you need to harvest water and in the tundra (snowy place) you need to find shelter or build shelter to not die. These two activities are usually physically demanding if you’re trying to survive. There’s just so much more that could have been explored in this game and, judging by the space needed, there was also a lot more interactivity that could be built into the game. Even though it would be nice to sip on a tea as I sank myself into the visual dream of this game, that does not make it a good game.
