Reach: From VR Epic to Underground Slog? My Hands-On Hopes and Fears
AI Gaming News Author · Eurogamer ·
Jeff dives into nDreams's new VR title, *Reach*, finding an exhilarating, *Blood & Truth* meets *Mirror's Edge* opening, only to be left cautiously optimistic yet concerned as the demo pivots to a slower-paced, visually bland underground experience with uninspired combat.
Right, so you know that feeling when a new game trailer drops and your brain immediately starts conjuring epic fantasies of what it *could* be? You picture yourself pulling off gravity-defying stunts, pelting baddies with magical arrows, and generally just being the coolest digital wizard in the room. Yeah, well, grab a cuppa, mate, because nDreams's upcoming VR title, *Reach*, seems to be playing a bit of a trick on us, delivering some truly mind-bending highs before settling into something decidedly… less high.
I've been tinkering with the demo for *Reach*, and bloody hell, the prologue chapter is an absolute banger. It kicks off with this incredibly fluid parkour sequence – leaping over boxes, clambering up walls, feeling like a digital daredevil in a sprawling warehouse. Then, just to properly dial up the adrenaline, they hand you a magical bow and unleash a flurry of armed enemies while a helicopter spits missiles and machine gun fire at you from above. It’s exhilarating stuff, a true high-octane climax featuring a full-speed sprint through exploding buildings and across rooftops. To me, it felt like a heady, intoxicating mix of *Blood & Truth* and *Mirror's Edge* in VR – all the parkour finesse mixed with cinematic, explosive action. And then, just as you're thinking you've stumbled into the VR action epic of your dreams (with a lovely, unexpected twist at the end, I might add), *poof*! The magic shifts, and suddenly you're wondering if you accidentally stepped into a completely different game.
Now, before we dig into that tonal shift, a bit of context. *Reach* is coming from nDreams Elevation, a new studio under the nDreams banner. These chaps aren't exactly newbies to the VR scene; nDreams gave us *Synapse*, which I still reckon is one of my favourite VR games ever, and the short-lived but rather fun *Fracked*. So, naturally, my expectations for *Reach* were sky-high. Perhaps, in hindsight, I was setting myself up for a bit of a fall – which, I suppose, is ironically appropriate given how much climbing there is in the game!
Visually, *Reach* starts strong. An impressive vista stretches across a mountainside, littered with tall buildings and shack-like slums. Cable cars trundle off towards distant, snow-capped peaks, teasing an action epic that would sweep you across this bustling, vertical landscape. But 'tease' really is the operative word here because, in the four-chapter demo I played, that epic never really materialised. The prologue had a taste of it, sure, but as soon as it ended, I was skipped forward a level or two to find our protagonist, Rosa, trapped underground. It seems a mysterious earthquake had sent gravity on a bit of a weird one, making it go all wonky, like a spell cast a bit too well.
This is where things got… different. Time slows when you activate your grapple, meaning with a bit of practice, you can chain together pulls, flying between green grapple points without touching the ground. This section definitely had some cool, *Uncharted*-style moments of perilous climbing, and a few fun bits where you could play with floating props. But it was clear the frenetic pace established in the first chapter was already slowing down a tad. Visually, it was interesting but never highly polished. Collapsed buildings gave way beneath me, and crumbling roads dropped cars on my head, but they felt like fairly simple models with basic, flat textures. Don't get me wrong, non-photorealistic graphics can be super stylish – *Synapse* managed it with about three colours and minimal textures – but *Reach* just looks… fine. And for a game that promised such a grand scope, 'fine' feels like a bit of a deflated magic trick.
After this, Rosa finds herself in an underground city, built by a race of 'Living Statues', and it’s here where the pace truly falls off a cliff. Upon reaching a level called The Workshop, I brought one of these Living Statues back to life. He was a jaunty, bearded chap named Atlas, and he proceeded to exposition at me for about fifteen minutes straight, pausing only to teach me about some new, magical kit he’d gifted me. This included an admittedly very cool, Captain America-style shield you can use to bash enemies or lodge into specific walls for climbing, gauntlets that display your health and items on your wrist, and a chest-mounted healing device powered by… mushrooms. Because, why not? Mushrooms are always the answer, aren't they?
Following this substantial lore dump, things picked up a *little*. I encountered a fun puzzle section that combined climbing and bow shooting to unlock a door. It was a great showcase of *Reach*'s physicality – climbing is precise and responsive, movement is smooth and fluid, and the archery feels nice and accurate. It was a very satisfying puzzle to solve, as was another later on that featured a huge rotating statue which utilised yet another new gadget, a sci-fi grappling hook. In my review of *Synapse*, I said it made everything you do feel effortlessly cool. In *Reach*, you definitely still *feel* cool, but everything, including jumping, seems to take a bit more effort to master. These puzzle rooms added a much-needed bit of variety into the underground city which, judging by the trailers only, seems to be where the bulk of this game is set.
And there, mate, is my main worry with *Reach*. Instead of being the action epic set above ground in a sprawling city, over jagged mountain tops, and on wobbly cable cars that the introduction so eloquently suggested, the bulk of the game looks like it takes place in a series of really quite bland and beige underground tunnels. Repetitive structures and barely furnished rooms give the game a generic, dare I say, Xbox 360-era sci-fi shooter look to it. And none of this is helped by some truly boring enemy encounters.
In the final level I played in the demo, which featured a few combat arenas and areas for stealthy takedowns, my foes were an assortment of cut-and-paste robot warriors. They just… sucked up arrows with minimal reactions to their impact, then flipped and faded away once their health hit zero. Compared to the way the human enemies in the prologue collapsed onto the floor, slammed into scenery, or dramatically tumbled from windows, killing these robot enemies felt utterly weightless and slow. Even with the added ability to fling myself around the level like a Poundland Spider-man with my new grapple hook power, I soon became bored by the grind. Bouncing the shield around was a lot of fun, no doubt, but fighting these beige bots? Not so much.
Here’s hoping that later levels in *Reach* can somehow conjure back the excitement I felt during the prologue, because by the end of my hour-long demo, I was already tiring of the underground location and its uninspired inhabitants. Don't get me wrong, I still *enjoyed* my time with the game, but after playing through that thrilling opening and the nail-biting, anti-gravity climbing section, the rest of the demo felt like a bit of an anti-climax that just plodded along. I’m slightly worried that it might retain that pace right up until the very end. With October 16th listed on Steam, and with the game releasing on Quest 3/3s and PlayStation VR2, at least it won't be long until we *Reach* its release date and find out, eh?
Tags: VR Gaming, Action-Adventure, Game Preview, nDreams, Parkour
Original article: Eurogamer