Propagation: Paradise Hotel Review - A Very Scary Zombie VR Game
If you’re wondering whether or not you should try Propagation: Paradise Hotel, or whether it’s worth your time and money, then this review will answer those questions. We’ll go through the premise, looks, sound, and game mechanics of this zombie VR game. Welcome to this Propagation: Paradise Hotel Review.
Propagation: Paradise Hotel is a zombie horror survival game from Wanadev Studios, the people behind the original Propagation VR, which came out.. oh woa that's a long time ago.
The Release Date Of Propagation VR
So this is the zombie VR game that they've been making since, and they've come a long way from standing still while zombies run at you. Now we can actually move. Oh, and there's tools, and scavenging, and stealth. Paradise Hotel is definitely a huge upgrade from the original Propagation, it's more of a game than a novelty. Though if you leave this review with anything, it's that this game is very short, a few hours at most, but it is a satisfying short game, though you won't get as much entertainment value for your money as you might with other games, even VR singleplayer games.
Propagation: Paradise Hotel Review - Game Premise
The premise is the usual early zombie apocalypse sort of thing. You're stuck in the kitchen with your buddy Owen, and your sister is alive on one of the upper floors. Oh, and the military is on their way to rescue you. So you need to go up through the hotel, get your sister, and make it to the roof for rescue. Though what makes this game different from most zombie games is that the zombies don't stay down.
A Zombie that won’t stay down
Every corpse you run across is a potential threat, because unless their head is completely destroyed, they'll get back up even after you put them down. Areas that you previously entered aren't safe, because what was once just a dead body might get up and try to eat you. We'll get into that more in a bit here, but first let's talk about the presentation.
Propagation: Paradise Hotel Review - Visuals
For a Quest 2 game, this looks really good. The blockiness and low res textures and objects that you see in a lot of VR games, standalone ones especially, isn't really obvious until you look for it. Though that could also be because most of the game is dark, like really dark. It's a horror game so that's definitely par for the course, and it means you'll always want to use your flashlight.
Propagation: Paradise Hotel is a dark game
Though you also need to be careful not to run out of flashlight batteries. This darkness definitely helps smooth out some of the usual rougher graphical edges that are more obvious in well lit rooms. Still, for a game running on a Quest this looks good, and considering the sheer amount of gore in some areas you might not even want it to look better.
Propagation: Paradise Hotel Review - Sound
Though where this zombie VR game really shines is the sound. More specifically, the lack of it. There's not a lot going on for long stretches, and those moments where the tension is building and you're looking around every corner or at every corpse and wondering where the next threat is going to come from is aided a lot by the sound design.
There's this creepy, hollow noise that constantly plays. It's like being in a haunted graveyard, which you kind of are, and all you'll hear are your footsteps as you walk around. Then, when a zombie wakes up and starts to growl, it fills the silence. The whole effect is very foreboding.
Just Around This Corner Are A Ton of Zombies
Propagation: Paradise Hotel saves the music tracks for the action packed moments in between sneaking, so when you do get attacked there's some serviceable action tracks. These aren't phenomenal, but really amp up the surprise and panic when the long quiet is broken by combat. Propagation: Paradise Hotel uses sound well to make it a scarier game and accentuate the pacing of tension buidling and sudden spurts of action.
There's also the voice acting, which is... okay. At least for the english version there's a few strange intonations on words, but overall there's very little emotion or weight behind the voice acting. Luckily there isn't too much of it, but overall it sounds like most people aren't too bothered by the zombie apocalypse, and it's a little jarring. Still, the protagonist's voice is pretty good, and she does genuinly sound worried, scared, or triumphant at times.
Propagation: Paradise Hotel Review - VR Controls
Before we get to the gameplay let's also talk about the VR controls. They're pretty standard, and nothing absolutely phenomenal or terrible, but there is one quirk. Unless you've broken your hand several times and can't turn your wrist anymore, or you've been typing on a keyboard for so long that the carpal tunnel has forced your hand to a constant 45 degree angle that you'll have to turn your wrist awkwardly to aim down weapon sights. Luckily you can fix this by changining the vertical controller orientation down or up as you please. -10 worked well for me, but you might be more comfortable at a different setting.
The Propagation: Paradise Hotel Settings Menu
There's also no collision between your hands and the environment. The various keys, tools, switches and physical objects you interact with in the game world actually felt really good and responsive. Your hand won't just slip right off of them, and if you turn your hand the object will turn too, so there was never that awkward moment of flailing around while trying to flip a switch. This is easier said than done, and overall the controls were good and tight from interaction to aiming.
Propagation: Paradise Hotel Review - Game Mechanics
Like we talked about before, a lot of the scariness in this game comes from the dead things not staying dead. Early on you won't be getting much ammo either, and so you'll have to scavenge a lot for bullets, healing antiseptic, and batteries for your flashlight. Even light can be a scarce resource, so you are encouraged to not always light up an area, which definitely adds to the spooky factor.
The first half of this zombie VR game relies on stealth a lot to conserve your resources. The zombies don't stay down, hit hard, and take a lot of shots to put down. So you'll be well off sneaking around from room to room. This section of the game plays into its strengths a lot. You feel vulnerable, and there's no way to clear an area and completely feel safe. Even if you've already been somewhere before you can't just run around like you own the place. The zombies own the place, and you're just passing through to try and get to get higher in the hotel and escape.
A Deadly Hallway
It works really well, and the potential of this game really shines through... until you get the shotgun. The shotgun can turn a zombie's head into mist, and they won't get back up again. This is really awesome at first, but as a consequence the game becomes more linear. You don't need to retread areas as much, and when you do there won't be any of the undead there to greet you. So a lot of the tension of sneaking and scavenging as efficiently as possible dissipates.
Instead the zombie VR game becomes very combat focused, and the combat itself isn't the greatest part of this game. It ends up being a combination of reloading really quickly, and keeping the zombies away, which you can by hitting them in the face. So you get into this loop of shooting, and then swinging to chain stun whatever zombie you're facing. Oh, and in this part of the game you'll be getting mountains of ammo.
A Pile of Ammunition
Where once you had to be careful and look closely, you'll just be getting piles of it. The zombies do get harder to compensate for your new power, but you can't sneak around them, so you'll have to blast your way through. So this becomes a subpar zombie action game towards the end.
Oh, and there's puzzles thrown in there sometimes... they really just break up the tension and don't really serve much of a purpose. I'm not a fan of these puzzles, they felt silly. Turning some knobs to activate a pump seems reasonable to give you a slightly different thing to do for a little while and break up the sneaking and combat. Trying to find out what number a jersey is to find out a door code felt very gamey in a bad way.
Two Big Boys
Speaking of gamey, there's even a final boss. We’re not going to anything else about that or the story here though.
Propagation: Paradise Hotel Review - Conclusions
Propagation: Paradise Hotel has some neat ideas but never fully commits to any of them, and so it just becomes all about the shooting at the end. If they'd leaned more into the horror aspect then there would be a great zombie horror game here. As it is now it's too short and gives up on what makes it unique halfway through, so there's only really a couple of hours of fantastic gameplay here that you can't find done better somewhere else.
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