Another VR Extraction Shooter Is Coming - Astro Hunters VR

You might be interested to hear that Ghosts Of Tabor might be getting a little bit of competition soon. Currently this Escape From Tarkov inspired Virtual Reality Game has been the only example of its kind, and from its exclusivity as the only VR extraction shooter has been wildly popular.

However now it seems that other game developers have picked up on this fact and are seeing if they can get a slice of that sweet sweet Virtual Reality extraction shooter pie. Enter Astro Hunters VR.

Fighting an alien for his loot in Astro Hunters VR. A new VR Extraction Shooter planned to be released soon.

If you’re a big enough fan of the extraction shooter PVPVE genre then you might have heard of The Cycle: Frontier, a flatscreen PVPVE extraction shooter that had its servers shut down due to it simply not being very popular.

Well, Astro Hunters VR seems to be kind of like what The Cycle was. You’re a space man or space woman in a sweet futuristic vacuum suit. You buy equipment to use, and then find a quest to undertake before getting into a capsule to blast off down to a planet to fight, loot, try to complete your quest, and hopefully return alive.

I’ve taken a look at the Volcano planet, which is explorable in the publicly available free demo that is free during this year’s Steam Next Fest. I have to say that one of the most impressive things about this demo is the scenery and setting.

Other VR games like Red Matter and Red Matter 2 have shown that the vast reaches of space can make for extremely fantastic spectacles to view from a first person point of view in VR, and that’s where Astro Hunters VR really shines.

The scenery in Astro Hunters VR is pretty nice.

Landing on the planet and looking around at it is pretty awesome. From the epic skybox to the alien terrain and the creatures that mill around. There is clearly a lot of creativity behind the portrayal of Astro Hunter VR’s alien worlds. Though the visual fidelity could use a little work in some places, and a lot of NPCs and objects will pop into existence not very far away from you.

Still, there are all sorts of creepy crawlies, giant turtles with huge triangular mouths, sky jellyfish, and so many more types of enemies and alien animals roaming the planet.

Fighting off alien turtles in Astro Hunters VR.

There are a ton of things to do, like mine materials such as crystals and ore using various tools, and collect loot from containers spread across the map. Mostly though like any extraction shooter of PVPVE game, Astro Hunters VR has you focused on fighting, collecting stuff, and trying to survive to extract.

Unfortunately it is in the fighting and surviving that the demo reveals that this Virtual Reality game still needs a lot of work. Those many different animal designs I mentioned earlier? Well they all seem to have very similar behavior, mill around unless a player comes too close. If a player does then the NPC just runs closer and attacks as soon as they are in range. They’re kind of dumb.

Walking around camps of aliens feels like avoiding enemies in World Of Warcraft. You can plainly be in their sight, yet they won’t see you. Oh, and the shooting doesn’t feel great and lacks punch. The same goes for when you get hit. The gunplay is extremely basic and obviously needs a ton of work at the moment.

Mining a crystal in Astro Hunters VR, an upcoming VR PVPVE extraction shooter.

While the Astro Hunters VR demo shows that the game still needs a lot of work until it is ready for release, there is some promise here.

The design is ambitious in quite a few ways, like making extraction capsules come back to pick up players every three minutes or so, while the location of the capsule and the time it arrives is globally visible. So everyone knows where and when the extraction arrives.

This could lead to an epidemic of extract camping, but at the same time could also lead to protracted combat over extraction zones, practically guaranteeing there is no free lunch in Astro Hunters VR.

The demo is available from June 10, 2024 to June 17, 2024 on Steam. You’d think that would mean that there is a demo on the Meta Quest as well, but I couldn’t find it in the Meta store. Regardless it seems that Astro Hunters VR plans to release on both platforms.

Hopefully this will be the start of more competition in the VR PVPVE and VR Extraction Shooter genres.