A Fun Singleplayer VR Tactical Shooter On The Meta Quest 3 - Tactical Assault VR Review

I keep coming back to Tactical Assault VR. Whenever I want to jump into Virtual Reality and do a bit of Singleplayer tactical shooting there’s no game that I’ve found myself drifting towards loading up for a few missions more often than this one.

Part of me wonders why, and the answer I keep coming back to is just how snappy and satisfying the whole experience is. Despite having very basic and blocky visuals, Tactical Assault VR is the closest any Singleplayer shooter on the Meta Quest 3 (it is also on PCVR via Steam by the way) has come to absolutely nailing the sound and most importantly the feeling of a quick and responsive tactical shooter in Virtual Reality.

There are, weirdly enough, very few good representations of a Singleplayer VR Tactical Shooter out there for the Meta Quest 3, though there are some in development on PCVR. Onward is another good example I suppose, but its Singleplayer is lacking when compared to the game we’re talking about in this article.

A long ranged firefight in Tactical Assault VR, a fantastic VR Tactical Shooter

There are two areas that this game is incredibly strong in and has only become stronger in over time with updates. The first is one that is really important for any tactical shooter whether in Virtual Reality or on the flat screen, and that is the AI.

Varied Missions And Reactive AI Are A Must For A Good VR Tactical Shooter

What is a VR tactical shooter without difficult AI opponents? Multiplayer focused games don’t have this problem, because they can rely on other players being smart and reactive. Tactical Assault VR, despite featuring Multiplayer PvP options, is much more focused on the PvE aspect of things.

The challenge in this game isn’t fighting other players as much as it is fighting against AI enemies that can and will take you down with a single bullet if you’re not careful. They’re not to be underestimated, and both you and they will go down when hit very few times, or just once if the shot is to the head.

Breaching a room with a pistol in Tactical Assault VR

This is a hallmark of any tactical shooter game. The AI opponents must be capable and they must respond very quickly. Otherwise what would be tactical about the game? You’d just breeze through every door and corner recklessly and without the need to think about your environment and your opponents in a tactical manner.

While still not up to the level of some flatscreen games like Ready Or Not, I have to say that the NPC opponents in Tactical Assault VR are very impressive and beyond anything found in other VR Tactical Shooters.

They can be suppressed by hits and near hits and will change positions to chase you or go prone to avoid incoming fire. Sometimes they will respond to nearby gunfire by running to the scene and supporting their fellows. However that isn’t always the case, and you’ll still often find AI opponents sticking to their patrol paths or just standing in a room just a few meters from where their buddies are being gunned down in plain sight.

Still, the enemies in Tactical Assault VR are leaps and bounds better than most VR shooters on the Meta Quest 3, and they’ve been getting better all the time. They can hear you coming if you’re too loud and be ready to shoot you in the face the moment you open a door that they’re covering. Sometimes they’ll even shoot through the door if you’re on the other side.

Speaking of doors, there is also an impressive collection of missions in Tactical Assault VR, and more are being added all of the time. Each of the main missions has an objective, a custom map, and its own suite of tactical considerations for the environment you’re fighting in and the mission you are completing.

This huge bank map offers some unique tactical considerations in a VR Tactical Shooter

Each of these maps makes you consider each set of buildings and environments differently and gives you different routes to take and options to consider for how you approach them. So you’ll have to reconsider your loadout and choice of weapons for each. If you fail, well that’s always a lesson learned you can take to your next attempt.

It would be nice if enemies had a little more variance in their roles, like snipers or machine gun bunkers, but there are some very impressive examples, like a Technical Truck on one of the newer maps.

There’s even a randomized shoothouse style map with procedurally generated doors and enemies and a training map that also features some randomization to enemy placement. If you want to get as tactical as possible then there are a bunch of options in this VR tactical shooter.

Of course, if soloing a mission seems too difficult, and it’s pretty clear that they’re meant to be very hard to solo, you can always team up with others in Multiplayer. Though in Singleplayer it’s the difficulty in finishing a mission that keeps me coming back, otherwise I would have completed them all a long time ago and gotten bored.

A VR Tactical Shooter With Varied And Responsive Guns

So the missions are varied and interesting. The AI is better than most. What about the weapons? A lot of games whether in Virtual Reality or on the flatscreen easily fall into the trap of making weapons feel very similar to each other.

Tactical Assault VR doesn’t have that problem, and for a VR game that’s even more impressive. Virtual Reality means that you’re using even more of your senses to really get in tune with what you are doing in the world of the game.

In VR you aren’t just seeing what is happening on a distant screen, the screens are so much closer to your eyes, and your actual body movements correspond to what you’re doing, so you have a much greater sense of being within the game world.

Your feeling of touch and balance comes much more into play than on the flat screen, especially when it comes to handling objects. That’s why it’s so great that the guns in Tactical Assault VR feel so varied and different from each other.

One of the many fantastic weapons you can enjoy in Tactical Assault VR, a fantastic VR Tactical Shooter

Guns with a bullpup design, or smaller SMGs, will have you naturally holding your hands closer together than more traditional assault rifles with the grip towards the rear of the rifle and the foregrip near the front.

Each of the weapons controls better if you hold them like they’re intended to be held. Actually having to adjust your grip to the length of the weapon not only increases immersion but naturally improves your ability to react and aim.

Even without the physical weapon to feel, it’s incredible how each of the guns in Tactical Assault VR can feel different to hold despite there being nothing physically in your hand to grab onto except for your touch controllers.

Though that’s something common to many polished VR shooters, where Tactical Assault VR really shines is how each of the weapons feels to fire as well as hold. Weapons generally sound very punchy and each shot feels like it has real weight to it like firing a real gun, because the varying amount of recoil to each weapon not only makes each unique but also feels very realistic. It’s clear a lot of time and effort went into making the weapons of Tactical Assault VR feel good and weighty like actual weapons.

Each action you take on your weapon, putting the magazine inside, or pulling back the charging handle to load a round into the chamber, lacks the floatiness and feeling of weightlessness that a lot of objects in VR games have. Firing them also feels like a dream.

Larger weapons naturally have more recoil and really kick the gun back, and the weapons really sound impressive too whether they’re loud or suppressed. The entire ensemble of tight VR controls and sound design clearly shows that a lot of attention and care has been given to each of Tactical Assault VR’s weapons. Switching between them changes how you play and leaves a lot of room for personal preference.

Despite the very low res look of Tactical Assault VR, which I think is likely a big reason that it is not more popular than it is, this is a level of polish in weapon design and implementation only seen among other legends of the genre like Into The Radius or Onward.

This even extends to the other parts of your loadout like the various tools and grenades that you can use from flashbangs to bulletproof shields to breaching charges and breaching shotguns.

A little sniping in Tactical Assault VR

This has been a quick review of why Tactical Assault VR is such a fantastic Singleplayer VR tactical shooter. While at the time of writing this game is still in development it is getting better all of the time and has already nailed some of the basics of what makes a tactical shooter excellent. It’s a quick and easy game to jump into for a few rounds and really makes you take things cautiously and respect its difficulty. Enjoy!

CONVRGENCE VR Early Access Review

Here's a tragic story. Once upon a time, there was a little VR game called called Paradox Of Hope. An ambitious shooter made entirely by one person. It felt like a real passion project, a little rough around the edges, but with unique assets and a setting and gameplay not found anywhere else in the realm of Virtual Reality gaming.

The frightening feeling of the post apocalyptic underground was unmatched. Updates were consistent and over time it got better and better, less rough, my optimism and excitement for this game only went higher. Paradox Of Hope was called "Metro in VR" by so many for its underground metro tunnel setting and generally oppressive slavic vibes.

Then, suddenly, it was gone. Destroyed by a DMCA strike from an unnamed company, shortly afterwards an official Metro VR game was announced.

Metro VR was announced shortly after Paradox Of Hope was hit with a DMCA strike.

Now I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to see a connection here, though the source of the strike was never confirmed. Anyway, that's history, because the one person developing Paradox Of Hope, known as NikZ, has just released a new VR game into early access on Steam, called CONVRGENCE.

New Game, Same Dev

Now I'll be honest, I'm inclined to be a little more charitable to this game than usual because of what happened to this man. He had to create a whole new game just because a larger studio couldn't stand a little honest competition from one dev making a project by themselves. Not to mention I've still got plenty of Paradox Of Hope nostalgia that's been waiting for an outlet, and oh boy did CONVRGENCE give an outlet.

This game is a lot like Paradox Of Hope, and despite being pretty rough around the edges and having a new setting that (hopefully) won't result in legal action, still slaps.

Ambushing an enemy in CONVRGENCE.

So what do you do in CONVRGENCE? Mostly you collect stuff to sell, buy stuff, and use that stuff to avoid getting killed while you collect more stuff. It's a surprisingly entertaining system.

You've got a home base to store items and do your trading. You get tasks to complete to upgrade your trader level to be able to purchase better gear. Oh, and you can also clean your weapons, refill your water so you don't die of dehydration, eat some food so you don't die of hunger, pet your dog (more on that later), and add modifications to your guns.

Adding a laser module to a pistol in CONVRGENCE.

You can also smoke a ton of cigarettes if that's the vibe you're going for. As far as I know, there's no cancer mechanic in this game, which is good because cigarettes actually not the most cancerous thing you'll run across while you're raiding. There are anomalous artifacts as well that are highly radioactive.

I say raiding because that's how the game is structured. Once you're ready to hop over to your car and have a fun interactive driving loading scene until the procedurally generated level is created.

Each level is loaded while you drive this car in CONVRGENCE. A nice touch.

Then you fight and loot your way through until you find an extract and stand next to it for a few seconds. Then you're back in the base, sell your stuff, buy whatever you want or need. Rinse and repeat. Oh, and if you do die you lose everything, unless you have insurance, then you lose everything except for what's in your backpack.

Nothing in your backpack is ever safe.

The mutants are very deadly if you wake them up.

There are multiple different location types to go and raid with different enemies, dangers, and surroundings, and overall I'd say the gameplay loop is solid. It's very similar to Paradox Of Hope's Raid Mode, though unfortunately there's no story mode in CONVRGENCE.

That means this game does rely heavily on procedural generation, so it does have the downside of seeming a little repetitive once you've raided a location type a lot. You'll notice patterns, especially now that this game hasn't been around for long. I think like a lot of procedurally generated games with this problem it will become a lot less apparent when more possibilities are added for generation.

Right now there just aren't a whole lot of map pieces that can be picked, and enemies don't really patrol or do anything other than wait around until you get close to them. So, I think with some updates the amount of possibilities will become greater, and so the game will stay interesting for longer. As it is I became very tired of both of the level types after around 3 and a half hours of play.

There are multiple levels to explore in CONVRGENCE.

The Garage Collective didn’t pose a challenge at all after I got used to it, and the Underground levels are more of a stealth than a combat challenge, so right now they're really just an exercise in patience.

Why? Well because if you wake up any of these absolutely horrifying looking demon creatures, then all of them wake up, and it's not going to be a good time for you. I doubt it's even possible to win fighting five of these at the same time.

A humanoid mutant in CONVRGENCE.

The Best Dog In VR Gaming

Speaking of possibilities there are a ton of different guns to unlock and buy, but your most important companion and weapon will be your dog. Yep, look at that good boy.

This big guy is probably the best dog ever implemented in a Virtual Reality Game.

Look at that good boy.

You can pet him, whistle at him to tell him to attack enemies, and also sometimes he pees, which is hilarious. Oh, and your dog can also dig up items from time to time.

He also functions as an early warning system, growling when he senses an enemy nearby and is ready to attack. I'm honestly not sure why the dog is in this game. The constant companionship makes the whole atmosphere a lot less tense, especially coupled with the fact that enemies won't surprise you because the dog will point them out even if you don't hear or see them.

You can always choose not to bring the dog if you don't want to though... but it's kind of hard to give up the advantage of having them.

So I love the dog, but I'm not exactly sure if he's the best fit for this game. Still, I'd like to see CONVRGENCE come a little further along before I really manage to say no to this adorable mug. Still, I don't think I've ever seen a friendly dog in an environment as openly hostile looking as that in this game.

You can pet the dog, and they are very helpful.

Even outside of the underground labyrinths, the sound of gunshots is very common, and so is the chatter on your radio directing various units to fight to the death. There's stuff floating in the air and some notes I've found talk about aliens and mutants of terrifying caliber. The feeling of CONVRGENCE is bleak.

Now keep in mind CONVRGENCE is in early access, and so a ton of enemies, locations, and features are yet to be implemented, and there are a fair amount of bugs and jank to be overcome. If NikZ's track record is anything like it was with Paradox Of Hope though, we'll definitely be seeing a lot of fixes, expansions, and improvements coming to CONVRGENCE.

Hopefully to the combat more than anything, the combat is kind of janky. The enemies are all stiff and unrealistic looking as they switch between animation states and hardly seem to react to the dog biting their crotch. It's early access. You know the drill, but I'm optimistic it will get better.

Fighting a bandit with the dog in CONVRGENCE.

If you're interested in picking up this game it's 19.99$ on Steam, and you'd be supporting a solo indie VR developer with a good track record and terrible legal luck.

If warm and fuzzies aren't enough to get you to fork over 20 dollars, and I wouldn't blame you if they weren't, then I'd recommend waiting to pick this game up, but definitely wishlist it. This is a Virtual Reality game to watch. There have already been several dev diaries posted to the store page, and major updates will be included in an article here, at Realty Remake. Enjoy!

Payday 2 VR Review and Setup Guide

Payday 2 is part stealth game and part horde shooter, centered around letting you live a life of crime by executing various heists and robberies.

It’s a very unique premise for a horde shooter, and one that has made Payday 2 a popular game, coupled with its excellent and varied mechanics, wide ranging choice of equipment loadouts, and massive replayability.

Of course, if you’re here then you’ve probably heard that Payday 2 has released a free DLC that allows anyone who owns the game to play it in Virtual Reality. Very exciting stuff, this isn’t another VR mod that may or may not function or convert all of the features of the game to Virtual Reality.

Nope, Payday 2 VR is actually a very well realized conversion of the flatscreen Payday 2 experience into Virtual Reality that unlike some other official VR ports has clearly been seen through to completion. However, that doesn’t mean this is a perfect conversion.

So if you want to know more then keep reading this Payday 2 VR Review, and a brief bit at the end where I’ll give you a little guidance on running Payday 2 VR for yourself.

What You Do In Payday 2 VR

Payday 2 has a lot of shootouts

First, let’s get caught up on what this game is about. If you’re already a Payday 2 veteran on the flatscreen and are familiar with the game, feel free to skip to the next section where I get more specific on how well this game works in Virtual Reality.

So what do you do in Payday 2 VR? Well, it’s a heisting game, where you and three other players or AI bots form a team of criminals that undertake missions in a variety of urban locations ranging from night clubs to banks to jewelry stores.

The first thing you can do is case the joint. Walk around, avoid the notice of security guards, and if you can do it use stealth to steal what you’re there to steal and bring it back to your van without being noticed.

The stealthy approach often won’t work out, so you’ll have to put your mask on and “go loud.” This means a gunfight with whatever security is on the premises and waves of police that show up on the scene to stop you.

The action of Payday 2 is very in your face in Virtual Reality

Going loud is what makes the real meat of Payday 2. You’ll have to use whatever weapons and equipment are in your loadout to outsmart the cops and bring the loot to your getaway vehicle.

You’ve got a very impressive amount of health, but if you still take enough bullets to be brought down your teammates can help you back up, at least a few times. So a lot of the gameplay of Payday 2 VR comes down to shooting.

There are so many police after you in this game that they definitely qualify as a horde, and working together as a team (or solo with bots) to hold them off for long enough to get out with the goods is the core of the game unless you pull off a stealthy robbery.

How Payday 2 Translates To Virtual Reality

So now that you know what Payday 2 is all about, how well does it translate to VR?

Surprisingly well. The developers did a very good job in adding VR hand tracked touch controls to the game, and making all of the controls necessary to play Payday 2 easily navigatable and useful in Virtual Reality.

Payday 2 VR’s controls are very smooth and well put together

Your VR hands are exactly as you would expect them to be, the gloved hands of your chosen criminal, and your hands closely and smoothly track the physical location of your VR touch controllers with no lag.

Your left hand is for interacting with the world by doing things like picking up objectives, using items, and activating objectives. Meanwhile, your right hand is centered around weaponry. It holds your weapon, and pressing the trigger on that hand fires it. Luckily for left handed VR gamers, you can also reverse these hands in the settings menu, or by simply taking your weapon off of your belt with your left hand instead of your right.

That’s right you have a belt of sorts, though it’s made up of icons instead of the actual items you’d pick up, and on it you can switch between your primary and secondary weapons, select equipment to use, and basically access all of the items you normally would need to access in a game of Payday 2.

The belt that holds your items is very convenient in VR Payday 2

This utility belt might not be the most immersive but it definitely gets the job done and lets you access your items cleanly and easily by just grabbing them out of the air in front of your waist, and it can even be adjusted for comfort.

Speaking of comfort, the default movement style used by Payday 2 VR is teleportation movement, likely because this is the type of movement least likely to cause motion sickness in VR. Your off (default left) hand will have a cursor coming out of it that ends in a blue circle on the ground. Then you hold your right thumbstick forward to teleport to the circle.

Teleportation movement is very antiquated, though if you want to use that it is perfectly serviceable in Payday 2 VR, though most will probably want to switch the movement mode to the usual slide movement in the VR options menu (called “direct” there).

Using slide movement is recommended unless you get very bad motion sickness, and you can still do some limited teleporting as a “dash” move using the same cursor, though constantly seeing that cursor and circle coming out of your left hand does add some clutter to the world.

Also, you can’t set your movement direction to follow the direction your headset is facing. Instead, you must slide move in the direction that your offhand is facing, which is a very odd choice to not have in a modern VR game.

Changing the movement mode to slide (aka direct) movement in Payday 2 VR

The controls and interface are generally great for a VR mode integrated into a flatscreen game, but there are a few downsides. For instance, a lot of interactions are mapped to your weapon hand’s thumbstick, like throwing throwables (such as grenades) or changing the fire mode on your weapon.

It’s a lot of clutter to have on a single thumbstick, so using it in the heat of combat is confusing and often frustrating when you select the wrong option. Also, some interactions, such as climbing ladders, are a little strange. When climbing a ladder you get on the ladder not by hovering over it with your left hand and pressing grip as you would to interact with any other object, but by pushing in the left thumbstick. Then to climb up you keep pushing the left thumbstick.

Also, you can only snap turn your character by pressing the A or X buttons. So this Virtual Reality port does show its age in some ways, but also tries to fit a lot of inputs in the small number of buttons provided by a VR controller.

Luckily most objects in Payday 2 VR are more straightforward, and once you learn how to use them the few that are strange, like ladders, are easy to get used to.

Otherwise, the only difficulties that VR adds to the game are the occasional clipping issues, which will make your screen go black until you get back into a valid position, for instance when you walk into a wall at an add angle or inside of an NPC or player. These are sometimes quite annoying, but are generally avoidable.

After some time playing the game, I did experience one crash, but they were not common.

The Fun of Virtual Reality Payday 2

So VR Payday 2 controls well, and despite a few issues is generally easy to learn and use. So does Virtual Reality make the experience of pulling off the ultimate heist better?

Of course it does! Payday 2 is a first person shooter at heart, and boy do first person shooters translate well to VR. The action is all the more in your face in Virtual Reality, and the ability to freely turn and look using your actual body and head serves to put you into the shoes of your character so much more than just moving a mouse to look around.

Check out the carnage!

The same goes for the hand controls that I’ve already told you are pretty well implemented and smooth.

Aiming by looking down the actual sights of your weapon and shooting with your actual hands is a ton more fun in VR than just clicking on a screen, though as I’ve mentioned the implementation is not perfect.

There are no manual reloads in Payday 2 VR, you reload automatically by just clicking a button, and while you can grip a weapon in both hands in this game the hands don’t have special positions for grabbing each individual weapon, so they just sort of hover near the grab point.

The biggest downside to the action in Virtual Reality Payday 2 is that the weapons lack punch and feel a bit weak.

You’re actually just as well off aiming a two handed weapon like a rifle, or even a pistol, with just a single hand. The weapons don’t feel very impactful while you’re firing them and sort of come across more as airsoft guns than actual weapons.

Still the automatic reloads and lack of recoil on the weapons probably serve to not make playing Payday 2 in VR significantly easier or harder than playing it on a flat screen. That’s because there is crossplay when playing Payday 2 VR, you can play with other VR gamers, or with players on the flat screen. This is great because it makes it easy to find a match, and the pool of players to play the game with is not restricted.

The action is more in your face, and if you’d rather aim with your real hands than with a mouse, you’ll find a lot to love in the action of Payday 2 VR. Compared to the original game, and compared to other VR games, it is a fantastic heist inspired VR shooter.

Anyway now that I’ve told you that Payday 2 VR is a ton of fun in this review, despite a few setbacks, let’s talk about how to play it if you’re interseted.

How To Play Payday 2 VR

Just like the base game of Payday 2, the VR DLC can be found on Steam.

It is a completely free DLC for the base game, and it should be automatically added to your account if you own a copy of Payday 2. Just to make sure though, visit the page and make sure the DLC is added to your account.

The Payday 2 VR DLC store page.

Now you can launch and play Payday 2 VR just like any other Virtual Reality game that you would play through Steam. There are a number of ways to do this. If you’re accustomed to playing Steam VR games on your VR headset then it’s as easy as plugging your headset in and launching Payday 2 from your Steam VR library as you would any other game.

If you’re using a Meta Quest 2 or Meta Quest 3 headset then you might be wondering how to play Steam VR games on your headset. The easiest way is with Steam Link. Though as always you’ll have the smoothest experience if you are running the game on a PC that is connected to a 5 GHz network and wired to your router with an ethernet cable.

You can also run Payday 2 VR like any other Steam PCVR game by using Oculus Airlink. This method is a little more difficult to set up but can be used when connected to your PC with a link cable if your WiFi setup isn’t sufficient for streaming the game wirelessly.

So that’s how to play Payday 2 in VR! Once you start the game the intro video should start playing in front of you on the projector in the main menu room.

The intro movie you see when starting up VR Payday 2.

However you choose to play Payday 2 in Virtual Reality, enjoy!

Medieval Dynasty VR Review - A Good VR Crafting and Building Game

Today we're going to get in depth with Medieval Dynasty New Settlement, a VR port by Spectral Games of the flatscreen game Medieval Dynasty by Render Cube.

The flatscreen game has been around for a while, originally released in 2021, and according to Steam reviews is pretty well received and sold well. Medieval Dynasty New Settlement, or rather Medieval Dynasty VR, is a rebuilding of the concept of the original flatscreen game from the ground up for the Meta Quest, and features the same focus on surviving, crafting, and building yourself up from a simple peasant to the well respected owner of your own sprawling medieval estate, except now it's all in Virtual Reality!

Building a wall in Medieval Dynasty New Settlement

Medieval Dynasty VR Is Focused On Creating

So how is it? Well if you're a fan of chiller and less action oriented VR experiences that involve a lot of crafting, building, and generally just doing virtual tasks like chopping trees, mining, and making virtual items over and over as you build your settlement and expand your wealth, then you'll find a lot to love in this game.

That is if you can get past the many bugs and technical issues this game has, as well as some very lazy feeling oversights that make the game feel kind of rushed overall, though hopefully those will be fixed with more patches like the first hotfix that just came out.

While you'll rarely fight for your life and really have to focus on how to "survive" in Medieval Dynasty New Settlement, there's a lot of satisfaction to be had in its many different kinds of crafting systems, and mostly in turning a pristine wilderness into your own vision of a medieval town.

That's because you start the game in both the Adventure and Sandbox modes as a nobody with hardly anything but the clothes on your back. As a new arrival to Green Valley, you've got to do some virtual work to establish yourself

Chopping down a tree in Medieval Dynasty VR

Work Your Way From Peasant To Lord

First, you build a house, do some tasks for the locals to get their respect, and learn more about what you can create through either the quests in Adventure mode or just trying out new things as you please in Sandbox mode. At the start, nobody knows or respects you, and you've got nothing but an empty plot of land and ambition.

You have to gather resources with your VR hands, and then with those same hands use those resources to build more buildings on your land and craft various items to use or sell. Over time you can even hire people to work on your estate for you, and romance and marry to have children and continue your dynasty. Medieval Dynasty VR aims to be a medieval life simulator like the first game, and largely succeeds at this, while also incorporating all of the magic of physically performing the work you need to do these things with VR tracked hand controls.

Sandbox mode releases you into the game world capable of building anything that you want, while Adventure mode has a series of story quests for you to do centered around the two existing towns in Green Valley. These quests function like extended tutorials with a lot of reading text boxes and fetching items for people in between.

The story itself wasn't hugely interesting, and really got boring at some points, but it would shortly pick itself back up with an exciting journey into the unknown or a new type of building or type of crafting to try.

There are many Quests to do in this VR game, but many of them end up feeling the same

In adventure mode you unlock new buildings by doing story quests, and while that was a little frustrating at times, for instance not being able to do any sort of farming until VERY far into the game, the quests do function as a great way for the game to naturally teach you its many gathering and crafting systems.

If you want to be taught how to do all of the things you can do in Medieval Dynasty VR and have a little story to go along with it, then I'd recommend Adventure mode, but if you just want to go wild and do whatever you please then Sandbox might be more your speed. Though Sandbox feels a little less fleshed out without the quest system to give the world of Green Valley more context and character.

Medieval Dynasty New Settlement Looks Great

Speaking of character, this game looks really fantastic on the Meta Quest 3. With the usual limitations given by the hardware of a standalone headset, the team over at Spectral Games has done a great job of depicting the wilderness of Green Valley in the warmer seasons, and especially in Winter.

Look at that snow!

The landscape is dense with crafting resources to gather and animals to hunt. Not to mention the many secrets and treasures to dig up spread across the map. This VR game looks fantastic and is one of the best depictions of a natural environment seen so far on the Quest.

The sound is also great, with the chirping of birds, clanging of hammers, and animal calls all sounding crisp and greatly adding to the immersion to the wilderness around you as well as the physical actions you're doing.

The sound design does falter in a couple of places though. Especially at night. No matter what you're doing the usual relaxed ambient music is replaced by the same creepy, scary musical track. Nighttime isn't that dangerous, and so this choice to make it always sound like it is was certainly a weird one.

Even a satisfyingly productive late night at the forge is ruined when you've got this ominous music constantly playing in your ears. I'd often go to sleep just to not have to listen to it anymore.

The sounds for people also aren't very good. A lot of the villagers sound weirdly depressed when you're saying goodbye despite that voice line not matching their character in the quest text. Also, some lone bandits will yell a victory cry while sounding like three bandits at once before running away. This is probably a bug though.

This Is A Very Buggy Game At Release

Medieval Dynasty New Settlement was released with a lot of bugs and inconsistencies. Like how its entries in the in game encyclopedia are sometimes wrong, like this one stating that copper can't be mined with a stone pickaxe... though it actually can, or a child butt sliding across the floor instead of walking.

I couldn’t get around this bug, so I never finished Adventure mode in Medieval Dynasty VR

One hotfix is already in place, and hopefully, more fixes and support will be given to this game going forward, but the release version has a rushed and unfinished feeling. Like the entrance to a mine clearly just being a door in front of a wall of rock. I could give a lot of examples of this, but if you're playing this game soon after the publication of this article expect some jankiness and issues.

The biggest problem I ran into actually cut my Adventure mode playthrough short when I was getting close to the end. Darkness consumed my world despite the lit torch in my hand. Trying different torches didn't help, nor did reloading a save. I couldn’t see… forever.

I definitely didn't want to redo all of those hours of fetch quests to reach the end. Luckily this at least freed me from the burden of carrying around all those quest items that were no longer relevant but were taking up inventory slots because the game refused to let me drop them. Hopefully, these issues will be fixed in time, and if you're seeing this article far in the future they hopefully already have.

Medieval Dynasty VR Is Great At Gathering, Building, Crafting, and Not Much Else

Let's talk more about how this game actually plays. Most of what you do in Medieval Dynasty VR is gather resources and make things out of those resources. There's even money you can sell goods for, but you can't buy too many things, and mostly money is for paying your workers and paying your taxes.

Buying pigs at the local market

It would be nice to have been able to buy fertilizer for a farm without having to make your own pigpen just to get some, while seeds are purchasable because you can't make them yourself.

So the economy is barebones, and so are the NPCs. Without a quest they just bark one of the same few lines of dialog at you and wander around, or are either hireable workers or romanceable women with little personality.

Where Medieval Dynasty New Settlement really shines is its many different kinds of crafting. Each crafting station has its own systems for making things physically with your VR hands. If you want to make some stew to keep you fed for the day you select your recipe, chop up your ingredients, throw them in the pot, light the fire under it, and stir to completion before dipping a bowl in and eating up.

Soup will easily feed you forever in this VR “survival” game

Though it is odd that stew left in the pot disappears after you sleep, while stew in bowls does not. There are a lot of weird little quirks to this game just like that.

The crafting is generally great though, and is the strongest part of this game. Making pots involves molding clay on a potter's wheel with your hands, and making tools in the smithy involves its own system of heating up ingots, beating them into shape, and adding a handle.

Gathering resources involves a lot of physically chopping down trees and physically swinging your pick at rocks in dark caves. You can also physically pick up resources off of the ground, and you will need to do that a lot.

Magically vacuuming up reeds is something you’ll have to do a lot

The world of Medieval Dynasty VR is held together with Reeds. So many things need Reeds. The world would collapse without them. The same goes for various sizes of sticks. Luckily you can easily pick up these items quickly whenever you see them by pointing at them and pressing the trigger, which transfers them to your inventory.

Does this lack immersion? Sure, but you can still physically grab them and put them away in your backpack if you like.

Mining in a Dark Cave in Medieval Dynasty New Settlement… see how this stone pick can mine copper?

Building crafting stations and then crafting things with those stations is a very relaxing experience, and also the most fun part of this game. The satisfaction of making something from nothing with your hands is where Medieval Dynasty New Settlement really shines. You can even hire workers to gather materials for you so that you can focus on more crafting and more journeying.

Though it's in the more adventurous elements that this VR survival game doesn't shine nearly as much. While being billed as a survival title, the survival elements are entirely optional.

Keeping yourself watered and fed isn't much of a problem. A pot full of mushroom stew will last you at least two days, and you can make those very early on in the game. You'll need some water every day too... but wells and streams are everywhere. Keeping your bars full isn't ever as much of a challenge as it is in other games like Green Hell VR.

So does the combat add a fun survival challenge? Not really. It's very easy. I quickly discovered that just poking enemies with your spear while backing away works against basically anything. If you're hurt because your finger slipped off the thumbstick just eat a bunch of your plentiful food and you'll quickly feel better. The combat is laughably simple and clearly an afterthought. To be interesting it would need to be redone from the ground up.

Bandits aren’t much of a threat in this VR game, really no enemies are

Hunting intersects with this and is also where the gathering part of the game is at its weakest. Arrows simply would not register as hits half of the time, even when they clearly were. The animals are frightfully stupid and not a challenge to simply chase down with a spear, so why bother attacking them from a distance? Either way just skinning more aggressive varieties of critters like wolves, bears, and boars left me with plenty of leather and food.

There are some neat mysteries to explore and discover in the Green Valley, though some centered around finding hidden treasure chests spread across the map, and to be honest I don't find scouring every inch of such a large map for mounds of dirt to be very compelling. Maybe it would be to you, but I've walked these roads quite a lot and I think I've walked them enough.

My Sandbox playthrough of Medieval Dynasty New Settlement ended when I realized that I'd built all of the production buildings I could want, hired some workers, and now had a pretty self-sufficient setup going.

Then I wondered... what now? I'd done the virtual work, fun as it was, and created a little estate for myself out of nothing. Now I would use those resources to... make it bigger? Why? Maybe I quit too early before any more intriguing challenges came up, but I didn't see Medieval Dynasty VR giving a satisfying endgame now that I was a successful farmer and local craftsman.

There was possibly the aforementioned exploration to try and some secrets to still uncover, sure, but the lack of compelling survival mechanics or combat to complicate exploration made that feel like a chore.

Wolves aren’t much of a threat either, but give you lots of leather and meat

There were repeatable quests scattered around to get more reputation and money, but I had enough of those things already. Outside of technical and polish issues that's where Medieval Dynasty New Settlement is most disappointing. Once your dynasty is set and you've built yourself up, there's nowhere to go from there.

Maybe the quests in Adventure mode might have given a more satisfying resolution, but there's no way I’m going to rebuild from scratch a third time and do all those fetch quests again to find out. Maybe if Medieval Dynasty VR had multiplayer that would extend the fun as well, and Spectral Games has announced plans to introduce a Coop mode on their roadmap, which also includes bug fixes.

Getting to this point involved many pleasurable hours in this game, and I got a lot more entertainment out of Medieval Dynasty VR than I get out of most VR games. So if you want to build a medieval settlement of your own, and gather and craft your way to the pinnacle of success, I'd recommend Medieval Dynasty New Settlement, despite the higher than usual asking price of thirty dollars on the Meta Quest store.

If you want a survival or combat focused experience, look elsewhere, but if you love VR gathering and crafting this is the game for you. As long as you don't mind a bit of jank that is.

If you’ve tried Medieval Dynasty VR, let me know in the comments, do you agree that the crafting is good and the survival and combat is bad? What do you think about the endgame of Medieval Dynasty New Settlement?

Planing wood to make planks, one of the many great kinds of crafting in this game.

As always enjoy yourself out there in Virtual Reality, this has been Reality Remake.

Cards And Tankards Review - The Best VR Card Game On Meta Quest and PCVR

At first, I thought that the idea of a VR digital trading Card Game was unnecessary and kind of stupid. Why add VR controls to a digital card game when you can represent the same mechanics with a flat screen and a mouse, or even a phone?

After experiencing this game I realised I was dead wrong.

Cards and Tankards is the BEST VR Card Game around, and in this review, I'm going to tell you why. I first came across this game when researching the possibility of writing an article over at realityremake.com about the Best VR Card Games.

A game of Cards and Tankards

While I did find some other good examples of VR card games, none kept my interest quite as much as Cards and Tankards, and none fits the mold of what I'd consider a Virtual Reality card game nearly as well. Cards and Tankards VR is exactly what you would expect of a VR Card Game. You draw cards and use your available mana to play creatures and cast spells to defeat your opponent by draining their life points to 0. It’s the classic competitive card game formula but in VR.

Cards and Tankards can be played against the AI or competitively against other players and features quite a few different cards that you can put in your deck to use during your matches. They even recently released a whole new set of them.

You can get new cards from packs earned with the currency you receive by playing games, win or lose, and you can customize the starter decks you receive in the game and even build your own from scratch. There are all sorts of combinations that you can pull off with the right cards. You might call Cards and Tankards “VR Hearthstone” and I’m sure somebody out there has, but there are many notable differences between this game and Blizzard’s.

In Cards and Tankards you end the turn by flipping over an hourglass

A Game That Makes You Feel Like You’re Actually Playing Cards With Someone Else

Before I talk about the mechanics of Cards and Tankards I'll start with what makes this a truly unique in the trading card game scene, and that's that it can be played entirely in a VR headset. It can also be played without a VR headset for those without one, but for this Cards and Tankards VR review I'll be talking about how the game feels and plays when tried as originally intended, in Virtual Reality.

What's best about playing Cards and Tankards is how much more immersive the entire experience feels when compared to playing a digital card game on a flat screen. Since the release of Hearthstone, there have been a lot of digital card games, but none has captured the feeling of playing a game with another person at a table like this VR game has. The addition of VR makes Cards and Tankards feel like you're actually at the table with someone else.

The open mic and casual communication with your hands that you can do in Virtual Reality gives the whole experience a sense of presence. It feels like you're placing cards down across the board from another person. It's also very easy to find a game, easier than in real life, because you can play with people far away, and I never had to wait more than thirty seconds or so in the queue to find a match. I often found a game instantly.

Playing a creature in Cards and Tankards VR

Everyone I played with was really friendly too, and a casual conversation about the game we were playing naturally ensued during each match. Instead of relying on emotes to convey each player's experience of the game, you can just talk and gesture casually like you are really there.

The hand controls that VR provides also translate nicely to the actions that you take when playing the game. Your cards float above your left hand and can be plucked out and placed on the board with your right hand. Actually performing this action instead of clicking and dragging on a flat screen felt really right to me, and then seeing that action play out with 3D animations and models looked great as well.

The sense of spectacle and that you really are doing magical things with the cards you are playing come across much better in VR. To attack you have to actually grab one of the 3D models of your creatures on the board and place it in the attack position, and gesturing and pointing to designate targets for spells feels great as well. Some creatures even come with activation abilities that you use by tapping them on the head. You end your turn by grabbing and flipping over an hourglass instead of just clicking a button.

These all sound like little things, and at first, I thought they were inconsequential fluff, but the more I played the game the more I realized that all of these little touches serve to make you feel like you really are at the table just like the ability to freely talk and gesture to your opponent does.

You can even walk all the way around the table if you want to and see the game from multiple angles. It's really great.

Look at that game board

Looking at the game is also a pleasure. The developers over at Divergent Realities didn't miss the opportunity to use your immersive VR view of the game board to add some spectacle.

Your creatures on the board are actual 3D models, and have death and attack animations that play out with the action. It's a lot more satisfying than seeing a number go down and an icon on a screen explode. Spells create wisps of magic and fire through the air as they hit their targets. I always enjoyed looking at the effects of my cards on the board.

The Gameplay Mechanics Of Cards And Tankards

Now that I've fawned over how much I love the execution of a VR card game and the immersiveness of it all, let's talk about how Cards and Tankards actually plays.

To summarise. You get an additional maximum mana each turn, and each player starts with thirty health. The first player to have zero health loses. You play spells and creatures with mana each turn, and each creature has a damage and health value. If a creature’s health goes to zero it perishes.

Each turn after you play your cards until you don’t have the mana to play more you can attack with all unexhausted creatures and then end your turn. Creatures are exhausted right after you play them and after you attack or activate them. If a creature is blocked it and the blocking creature fight and even if the attacker survives it doesn’t do damage to your opponent.

Your opponent blocks with their creatures and then their turn starts when they’re done blocking. They do the same thing you just did, play cards, and then attack if they want to. Over and over until someone’s health hits zero.

Hitting an enemy with a spell

Hopefully that gives you some idea of how Cards and Tankards is played. There are clearly some elements borrowed from other card games, but the end result is a unique set of gameplay mechanics that is still very accessible and straightforward to understand.

The tutorial also explains things very well, though there were a few gaps in what it teaches you, like the maximum amount of creatures on the board (10) or what the maximum mana cap is (also 10). Cards and Tankards feels even more unique when you get into deck building and the difference between factions.

I'm very proud to report that the starter decks are actually really viable. I racked up quite a few wins without even modifying them.

I also found myself opening quite a few card packs. While progression does inevitably slow down, I was getting a lot of in game gold from the Quest system, all the games I was playing, and the free battle pass for the current season. I was opening quite a few packs without spending a single penny. Not enough to create entire decks from scratch, but enough to introduce some new cards and keep things interesting.

Deck building is also fun in this VR card game

If you want more specific cards you can also see what's for sale in the public tavern at the bar. Also while you're there you can hang out with and play games against others, or just watch players that are much better discuss the current meta and play against each other.

The social aspect of Cards and Tankards comes alive even more if you play in the public tavern, and I think this VR game benefits so much from having a public space where you can just hang out, share decklists, and play some casual games.

So Cards and Tankards, at least for now, doesn't have the problem that a lot of trading card games have. That is, to be able to have a chance against more experienced players you have to buy a lot of cards, copy somebody else's deck list, and then figure out how to play the deck. Sure you can do all of that, or make your own, but you don't have to. You'll start out with four mostly viable decks.

I played quite a few ranked games before making this review and won more than I lost, even against opponents with custom made decks. Personally, I had the most success with the first one you get, the Plundering Guild.

The Plundering Guild can enhance cards with coins, like you saw earlier, and has a lot of cards that buff cards in your hand before you play them.

The Dungeon Master faction gets a “Master” to represent you on the board

The Dungeon Master faction focuses a lot on combos and direct damage cards to burn away your opponent's health or slowly gain control of the board. I especially love that you actually get a Dungeon Master creature on the board that shares a health pool with you, giving you as the player a direct representation as a creature on the board. Also, some of them have some really great abilities.

The Augur Order faction has a special mechanic where they can use contract spells which have a constant effect on the whole game as long as you meet the requirements for it. Like their best spell of all those I tried, which makes all of your creatures deal damage equal to their health, as long as you have three creatures with more health than attack on the board. With a lot of high health, low damage creatures, this card is really powerful and can tip the balance of the whole game. Additionally, they can place a card in their hand at the bottom of their deck in order to draw a new one from the top of their deck once a turn. This gives the Augur Order a lot of flexibility.

The last faction is the Wild Horde. I played this one the least since I had no idea what their signature mechanic was and it was never tutorialized. Turns out the Wild Horde can “Reserve” a card each turn for an additional mana on that turn. This card is then placed in that player’s reserve of cards. The Wild Horde has many card synergies that complement reserving, like giving cards in your reserve bool power bonuses or playing them outright. In addition, they do also have some pretty unique cards and seem to focus a lot on buffing creatures to deal a lot of damage, and drawing and playing a lot of creatures to overwhelm your opponent.

The only reason I realized how the Wild Horde’s and Augur Order’s unique mechanics function is due to comments from readers and watchers of Reality Remake. Thanks to them, though this does, unfortunately, highlight that Cards & Tankards should really have better ingame tutorials to explain these factions.

Playing the Augur Order’s best card

There is so much more to talk about in this game. Entire books have been created to cover the ins and outs of card games and as in depth as I like to make my reviews, I can only scratch the surface of the intricacies of a VR trading card game as enjoyable as Cards and Tankards in a single article.

No VR Game Is Perfect

I do have a few minor gripes with Cards and Tankards VR. Some of the models and animations, as much as I like them, do miss opportunities to be more impressive.

I wonder what sort of spectacle this game could be if the developers really went all in on the effects and made the animations for creatures a little more expressive. Mostly they just whack each other. If I have a wizard creature on the board I'd rather they throw a fireball or something instead of just swinging their staff to do damage. The presentation of the board is still leaps and bounds beyond what a non VR card game looks like, but it could be even better.

The same goes for the sound. It's a little basic and could use some more love. Though overall the presentation is on par with other quality VR games on the Quest. You also can't see how many cards are left in your deck exactly, though you can estimate based on looking at it. It would be nice to know the exact number when a game really drags on.

It would also be nice to have an easier way to share decklists between players instead of having to manually copy another player's decklist from their collection menu. Lastly, the VR controls aren't always the best. Often your hands will clip into the table temporarily or something on the board will be frustrating to grab for a few seconds. This never killed the pace of the game for me, but was a minor annoyance.

The VR hands that you get in this game sometimes feel awkward. This is all really minor stuff that could easily be changed in the future.

You can hang out in the public tavern any time in Cards and Tankards

My biggest takeaway from this game is an even greater appreciation of the immersion that Virtual Reality can bring to all sorts of experiences.

Playing a card game in VR is a much more personal and enjoyable experience than playing with a faceless, wordless stranger on a flat screen. I've had a lot of fun against so many different opponents and felt like I was really there playing this card game with them. Cards and Tankards is free, so if any of this sounds remotely interesting, and it probably does if you've made it this far in the article, give the game a try.

I haven't spent a penny on it and I've had a ton of fun with it. You can find Cards and Tankards on the Meta Quest Store and Steam for the low price of zero dollars. There's a great tutorial to explain all of the nuts and bolts, and finding a game was always really easy. It's clear a lot of people enjoy Cards and Tankards from the fast queue time alone.

Enjoy yourself out there in VR, and hopefully, you'll also enjoy the best VR card game out there.