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Best Games - In Death
There is no shortage of VR archery games. I think it’s the controllers. While there are many options that VR controllers present to developers, grasping, waving, punching, pointing, lifting, pushing, pulling, VR controllers usually translate to some sort of gun. Or, if you prefer a different sort of shooting, you can use one hand to aim a bow and the other to draw back a string. The hardware just sort of lends itself to that sort of gameplay.
The first couple of times I played In Death were frustrating. The archery was very precise and you couldn’t really lob shots off and hope for the best. There is a shield block and parry mechanic that requires pretty bang on timing. The movement mechanics are strange and can really throw you for a loop.
I played it a couple more times, and everything started to make sense. Started to feel right. The secret is that In Death doesn’t really play like a most regular video games. It is a VR game through and through. In Death is intensely physical. Just not in the same ways as a lot of other VR games.
Since In Death is a VR game, you can easily stand in one spot and rotate around or take a step or two in any direction. But that’s not really how you move around in this game. In Death has a teleport mechanic where any spot where you toss a shard, you will instantly travel to. You can toss that shard casually or try to throw it a long distance, but how well you can throw and how precisely you can land the shard determines where you will go. Moving around is a trainable skill and it feels great once you get it.
Not only that, but you have an arrow with the shard already on it. Load up that arrow and fire it to teleport yourself anywhere you can shoot an arrow. Which is pretty far away, as it turns out.
There are, of course, enemies to shoot with your bow and array of different arrows, but just standing still and launching arrows isn’t what this game is about.
In Death is a roguelike, so failing a run means that you loose all items and progress to that point. There are unlockable abilities and options that can make subsequent runs easier, but this is a game where you really don’t want to rush in and die.
Trying to keep the run going means you need to take full advantage of those movement abilities. You will be firing arrows to teleport yourself up onto rooftops and odd balconies. You will toss the shard behind you to give you some distance from attackers. You will look for spots in the level where you can get the best angle on enemies while making sure that they can’t get behind you. So, rather than a very physical game like Beat Saber where you wave your arms around, In Death is more about you mastering the physicality of a virtual space.
This is the sort of game that you really couldn’t do properly without VR. The movement mechanics would feel hopelessly restrictive in a regular FPS game, but here they feel natural.
Getting the drop on a bunch of crusades era knights and peppering them with arrows only to teleport behind them when they turn to rush you at the end of a hallways is a magical ‘super ninja’ type experience.
It’s a strange game, a difficult game to play for a lot of reasons, and one that I don’t think many people got a chance to play, but for me it’s one of the Best Games.