Recently, I travelled to what looked like an unassuming warehouse in Trafford Park, Manchester. Tucked away just outside of town is the local Zero Latency experience, where you can fight off zombie hordes, head into insanity, and become a Space Marine.
As the office’s resident Warhammer nerd of course I was going to choose the lattermost option, popping a gun under my arm and a headset over my head, I stepped into the arena and was suddenly thrown into Avarax, the massive city fans of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II will be familiar with.
Something I’ll raise right off the bat is that I usually struggle with VR due to motion sickness. “You people can’t do anything,” I know, I know. Locking in to do any strenuous VR gameplay can be quite taxing, so there were some concerns when I realised how much space there was to move around here, but throughout my 30-minute experience with Defenders of Avarax, I remained without a hint of sickness. It was probably because I was so focused on keeping hordes of bugs off my back.
This is an ad:
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine VR – Defenders of Avarax is not nearly as crisp as Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II when it comes to its visuals. Nor does it allow for nearly as many Tyranids on screen at once. However, the immersion added by it being a VR experience did heighten the sense of danger and there were enough bugs chittering towards you at any one time to keep tensions high and the action fast-paced. There’s no melee, no executions. You’ve just got your trusty bolter with a grenade attachment and the occasional heavy weapon you can grab from ordnance pods in the small maps. On the one hand, this gameplay is rather simple, but on the other it’s an experienced designed for anyone to just pick up and play. You don’t have hours to learn the controls and I found the feel of shooting to be rewarding enough without any extra flashy effects. Gore still dashes across the screen when you kill a Tyranid, and you really get the feeling of being a walking tank as a Space Marine, even if you can be ripped apart should you get surrounded.
The Warhammer 40,000 universe feels well-represented here, especially in the feel of the guns. Similar effects to those seen in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II have been ported in, and the heavy weapons especially sing as they tear through the hordes of enemies coming your way. The melta rifle was a personal favourite as it showers the screen and your enemies in a flash of purple and orange light. It’s impressive the headsets could keep up with so many effects and enemies on-screen at once. I’m no expert on the platform, but the HTC headset I wore never struggled with the game, even in more intense sequences like the Hive Tyrant fight at the end.
The controls were simplistic and responsive. It was my first occasion using any sort of attachment for a VR controller, and I was surprised to see that even with a massive plastic gun attached to the controller, there was no issue in the feedback for my shots, reloads, and grenades. It keeps you immersed in the action when you don’t notice a slight pause before you can reload, and you can focus on the rows of teeth trying to clamp down on your head. Being able to run around a large room as well helped make you feel like you were in the thick of the action. I will say though it was just me and another player in the experience, meaning we could manoeuvre around one another easily. I can’t imagine what it was like for people in an 8-man squad.
This is an ad:
With a score the guy running the game assured me was pretty impressive for a first-timer (50,000+ but who’s counting?) I ensured I did the Emperor proud at my time with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine VR – Defenders of Avarax. There’ll be no score on this piece, as it’s hard to put a number on a 30-minute experience, but my opinion on VR has changed thanks to it. Maybe I just need to find the right games to truly give me that same experience. A shame I passed my VR headset onto the Spanish office.
