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Sprint Vector. Developer: Survios. Publisher: Survios.
Format: Reviewed on PSVR. Availability: Out now on Oculus, Vive and PSVRThat's why, before I even get into how the game works, it's well worth pointing out that Sprint Vector is one of the most intensely physical PSVR games I've played to date. If you're not a fan of titles that require you to stand up and get sweaty then it's safe to say this is not the game for you.The same can also be said to those of you out there with limited VR playspace. Although the setup blurb suggests you can play the game seated, Sprint Vector relies on full upper-body movement in order to work properly. That's all well and good in theory but when I tried to play it in a seated position the controls were so unresponsive it made the game unplayable.Fast-forward half an hour or so and, after moving around a bunch of furniture, I was finally able to create just enough space for the PSVR to track my arm movements correctly. Yes, it was a mission to get it all up and running but the results were well worth it. I walked away from my first session dizzied, out of breath and (thanks to a nearby, immovable shelving unit) sporting a couple of bruised knuckles.
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At some point when I was mid-stride during my demo of Sprint Vector on PSVR, I really did forget I was wearing a VR headset.Swinging my arms/Move controllers back and forth at my side, feet firmly. The Sprint Vector experience serves the VR platform in a couple different ways. It fits into your home as a competitive romp among friends or online and as one of a growing number of virtual reality games that can be worked into a fitness program. It also supplies a combination of competition and match length that fits into VR arcades.
Despite all that I was incredibly keen to go back in and play it again; the adrenaline rush that Sprint Vector administered had left me thirsty for more. Triggering power-ups close to environmental traps can make for deadly moments like thisThink of Sprint Vector like a cross between Mario Kart, Jet Set Radio Future and Mirror's Edge. It's an arcade racer, on rollerblades, where winning depends on finding the best routes possible in order to flow through your environment without losing speed. The setup is familiar video game fare; you're a contestant on a futuristic game show where success is success and failure - well, that's death. The VR twist here is that you must use your own bodily movements to propel yourself around multi-level, multi-route race tracks that are full of deadly traps, bottomless pits and aggressive, power-up wielding opponents.To get yourself moving along said tracks takes more than a small amount of physical effort. To increase your speed you need to quickly swing your arms up and down, a bit like how speedskaters might move their arms if they were stood upright rather than hunched over. At the height of your swing you squeeze the trigger button on your Move controller and then you release it at the bottom; almost like you're grasping at an invisible rope in order to pull yourself forwards.
Reaching maximum speeds isn't all about how fast you can pump your arms though - keeping a steady form and rhythm is the key to achieving top lap times.If that sounds tiring you'd be right, but thankfully each race takes only around 2 to 3 minutes to complete. That's enough time to break a sweat after a couple of goes, but it'll never leave you feeling like you've over exerted yourself.Once you've got your head around the basic concept of movement, things start getting infinitely more tricky.
Sprint Vector has an incredibly steep learning curve and there's a lot to take in as you careen round the tracks; from chaining together double jumps and flying in order to cross large chasms, through to activating the many collectable power-ups. Learning how to drift turn correctly is one of the many advanced maneuvers you'll need to master. By holding down the brake button on the side you want to turn to and pumping with the other arm your character will take tight bends without the need for you to physically turn your body in real life.The game comes with around 12 tracks for competitive racing, although most maps do tend to reuse or reverse sections from existing levels. The first track, Winter Rush, is relatively gentle but as you progress through the game, the layouts become much more complex. Later races introduce a lot of verticality that will stop you dead in your tracks unless you've mastered how to climb walls correctly.
By jumping at a wall and pulling the trigger on your controller at the right time you'll grab onto a green handhold. Then by raising your hand above your head and pulling it down rapidly while releasing the trigger you'll catapult yourself upwards. I found that movement in particular to be quite awkward to pull off correctly, the game would often fire me backwards away from the wall necessitating a frustrating reclimb. During the times when it did work, throwing myself up tall walls at speed was a great sensation; I felt like a super-powered Agent scaling skyscrapers in Crackdown. Using the Nitro power-up to fly your way to first place is especially satisfying.Keeping a forward momentum is imperative if you want to win medals in Sprint Vector and there are plenty of boosts pads and nitro power-ups dotted around to help you do this.
Conversely, there are so many hazards littering the tracks that crashing into objects and coming to an abrupt, jarring halt is only a matter of time. This is especially true in the early hours of the game when you are still feeling your way around each track.Surprisingly, with all this extreme movement going on, Sprint Vector really nails the comfort factor when it comes to reducing nausea in VR.
Falling down a big hole or launching yourself into a particularly powerful jump are things that will occasionally turn your stomach, but it's never that extreme. By using actual, physical movements to control your character, it grounds you in the world and it means you're less likely to experience that out-of-body jolt that can cause tummies to turn.During solo play your fellow competitors, a colourful bunch of aliens, humanoids and holograms, will be controlled by AI.
Whilst these opponents offer a slight challenge to anyone familiar with the tracks, if you continually fail a section of a race they will often stop and wait for you to catch up. That's ever so nice of them, but it looks and feels a bit odd, especially when they decide to race back along the track to see how you're doing.
There are multiple racers to choose from but they all control the same. The only noticable difference is the dialogue but that repeats itself so often you'll want to turn it off eventually.For an actual test of your skill you'll need to go for online multiplayer and race real life people. I had a few problems finding opponents in the EU server but on the US side there were plenty of people to race with. Most of them had live mics but instead of being toxic, anyone who spoke was friendly and happy to offer help to newcomers, giving the lobbies a welcoming atmosphere.If you fancy taking some time out from all that competitive racing, there are a number of exclusive challenge maps on offer that'll test your speed and ability to navigate the environment.
Whether it be a time trial or an item collection run, nailing those top speeds and perfecting those routes can be quite addictive. In my mind these challenges felt very much like playing a VR version of Mirror's Edge. The challenge maps are a great place to hone your skills and learn how to chain moves together.While most of my races, competitive or otherwise, went off without a hitch, I did have the occasional calibration issue. These could have been down to my tiny play area, or my own unwieldy movements but either way, every so often I'd boost wildly and unexpectedly to the left or right when trying to run forwards. More often than not this would put me at the bottom of a pit, forcing an aggravating restart at the nearest checkpoint.With all this in mind my recommendation comes with a few caveats. If you're a VR enthusiast with a decent sized games room and a good stomach for intense action then you're in for a treat. If however you're a VR beginner, or someone with a cramped gaming area, you do run the risk of feeling like you've wasted your money.Don't expect to just pick up this game and ace it straight away either.
Getting to a point where you're actually good enough to sprint around a course without crashing every 30 seconds or so will take a lot of practice and perseverance. The learning curve really is punishing and it's imperative that you play through the four lengthy tutorials if you want to stand any chance of winning a race. Once that unique method of locomotion finally clicks though, the amazing feeling of physically powering your way through each level just cannot be matched by any VR game on the market.
Sprint Vector (2018) is a VR racing game of a different stripe. Dubbed an “adrenaline platformer” by production studio Survios, the developers behind Raw Data (2017), it actually sticks to some pretty well-established arcade racing tropes pioneered by the Mario Kart franchise. Still, it’s something entirely different; it’s not only a fast-paced, technical sort of game that depends on the user’s ability to memorize every map’s twists and hazards, and ultimately understand how to best get from point A to point B, but it’s almost what you might call legitimate exercise. Sprint Vector Details:Developer: SurviosAvailable On: , Oculus Rift (Steam, ), PSVR Reviewed On: HTC Vive, Oculus RiftRelease Date: February 8th, 2018Note: Sprint Vector is discounted 20% off the retail price of $30 through February 22ndGameplayYou can’t really talk about Sprint Vector without first mentioning the main reason for its existence: a unique locomotion method Survios dubs “Fluid Locomotion,” a system which requires you to pump your arms as if you were running in place in order to move. You can also think about it as if you were skiing with ski poles, but instead of pushing off the ground with a pole, you thrust your arms downward while activating the trigger button on your controller, thus moving you forward.Survios has put a certain amount of faith in the median VR user’s ability to change from what they know, i.e. Lackadaisically pushing a single button to move.
Thankfully, that faith is well-founded. I’ll get more into this in the ‘Comfort’ section of the review, but suffice it to say that Sprint Vector‘s locomotion scheme is magnificent.One more thing. If you don’t like breaking a sweat when you play in VR, maybe now’s the time to look into. If you don’t mind getting your headset a little damp, then you’re in luck. According to my Fitbit, when I play Sprint Vector, I consistently boost my heart rate into the ‘fat burning’ zone. Image courtesy SurviosAt launch, Sprint Vector offers 9 solo challenge maps with 3 modes each, and 12 competitive maps which can either be played solo vs AI, or in an 8-player online races. As a point of comparisons, boasts 32 competitive maps, several cups, and a battle mode. I would have liked to see more maps, although 12 seems to be a good starting baseline.Competitive maps are linear, and not looped, which means you only get one run to determine the winner. I kind of wish they were looped, if only to get more practice on each track, but I see why they aren’t: racing requires physical effort, and a 15-minute race might just scare away your competitors.On competitive maps, there’s a standard mix of strategically placed powerups that fall in line with other kart racing games; nitro, bombs, slow-downs, guided missiles, etc.
Unlike other kart racers though, you’re expected to get vertical by climbing, riding ‘slip steams’, double jumping and soaring forward through the multilayered level, leaving your opponent with several ways to get around your carefully placed trap. Many competitive maps are also densely packed with environmental traps like crushing pistons, nuclear waste spills, giant fan blades, and explosive barrels, making for an incredibly dynamic gameplay experience. Despite some minor flaws, Sprint Vector is ultimately a visceral, heart-pumping racer for genuine speed freaks.Solo ModeLike many kart racers, Sprint Vector‘s AI essentially follows the ‘rubber banding’ principle – the game will give human players the ability to catch up by slowing down the NPCs in front of them. When this is done right in games, you don’t really notice it. When it isn’t, well, you get NPCs doing silly things like nonsensically skating back and forth on the track with no urgency to find the fastest possible route, or waiting for no apparent reason.
The latter example is unfortunately the case with many single-player AI races I played in Sprint Vector.As far as I can tell, there’s no way to manually change the AI’s difficulty setting. The game also doesn’t offer any of the cups or standard single player racing progressions. With only a few different leader boards to beat, the game’s competitive emphasis is clearly on the online multiplayer portion. That said, the solo challenge maps, which features time trial, coin collection, and a non-stop nitro-fest called ‘hardcore one-life’, are a welcome addition that makes up somewhat for the lack of cup races. MultiplayerThe skill differential from single player to multiplayer wasn’t huge when I played the pre-release version (identical to launch version), but you can chalk that up to the general level of inexperience in my fellow racers.
Once people start to intimately understand the in and outs of each track though, multiplayer is probably going to get pretty tough. In one such online race—after thinking I did fairly well playing the same track in single player mode moments before—the first place racer finished a full minute ahead of me. Since races take about a 2-3 minutes to complete, it was a stark realization that there must have been a secret passage that I missed, or a booster that I should have found.The only way to interact with others is through the game’s powerups, so there’s no way for you to, say, punch a fellow racer or push them off a ledge. This would have been a fun addition, but I rarely found myself within that sort of range anyway, so it’s a bit of a non-issue. Image courtesy SurviosAs far as I can tell, characters don’t seem to have any differentiating qualities besides their exteriors, which is kind of a shame.
Unlike other arcade racers which give you a selection of max speeds and accelerations, it appears as if you’re basically just choosing a skin to wear. This too is a minor niggle, but still worth mentioning. ImmersionSprint Vector works on many levels. The worlds and characters are interesting and visually cohesive, the locomotion system is rock solid, and the environment offers consistent interaction across the board. These are some of the most important ingredients to achieving Presence (yes, I used the capital “p”), that moment when you fully engage with the virtual world and mentally leave your office or bedroom behind.As for the world around you, I’ll say this: It’s not easy creating an entire universe for the benefit of a single racing game, but Sprint Vector manages to make you feel at home in its absurd reality show-driven future. Considering it’s not relying on existing IP like, well, freaking Mario, this is a great accomplishment.
To that, I’ll add that voice acting is on point, and character design and rigging is well done. I would have loved to get more of a chance to interface with the world besides just racing through it though, but that’s far from an admonishment.Also, if you have a hard time focusing, or you’re not into social multiplayer games, you’ll be happy to learn that you can mute nearly everything in Sprint Vector, including the jabbering announcers, AI characters, and your fellow multiplayers, leaving only the pulsing soundtrack in the background if you so please. You can also mute that, although I personally enjoyed it.
ComfortCreating a comfortable VR game is hardly a mistake. Even in this early stage of development, there are some tried and true methods for creating a fast but comfortable experience, and Sprint Vector uses every trick in the book.Giving VR users a way to associate virtual locomotion with larger physical movements seems to side-step some of the issues that may cause nausea in VR games. Like Echo Arena (2017), the zero-G multiplayer sports game, Sprint Vector (in a way) makes you use the world around you to move, which is why I compare it to using ski poles instead of running.
Executing good form in your arm’s stride determines your speed, and the smoother you can get that stride, the faster and more consistently you’ll move. You have to pay constant attention to this relationship though, more so than just jamming down on a button mapped to the accelerator.Not only that, but accelerating, flying, or drifting places particle effects in your near field of view, which keeps your vestibular system happy as you fling across the map at 50 mph. Because of this pseudo-cockpit effect, fast acceleration and deceleration isn’t nearly as jarring as it could be too.There’s also the option to enable click turning for players on Rift and PSVR, something I didn’t use too frequently thanks to drift-turning. REVIEW OVERVIEW.
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