The idea of a PSVR MOBA game seemed unnecessary, but Sunsoft executed it without a hitch with Dark Eclipse. They made a case for how to do MOBA correctly in VR, as well as how to make MOBA fun in the medium. If they can populate it with more players, then the experience would be even better. Otherwise, you’re going to be getting a single-player experience that taunts you with the idea of multiplayer fun.
Sunsoft, a word please. You do realize that this is the holiday season and you just can’t go and make an entertaining game without warning a few of us beforehand, correct? A free to play game at that, where microtranscations aren’t a necessity in order to have fun. Seriously, I have WWE, RDR 2, some Turtle Beach headphones, and an indie game on the Switch to worry about in the coming weeks. I honestly cannot be distracted by a VR MOBA that shouldn’t be good in concept but is surprisingly fun and addictive.
Again, warn us reviewers before going there.
Humor aside, Sunsoft just recently released Dark Eclipse, the first MOBA for PSVR, and it’s fun as hell. While not all of it works, the majority of it stays intact and brings an awkwardly entertaining MOBA experience in a Populous-on-the-Sega-Genesis manner.
Anyway, let’s dig right into it.
Dark Eclipse is structured to allow you to play as the overseer of a giant MOBA board. It feels like you would be playing this game at home with friends if you had enough dice and enough time (and enough friends). The board is the typical three-path MOBA design, where you can send players out to gather resources, build towers, and take down the enemy or the enemy’s tower when you’re ready. Everything that you love about the MOBA genre, at least the good ones, is firmly intact here with DE. Your expectations for what the game delivers in terms of a MOBA experience will be met, so don’t worry about that aspect of the gameplay shifting — it doesn’t.
The niche to the PSVR experience is how much physical control you have over the imaginary board. Honestly, when this was sent to us I had no faith that a MOBA would work in a VR environment. The whole concept seemed gimmicky on paper/email. There was little need to pick up a character, place a character on the map, and then send the character off into battle. The process seemed unnecessary extra steps that didn’t need a VR view to accomplish — again, on paper. When you get into the game, though, all of that ‘on paper’ business changes.
The controls completely make sense after a few minutes playing the game. Each character has a diamond shaped icon above them. With your hands, you can pick up the diamond, place it on an enemy, a resource, or other locations in the game and then quickly move to another piece. The characters react to the movement and move toward the object. The movements of the diamonds with the controls actually enhanced the experience and made sense of the moves I was making, as well as gave me a full view of the map, so I could make moving decisions quicker. It was odd, it was uncanny, but it worked like butter on bread.
In addition to player movements, you have the ability to actually shift and move the board pretty much any direction you want. If you want to stand over it (really stand over it), you can push it down. This would give you a clear view of the world you’re occupying (like Populous). If you want an up-close view of it, you can lift it up. You can pan across the land, rotate it, and do anything you want with it to get a better view. It’s a simple push of a button, then a shift with the hand. It’s simple and intuitive, and it enhances the experience quite a bit. This was a very good use of VR, folks.
By the first 30-minutes of the game, I found myself not even thinking about the controls, which is a huge deal, and focusing on my strategy. Seeing the entire map helped a lot, but having smooth controls to move pieces around made sense in pretty much any view I went to during gameplay. It was nuts how much fun the game quickly became, even though the first go around was tough. The controls and vantage point work gorgeously.
On top of that, the VR also helped with selecting types of defenses to put in place once resources were gathered. The latter, resource gathering, was made simple through touching resources and having the game send grunts to gather them. Building towers involved gathering the right resources and choosing, in a 3D manner, which tower I wanted to build. It was absolutely intuitive, which made the game positively fascinating and fun, and because the controls were so simplified it made my time in DE more about strategizing than fighting with everything to build something.
Again, the design was damn good, and it worked within a VR MOBA environment. Folks, you honestly don’t know how much you need an over-the-map view (the entire view at once) of a map until you experience it. I’m not sure I’ll be able to play a normal MOBA the same way now.
Beyond the gameplay design, there were also a few modes to play in the game. The mode that will certainly peak the interest of most people will be the PvP mode. Now, if there is only one sore spot about the game, it’s that it hasn’t caught people’s attention yet, which means finding a PvP match might be far and few between at launch. We played one person online and got our asses handed to us, but after that, especially today when I was trying to get back on PvP, I had a hard time finding someone in matchmaking. Waiting for people isn’t fun at all, which at this moment, puts a dark mark on that aspect of the gameplay. Outside of PvP matches, there is a ranked mode, which is not unlocked in the game’s current season (Season 0). Sunsoft said they would be unlocking the mode in future updates. Can’t wait to see that in action.
A mode that was accessible, and fun, was the PvE mode. It presented a good challenging place to hone one’s skills while the PvP portion of the game was being sorted out. While it sounds incredibly ‘duh’, it was also a nice place to try out new characters and formulate strategies that might benefit you when you play other human beings. It’s a training ground of sorts, and a fun one at that, so it’s a good plan B, if plan A doesn’t work out. Come prepared, though, as the enemies will show no mercy with you. The game features one difficulty option, so things will be challenging, but Sunsoft is working on a way to add more difficulty options. I’ll be waiting patiently for the easiest.
Shifting gears just slightly away from gameplay, another plus for this game, and a must as well, was the visuals. If the visuals were poor, then the experience would be incredibly poor. That is one thing that must be done right in VR to get the correct experience out of the game. The visuals hit the right notes, as everything was detailed and in your face (literally). The character designs were outrageous anime influences, including a skull-faced scantily clad female character, but were complemented by the enemies, which were just terrifying monsters up close. For example, there was one scorpion in the game that had an anguished face on the front of it. I didn’t take note of it until I physically pulled the map closer to me and found myself quickly pushing the map back out. They all have a good design to them. In addition, the levels where also gorgeous to view. Nicely laid out grounds of open areas with trademark scorched-earth elements in it to make it war-torn.
Overall, the idea of a PSVR MOBA game seemed unnecessary, but Sunsoft executed it without a hitch with Dark Eclipse. They made a case for how to do MOBA correctly in VR, as well as how to make MOBA fun in the medium. If they can populate it with more players, then the experience would be even better. Otherwise, you’re going to be getting a single-player experience that taunts you with the idea of multiplayer fun.
