Evasion

Evasion is an interesting title from developer Archiact. It’s a first-person shooter that has all the good elements of a VR game. It has simple controls, easy aiming system, and it doesn’t ask too much from the player. While most VR experiences are simple experiences, Evasion tries to deliver a full first-person shooter to the PSVR, which is a genre that isn’t completely common in the VR world (they’re getting there, though). Does it deliver a proper FPS experience? Let’s break this baby down.

Evasion is a game that puts the player in the role of a Vanguard elite special ops soldier. When things go wrong in the universe, the Vanguard is called in to rectify the problem. The Vanguard elite is broken down into four specific classes — Striker, Surgeon, Engineer, and Warden. Each come with their set of particular skills, much like what you would find in a Call of Duty or Battlefield, and each has certain ways of doing things during battle. Knowing this, you might be wondering why there would be classes, such as a Surgeon, and that’s because the game allows for solo or co-op experiences. The latter, co-op, I had no luck snagging anyone online. The fact that you have that choice, though, is nice, and the game even allows you to open your match to allow people to join you during your story run. That is a cool feature in its own right. All said this review will be a solo review only.

Anyway, I chose the striker out of the bunch, because the word ‘Striker’ just makes me think of a badass. I traversed across a desert/mountain landscape (that changes as you progress) in the first few levels taking out giant Robotech like Invid robots, flying robots, and various other metallic baddies that are trying to kill you. While the beginning of the game doesn’t have too much of a variety in terms of enemies and map style, the joy of the game’s development lies within the simplicity of how the player moves and functions.

The controls are the bright spot of the game. I think that Archiact nailed those perfectly, which is a huge deal for a VR title. Sometimes developers concentrate too much on putting the player in a VR experience, rather than remembering they should be delivering a certain genre of gaming experience within the VR world. Archiact, in spite of their tutorial, which feels like it’s teaching you a lot of controls, delivers a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) to the main control scheme. You have a trigger button to fire your gun, which you can treat like a scout rifle (pulling the trigger for every shot). You can hold down the trigger button to charge the gun up to deliver a multi-bullet attack on enemies (a good option in a tight spot), or you can do a surge attack (really powerful attack).

Beyond just firing your gun, you also have a tethering attack, as well as tethering goodies left behind by enemies (we’ll get to that in a second). The tethering attack basically rips apart robots and destroys them, but the attack is time-consuming, which makes you open for other attacks. It’s a good way to feel cool, but it’s a risky move unless the robot is alone. Other than the tether, the game also features two shields on each side of the gun, which blocks, and sometimes sends back attacks. There are other ways of attacking the enemies, but I guarantee you that these will be your go-to when playing the game.

The other tethering uses in the game involve obtaining canisters from downed enemies. There are yellow and green canisters that appear randomly during a battle that you can tether and bring in to power up Surge Attacks, as well as replenish depleted energy. Obtaining the canisters is just as easy as hitting a button, while you’re in battle. The catch with this is that when you tether the canisters, and as they are floating briskly towards you, your shield on your gun goes down, which opens you up for an attack. My big issue with the canisters is that you don’t have enough of them drop during battle, or you have too many yellow versus green. The green ones, the player’s energy, are in more high demand than the yellow, which is frustrating when you don’t consistently snag them. While dodging attacks in a non-VR first-person shooter is generally easy, you can usually see it coming, doing it in a VR environment is a lot harder because you’re essentially controlling your body movement beyond your left/right thumbsticks. It’s different than a typical FPS because you have so much physical control over the body’s position, which makes it more challenging, and you get hit more times than not in the game. It’s essential to have energy replenished consistently because of how easy you can get hit in the game.

Staying with controls, Archiact gives you different options to choose from in the game. The left stick controls the player’s forward/backward movement, while the right stick controls the quick-shift in angle. You can change the quick-shift (just a quick tap of the right thumbstick) to a normal FPS right-stick movement, but I don’t recommend it, as it will cause motion sickness. The option is there, though, which is nice, if you want to go that route. Archiact responsibly gives you that option, and I highly commend them for it. Generally, developers tend to give you what they think you’ll need, rather than options to choose from in the medium, at least that is my experience having played a lot of VR titles. Anyway, the control movements work, and you have an option to literally point your head in the direction you want to go, and the game will go that direction. It’s an awkward way of moving, but it works. It’s an additional choice for you in movement. Lots of good movements options in this game.

In terms of gameplay, the game just seems very repetitive with regard to enemies and variety. The first 5-6 stages had essentially the same type of enemies from map to map. For me, that just felt a bit stale in gameplay. I realize that the VR experience does its job of keeping the game interesting, but the gameplay design just doesn’t have enough variety and enemies to keep the game engaging. This isn’t going to be a Call of Duty or Battlefield experience, even if the player options are similar (see above for details), so you shouldn’t expect that at all. The gameplay bets a lot on co-op, which I hope really works out because I can see how entertaining that possibly could be. As it stands solo, the game just needed a bit more enemies or changing up on map design to keep the experience unique. I think there could have been a bigger, better variety of enemies/level design delivered, but there is always hope for future updates or for a bigger sequel. The gameplay is smooth in execution, as this is the blueprint for making an FPS work in a VR environment, in terms of movement and simplicity.

Overall, Evasion is a decent FPS for the PSVR, but it needed just a bit more variety to make it fun and engaging. The initial structure of the gameplay is spot-on, but the enemies and level design are just a bit too stale.

Hopefully, Archiact continues to make VR titles because I think they’re onto something.