Killing spiders is incredibly easy – Kill It With Fire VR makes it fun. Scratch that – it makes it dumb fun. Despite the jump scares and spiders, I kept myself fully entertained because of the sheer number of ridiculous things I could use to kill spiders. If a book from the shelf wasn’t enough, maybe a shotgun would do the trick. No dice? Shurikens. No? Fine. Flamethrower. That’ll work. Some of its controls lack explanation and its features could be better explained. Once you figure it out, Kill It With Fire VR lends itself for a fun afternoon VR experience or party game if you want to mess around with some friends.
Kill It With Fire VR is a very simple game that utilizes puzzle game secrets and arcade-title mechanics to create bite-sized levels where the player’s sole purpose is to enact mayhem on spiders. It’s in the title – kill it (the spider) with fire! Each level contains a general “main” quest of simply killing a set number of spiders while additional side quests and secrets encourage the player to fully explore and utilize their surroundings to unlock additional content. Because of this, it’s very easy for players to move through the motions of progression without needing to grind through repetitious content for the sake of mastery. If you missed a puzzle the first time, simply replay the level at a later time. No worries!
The main draw of Kill It With Fire VR involves the use of its arachnogauntlet. If you’ve ever wanted to use the force to summon objects to your hand like a Jedi…now’s your chance! Upon getting the gauntlet in the first level, it’s incredibly easy to summon anything in the environment right to your hand so you can slam it onto a spider or throw it across the room. This feature fully encapsulated the VR experience for me because of how I could literally interact with just about anything I wanted in the rooms and levels.
Kill It With Fire VR takes the player off the leash incredibly early, perhaps to its detriment. The VR controls take some getting used to, especially for those unfamiliar with VR setups and physics expectations. Its UI errs on unintrusive, briefly flagging players with a few set rules before setting them loose to kill every spider in existence. You could argue that a lack of instructions is best in a sandbox style title – Kill It With Fire VR creates a fantastic sandbox environment by making just about everything interactable and able to be used as a throwable weapon. If you’re down for blunt force, you’ll have no problem finding something to smoosh a spider. On the other hand, the arachnogauntlet’s full potential is masked by a lack of information overall.
For instance, upon unlocking a new weapon, you can quickly dismiss it by pressing L1/R1. If you want to bring it back or select a new weapon, you need to open up the menu and attempt to select your desired weapon from a virtual wall of other weapons you unlocked. You’re not given much of a guide as to how to use these weapons for the first time nor how to reload them, either. This occurred when I unlocked the cheese puffs weapon, a literal bag of cheese puffs whose purpose I could not immediately discern. The bag remained in my hand and did not leave when I tried to throw it. Instead, I was to turn it over, grab the single cheese puff that dropped out of it with my other hand, and simply leave the puff on the floor for a spider to eat. Logically, I assumed that I could simply shake the bag and leave a trail of puffs – the requirement of using both hands to create a trap was not described or even alluded to in a significant fashion in-game other than a hidden side quest asking me to feed six puffs to spiders.
It’s a shame because the weapons are straight up bonkers. Sure, you could use a Teflon frying pan to pummel any spider you see, but why not something bigger? How about, oh I don’t know, an RPG? Or perhaps a Molotov cocktail? Too explosive for you? Okay, a weed wacker (trimmer) it is. These weapons are entirely chaotic and goofy, only limited by their ammo capacities. It’s easy to come across additional ammo in future levels and replaying older levels, so if you find yourself low it’s a quick fix. It’s also a great feeling to not be forced to use some weapons over others. Kill It With Fire VR truly lets players use whatever they want to kill spiders. If you’re aiming to complete all of the side missions, then you’ll need to rely on specific weapons, but those are optional! Entirely optional! For those wanting adaptive trigger support, you can rest easy knowing that some weapons fully utilize the PSVR2’s adaptive triggers.
Jump scares and mayhem are combined to keep players on their toes seeing as spiders are involved. As you walk around, you may hear small chatters or see glimpses of the spiders’ legs or bodies behind or underneath objects. The chatters increase in volume as you move toward the spiders, resulting in a cacophony of chaos when you see a spider in its entirety. Plucky violin and loopy string music waver afterward in time with the spiders skittering across the floors. With the PSVR2 fully plugged into my ears, I felt connected with the virtual environments I was moving through and fully felt on edge knowing that somewhere a spider was waiting for me…to kill it.
Side missions are mostly rewarding but are in no way required. Unlike the main level quests that are gated by the number of spiders you kill, side missions involve you finding small scraps of paper and doing something in the level. This could mean solving a puzzle by moving objects around or using a specific weapon to kill some spiders. Some puzzles will be obvious while others will be confusing. Admittedly, a small handful of them lacked so much as a hint for me to figure out what I needed to do in order to complete the missions. If you finish all the side missions in a level, you can partake in a spider-killing time trial. Again, none of these things are required, but they can be fun if you can figure them out.
Again, Kill It With Fire is a simple VR game. It shouldn’t require much thought to do anything in-game since the premise is that of simply killing spiders by any means necessary. The PSVR2 helps contribute to an interactive sandbox experience that avoids taking itself seriously, albeit too contrite than I would prefer. Getting the hang of the sandbox physics led me to fully scramble through the levels looking under every single nook and cranny for spiders to kill. If they proved annoying, I pulled out the big guns.
My final concern with Kill it with Fire is its general appeal, or lack thereof. Those with arachnophobia should not, by any stretch of the imagination, play this game. Despite the silliness of wielding flamethrowers and summoning items with your gauntlet, the entire experience feels increasingly real the longer you play. Sure, the spiders won’t actually hurt you. They’ll scurry past you and move around in haphazard fashions quite unlike actual spiders. There are settings within the game that can be adjusted to make the game arachnophobic-friendly such as turning off the jump scares and other effects, but the fact remains that those with legitimate fears will most definitely feel overwhelmed after a small amount of time. I personally don’t have a few of spiders (in fact, I love them and appreciate what they do to keep my home pest free!), but I can recognize trigger-inducing content when I see it.
Killing spiders is incredibly easy – Kill It With Fire VR makes it fun. Scratch that – it makes it dumb fun. Despite the jump scares and spiders, I kept myself fully entertained because of the sheer number of ridiculous things I could use to kill spiders. If a book from the shelf wasn’t enough, maybe a shotgun would do the trick. No dice? Shurikens. No? Fine. Flamethrower. That’ll work. Some of its controls lack explanation and its features could be better explained. Once you figure it out, Kill It With Fire VR lends itself for a fun afternoon VR experience or party game if you want to mess around with some friends.
