Recently, we have acquired a PSVR 2 (review forthcoming) and in doing so have unleashed a plethora of requests for games to try out. The first game that we downloaded for the newbie hardware was Ragnarock from WanadevStudio. While the structure of this game screams every tap game out on the market, including Beat Saber, it has enough variety and pointedness to show us it’s a bit different in some areas.
Let’s get this drum beating.
It’s good to be a Viking (cue Lizzo)
The basic story setup is this – you play as a drummer for a Viking ship and your duty is to beat the drum to the rhythm of the music playing in order for your rowing crew to get the ship to its destination. The destinations do vary, some in hell, some in snowy landscapes, and some even taking your crew to Valhalla. Nothing too terribly complicated with the setup but using Vikings to drive this ship is quite creative and entertaining.
Much like the structure of Beat Saber, at the beginning of the game, you’re presented with a variety of songs. Each one has its own style and rhythm to it, and sometimes its own genre (nothing like some Viking polka music, am I right?). AHEM. Anyway, the game has the player pointing in a first-person perspective looking at the crew while small beat buttons make their way down from the front of the ship and pass over the drums. As you see the beat buttons pass over the drums, you hit the drums. You do this as many times as you can to build up some good chains. The onscreen indicators let you know when that happens, as lightning goes off when you hit on the right beat and eventually get into multi-chain hits. The concept is incredibly simple and familiar, especially if you have frequented Beat Saber or any Guitar Hero in the last 20 years. You do well by maintaining those chains. And those chains equal some fun points.
You score points by accuracy and chains. The more you hit beat buttons accurately and the fewer missing means you’re going to score more points. These points gathered at the end of each stage are compared to other players around the world as there is a constant leaderboard you access at the end of each song. The leaderboard will at the very least keep the game competitive and give you some motivation to do better. I’m not the competitive type, but it certainly made me want to do better in the game and have another go at the songs I had completed.
If you miss beats, then you risk not getting the crew to their destination. How does the crew get home or get to an invasion if you can’t hit the beats? Answer – they can’t. So, ya know, don’t be lame. The game will tell you at the end how long you have been rowing and where you stopped. That is significant because you’re given a bronze/silver/gold ranking at the end of each song, depending on how far you made it. Ragnarock assigns you one of the three rankings, which provides some sort of progress on each song. When you go back to the song menu, you will see a record of how you ranked with each one. Again, at the very least, this provides you with the motivation to replay a song.
Speaking of progress, the songs come with three difficulty ratings. The more songs completed, the faster or more complicated the next one gets, and even at times throws your rhythm for a loop in pulling back and changing the speed of the beats. The songs provided come in a variety of rhythms and styles. As previously mentioned, there was an accordion-led polka Viking song that had some good rhythm to it and made me happy. It was a good paced song that pushed me along early on in the experience to give me a gauge of how the music was going to go. Compared to a game like Beat Saber, which has mostly techno-driven pieces (not bad for a lightsaber game – it makes sense), this has a hodgepodge of polka, hard rock, and death metal. Each works well with the game’s overall feel and content, and it creates a solid variety of music that doesn’t feel repetitive and boring. Vikings would probably totally dig this library.
As for the difficulty of the game, the changing rhythms can throw you off a bit and that’s the cruel gameplay design leading the way. And I’m not saying that it’s bad, but it’s rather challenging and certainly motivates you to come back to the song and try to improve. For a game developer, you want your player to be more motivated to return and try everything out again, rather than to put away the game and walk away. It certainly had me returning again, though I mostly tried out the easy levels during my playthrough.
The reason why I took the easy route is that the medium and hard versions of songs were just a bit too much for me. While I will mostly blame my eyes and brain for not reading and connecting with the fast-moving notes, the game is hard as nails when you turn it up a notch. Even for a game like Beat Saber, the expert level isn’t that bad. For Ragnarock, it’s damn near impossible. That was frustrating for me because it cut the longevity of the experience. Either I wanted to fail repeatedly, or I just put the game away once I went through the easy path. I like challenges in my games, but I do not like moments of impossibility. I can live with failure and growth, but not just failure.
For those who enjoy a torturous adventure through difficulty, and who probably love the Dark Souls series as well, the difficulty bump might be a dream come true. For me, I’ll stick to perfecting the easy path and watch ‘those gamers’ do their thing on YouTube or Twitch.
Overall, Ragnarock is a fun experience (solo or multiplayer). The gameplay is super easy to pick up on and there isn’t much complication to the process. Doing better means getting in rhythm with the variety of music, and that variety is well done. The difficulty might trip gamers up a bit, though, which could be a turn-off. It’s still fun.
Gameplay feels in VR
The PSVR 2 does a masterful job of bringing the vibrating beat of a drum to life in its controllers. The game feels so good. You can feel the beat reverberate and it motivates you to keep hitting. There are times that you will forget that you’re playing a game, which is the purpose of VR. The controls and how they react to the game make for a great PSVR 2 experience. I really enjoyed beating a virtual drum to score points. And I also enjoyed the music that accompanied it, as it was wisely and meticulously selected.
On the graphical side of the tracks, the graphics are basic. The surrounding environments that you’re in don’t affect the gameplay experience at all, though the graphics don’t go above and beyond cute polygon Vikings. You can say what you will about that, but do you really want your eyes distracted from the beats? Probably not. The graphics are enough through its good variety of locations to row in, even if one of them is through the sky and into the clouds, which makes for a pretty, yet focused experience.
On that note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Ragnarock is a wonderful rhythm game from WanadevStudio that does enough to separate it from its Beat Saber brethren. The Viking backdrop and drum-beating fun make it unique in its music-driven rhythm gameplay, as does the variety of music included. The difficulty jumps from easy to hard is a steep climb that may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
