Sairento VR is a fun experience and one that is far more complete than most VR gaming experiences out there. With it you get a good story, fantastic gameplay mechanic design and a good set of multi-tiered levels to use those mechanics in. This is more than just a gimmicky, short experience, which most VR games slip under these days, as it is a bright spot in a sea of VR shipwrecks.
A techno ninja packed with guns and a sword in VR? Good lord, the possibilities. Welcome to Sairento VR from Mixed Realms.
The concept is pretty simple and it’s honestly without the need for a solid story, though there is one. You play as a cyber ninja for an organization called Sairento. Your job is to track down terrorists, who range from samurai robots to giant grotesque bosses, in hopes of stopping their attacks in Tokyo Cluster, as well as their hacking of civilians. The story is simple and it’s a means to an end, which is the freaky awesome VR experience that drives the entire game.
The gameplay design of Sairento is basically it being a first-person ninja perspective. So, right now having read that, you’re thinking to yourself, “Oh, you get to wield a sword and fire guns? How ordinary.”, and you wouldn’t be wrong. I mean, swinging katanas and firing guns is neat. It’s what gets games like Call of Duty and Battlefield by every year in first person (sans the katanas). You point, you shoot, you hit, you move on — quite simple in nature and nothing incredibly special. That said, I was incredibly impressed with the accuracy of the swinging and the ease-of-use with the aiming/firing of the weapons. It works well and as long as you don’t feel silly swinging an imaginary sword violently in air (and you shouldn’t because you’re a gamer — so suck it up), then you’ll enjoy these mechanics. Seriously speaking, they’re spot on.
But, that’s not the reason you play this. Those are old mechanics with new movements, but not new experiences, which is what the world of VR promises, right? Right.
The tricky and wonderful part of Sairento VR is the actual ninja movement and mastering it. The double-jump of your character and the quick, yet incredibly jarring transport when you’re in need of escape are what you’re going to be using the most. The latter is what you have come to know/love about the HTC VIVE controller, as the standard in VR games on the VIVE is to press the giant button on the controller to mark a jump, then you jump. It’s a simple process and one that isn’t unknown to VR gamers.
Now, unlike games like Valve’s The Lab, where the jump command is started and ended by fades, Sairento VR enjoys speeding up the environment during the process, which can only be compared to a light speed jump in Star Wars. It’s quite cool, but it can knock you off balance in real life, if you’re not ready for it. But, it’s quite cool.
Now, the first thing you will do in this game, as you progress through the early multi-tiered levels of its maps, is perform a double-jump to guide yourself through the environments. You literally will jump up twice and come down. You always wanted to ‘be’ that ninja in Ninja Gaiden, so now is the time to live that dream!
Kidding aside, the first part of the jump is amazing, the second part will freak your brain out just slightly. The funny part, at least for me and my feeble brain, is that your cognitive expectation will never accept the jumping as a norm. I guess after 40+ years of life, where I didn’t leap 10+ feet in the air and then an addition 5+ feet, just wasn’t something my brain was willing to accept as standard. As critical as that might sound, it’s quite cool to see/do over and over again. If you do suffer from motion sickness, though, you may want to briefly reconsider this game, ya know, if you don’t enjoy getting sick. Or maybe you’re fine with that and you have hardwood. The experience is quite cool.
That said, the combination of jumping, transporting and using weapons in a sped up, slow down environment is quite good and accurate. It all feels like it fits within the game built for it. Nothing feels forced or gimmicky, which is what happens with VR games. Mixed Realms did one helluva job putting those mechanics as the clear focus of the gameplay and they pulled it all off brilliantly. The game plays as advertised and while you may not get long levels you want to stay in for hours at a time, the mechanics fit the gameplay design perfectly.
Now, if there was any sort of knock I could give to a game like this, it would be the longevity of the experience per level, which varies. For example, I played a level for a good 30 minutes trying to take down a boss. Getting killed in the game, especially when you panic, is so easy. Sometimes you will have to take a methodically slow approach to the game and that equals out to what can be drawn out levels. I’m certainly not one to complain about long levels, but the amount of caution it takes sometimes to complete a level can be a bit tiring. Of course, this is VR, so anything beyond 15 minute spurts can be exhausting to the senses. I do appreciate the fact that there are a good amount of levels, but if you’re a cautious gamer then this could be a large amount of work for you.
Overall, Sairento VR is a fun experience and one that is far more complete than most VR gaming experiences out there. With it you get a good story, fantastic gameplay mechanic design and a good set of multi-tiered levels to use those mechanics in. This is more than just a gimmicky, short experience, which most VR games slip under these days, as it is a bright spot in a sea of VR shipwrecks.
