nDreams, the developer behind one of my all-time favourite VR titles, Synapse, has announced a new shooter game called Vendetta Forever during this week’s VR Games Showcase.
If that wasn’t cause for celebration enough, nDreams also released a short, Quest-exclusive demo for the game that I played through for this week’s episode of VR Corner. In the video, you can see me play the Quest 3 version, but it will also be available on the Quest Pro, Quest 2 and the PS VR2 at some point in October.
So what is Vendetta Forever? Well the easiest way to describe it is a mash-up of Superhot and Pistol Whip, with some of the best aspects of both games cherry-picked and given a little twist to make them feel fresh and unique. The monochromatic-but-not-quite visuals are definitely more Pistol Whip-y, but the title screen is just full of those iconic Superhot reds, whites and blacks. Then there’s the main menu, which is almost a carbon copy of Pistol Whip’s, with mutator and level select options, alongside online leaderboards and a nice little shooting gallery area which is something Pistol Whip does lack.
In terms of gameplay, rather than being a rhythm-action game like Pistol Whip, Vendetta Forever leans more towards the Superhot method of giving you super short, fairly intense puzzle-like shootouts to blast your way through. What sets this game apart from the others though is it’s ‘LO-KILL-MOTION’ movement mechanic, which allows you to teleport to the location of the last enemy you killed by reaching out and grabbing the weapon that they drop on death.
It’s a movement scheme that takes a little bit of getting used to, especially as the incoming enemy fire is a lot faster and harder to dodge than that of Pistol Whip but, at the same time, once it clicks ‘juggling’ your way forwards by continually grabbing and throwing away your weapons does feel incredibly cool.
Vendetta Forever’s short burst level structure benefits the gameplay in the same way as Superhot’s, by which I mean that its missions have a lot of variety to them. One set piece that’s over in literally five seconds or less sees you sat at a card table in a cowboy saloon, where you’re tasked with taking out all of the players around you with one single revolver. Then there’s the intro level, set in a club, which can be finished off in 30 seconds or so where you have to kill, grab and teleport your way across a pumping dance floor. The final level of the demo is slightly longer though and, near the end, it gives you a nice big sniper rifle (complete with an actual working scope and none of that ‘screen slapped on your face’ nonsense, hooray!) and puts you up against a rocket firing attack helicopter.
Vendetta Forever’s demo, like its levels, is short but sweet and it feels like a perfect slice of what the full game will offer: super moreish, arcadey, time attack levels that will be great for short blasts and high-score chasing replays. Couple this with the game’s unique movement scheme that should be a good nausea-avoider for newcomers to VR, and what you’re left with is an experience that could easily rival that of the games it borrows from.