The ludicrous lopping and comedy chopping of goofy gladiatorial game Gorn proved to be a winning formula when the Early Access build lolloped its way onto PC VR platforms in 2017. The simple premise of the game – fight to the death against waves of scantily-clad, beefy bad-guys who totter around on tiny, unstable legs like new-born deer – meant that it was not only fun to play, but it was extremely amusing to watch too.
Since then, PSVR owners have been clamouring for a port so that they too could experience the mayhem and finally (after multiple delays) Gorn PSVR is due to release this coming Tuesday, 19th of May.
In this week’s episode of Ian’s VR Corner, you can watch me pummel my way through the first 30 minutes of the full PSVR version and it’s safe to say, it was a lot of fun.
So how does the PSVR port of Gorn handle? Well, as you’ll be able to see in the video above, this is a pretty accurate conversion of the game. I haven’t put a huge amount of time into the PC version, but in all honestly it doesn’t feel like anything has been left out. At least not in the first 30 minutes anyway.
During my preview of the game, I took part in quite a few battles and the virtual violence seems to be just as over-the-top and bloody as that of its PC counterpart. I’m sure there have been a fair few visual downgrades, but it’s nothing that I noticed as I was swinging a battle axe around my head like a Poundland Conan the Barbarian.
As with any VR game that involves dual-wielding melee weapons, motion controls are a necessity here and my twin Move controllers felt like they were more than up to the task. The game seemed to be accurately tracking every chop of my sword and every swing of my club and as such, the combat felt fair. Obviously, in keeping with the ridiculous visuals of the game, each brawl is designed to be a little bit wobbly and wonky (think those inflatable Sumo suit fairground attractions), but this just adds to to overall hilarity.
What did take a little getting used to though was the movement scheme. By pressing one of the Move buttons on the twin Move controllers, you have to grab and then pull or push yourself around the game world. It’s sluggish and unwieldy and it took my brain a while to adjust to it, especially when I found myself in the middle of a big scrum, but after about 15 minutes it had pretty much clicked.
I had a lot of laughs with this hands-on with the game, and while I didn’t get bored at the time, I do wonder how much more there is to the game, other than the cartoony violence to stop it from quickly getting repetitive. With a custom sandbox mode, 4 different arenas and a load of weapons to choose from, there’s definitely plenty to do here, but it feels more like a game to dip in and out of or whip out at parties, rather than something you’d play for extended periods.
Well, that and the fact that being a gladiator is rather exhausting – as you’ll be able to tell from all my puffing and panting during my let’s play!
If you enjoyed this episode of Ian’s VR Corner, you can catch up with my previous adventures over on YouTube in our VR playlist, where I’ve covered Asgard’s Wrath, Ghost Giant and Five Nights at Freddy’s VR. You can also read our list of best PSVR games.
