Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Jackal Assault VR Experience - Review

With the PSVR being so new, and with multiple non VR games coming out around the time of it's release, it's really no wonder that companies are trying to make use of this new hardware any way they can. VR is a new experience for a lot of people, the PSVR units are selling, and developers want to give people even more of a reason to buy their games. So when Call of Duty Infinite Warfare was announced to have a VR mode included, it wasn't really that much of a shock; however, what did come as a shock is the fact that they decided to release this "VR Experience" for free, and allow even non CoD: IW owners to download and play it. So with that being said, how is it? Well, you could go out and download it yourself right this moment, or you could continue reading to see if it's worth your time. Spoilers: it most likely... isn't...

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Jackal Assault VR Experience (wow that's a mouth full) is a free game that doesn't really even feel like a game -- it's more like a demo without a main game to go with it. In this game you play as a pilot inside the Jackal transforming space ship from Infinite Warfare, and you fly around within a small area in space shooting at enemies. That's it. While the game starts out cool with you in the cockpit, you quickly get launched into space, fly on a set path to get used to controls, and then fly around and shoot at targets as they pop up. The game tracks how many enemies you kill before your time runs out, but that's it. There's no real story here (besides bad guys are attacking), and it seems to only last around five minutes at most. Of course you can instantly hit replay and keep shooting, but it wont take long before it gets old. The only other thing you can really try to do is crash into the massive battleships floating around in space, but since there's no collisions in this you'll simply just slide off  of whatever it is you hit. Of course you could also spin your ship around in circles, and attempt to make yourself dizzy/see just how much you can handle in VR, but honestly that may not be a good idea. Since you are moving at faster speeds in this game, and it is possible to become motion sick, you may want to think twice before you start doing anything crazy.

Although Jackal Assault is free, there's really not much of a reason to download the large file. It may be something nice that you could show off to others just to give them an idea of what VR can do, but it's not something you'll keep playing. The game is shorter than most demos, without a full version to go along with it, so it doesn't even give you anything to look forward to. If anything it may sell you on other VR games similar to it (such as the PvP high speed action space shooter EVE Valkyrie), but it won't sell you on CoD IW if that's what you were hoping for.

Sorry to say, while it's fun the first or second time, Jackal Assault just isn't something worth keeping on your system. It's not as fun of a "ride" as other VR experiences out there, and it only leaves you wanting more. Check it out if you wish, but don't get your hopes up.