Moose Life
Index, PC, Rift, Vive
Within five minutes, our eyes are watering – and we’re not even playing in VR. Amid this cornea-battering spectacle of colour and light, you’ll find stampeding deer, vintage videogame references and a driving EDM soundtrack in perpetual competition with a wall of sound that ranges from crunchy explosions to baaing sheep. And, of course, a near-constant hail of tiny particles into which you peer, hoping to spot the deadly projectiles being fired back at you. It ripples with Big Yak Energy, then, but even by Llamasoft standards, Moose Life can seem overwhelming at times – at least until you acclimatise to its wilfully uneven rhythms.
You move your colourful ungulate across a flat plane, firing at waves of enemies while avoiding the projectiles they shoot back. The ones you miss will return once they’ve passed, sometimes in faster, deadlier form. You can flip up to the ceiling to escape clusters of bullets, or simply to blast the enemies that pop up there. And you can control the pacing of the action, slowing up when things are hectic ahead, and even backing up a little (though that’s rarely advisable, since as likely as not you’ll bump into a bullet or bomb you’ve just avoided).
Then again, you might need to put on the brakes to grab a pill or two, because these naturally make for a more pleasant trip. Among the spread shots and smart bombs, you’ll find one that gives you a giraffe security detail, another that clones you so you can shoot from floor and ceiling at once and, most enjoyable of all, the Hoof Stomp that creates a devastating shockwave when you land from a flip. All the while you’re waiting for the appearance of a purple-hued Amiga Boing Ball, which releases a cascade of tiny sheep. Herd them up and you’ll extend a period of invulnerability, your reticence to reach top speed abandoned as you slam the stick up to race forward, sliding left and right without fear to take out as many enemies as you can before the timer hits zero. Then it runs out, and you’re back to picking your way carefully through the stragglers, hopefully having held onto your flock for a score bonus at the level’s end.
There are some surprising difficulty spikes (well done if you make it past level 15 on your first attempt) and it’s harder to get the measure of than the more immediate Polybius, while lacking some of TxK’s refinement. But there’s still no one else making games quite like this, and whether you’ve got a headset or not, it’s a joy to be transported once again so completely to the Minter dimension.