EVE: GUNJACK
A master of one shooty trade
We can all agree PlayStation VR is an amazing piece of kit… but it doesn’t half make you look like a berk. No-one may be able to hear you scream in space, but they sure as hell can see what an utter wally you look bobbing this way and that, a headset strapped to your cranium as you pretend to man an armoured turret on an intergalactic mining station.
This gallery space shooter shares the loosest of connections with the EVE mythos, and it lacks the frantic spectacle and VR dogfighting drama of Valkyrie. Gunjack may be light on scale, 1 then, but it absolutely nails the one thing it attempts: devastatingly onpoint turret blasting.
As you control mute gunner Eight, it’s impossible not to marvel at how accurate the game’s immaculate head-tracking is. Aiming with PS VR is an intuitive doddle, and because you move the reticule with the headset and fire your guns with DualShock 4,2 this is one reality-altering experience that can comfortably be enjoyed slumped back in your favourite chair.
Yet perversely, these precise controls are the stabbiest of double-edged swords. Annihilating enemy ships isn’t just a piece of cake, it’s an avalanche of French Fancies. I polish off Gunjack’s 20 short stages in under two hours, using but a solitary restart as I three-star almost every level.
That enemy craft never really evolve doesn’t help. Oh sure, later stages chuck formations of ships that must be downed in a specific order at you, but that’s about the only tactical curveball. If Gunjack’s combat had just been a little more thoughtful, this space blaster could have been a real VR delight.