RIGS: MECHANIZED COMBAT LEAGUE
Ushers in a new age of virtual reality sport
Having just ejected from my exploding rig, again, I’m hanging in the air by my shoulders, held aloft by a drone and looking like an infant in a baby bouncer. I’m even wearing a onesie. The score is three all, and if I get back into the game now, I might just be able to help nudge my team to victory. The problem is that we’re playing in the Rio de Janeiro arena, and from up here the view of the city is so astonishing that I don’t want to come down. Sod winning, I’m going to hang tough and drink in the vista. My exasperated teammates can lay the blame at Guerrilla’s door – the studio shouldn’t have made this game so pretty. Every aspect of RIGS looks and feels like a glamorous sporting event, and you’re made to feel like a star player every step of the way, from the time you ascend from the pits up into the arena, your visor rumbling in step with the deafening roar of the crowds, to the moment you hurl yourself through a giant hoop and notch up another point for your team amid a cacophony of fireworks and excitable commentary.
RIGS offers up three 3-vs3 events: Team Takedown, Powerslam and Endzone. The first’s essentially a deathmatch where you notch up points by destroying opponents. Powerslam sees you attempt to get into Overdrive by collecting tokens or taking out others, then hurling yourself through the hoop. Endzone feels like mechanised rugby as both teams dash for a ball at the centre, then attempt to run it to a goal at the other end of the arena. There are an array of rigs to choose from, all with different abilities and playstyles, and even some light team management in the single-player campaign.
GETTIN’ RIGGY WIT IT
RIGS’s greatest achievement isn’t in its commitment to pageantry, or even that the game is colossal fun. No, the thing that most impresses is that, amid all the quickturning combat, my stomach doesn’t eject its contents in the opening minutes. Or even after an hour. That’s not to say RIGS is an easy ride in VR – it will test those sensitive to motion sickness, and even players with robust constitutions will want to take breaks. But Guerrilla has employed a smart array of techniques to make its robotic acrobatics palatable for longer than they have any right to be.
The total of all of these well-oiled parts is the first VR game I’ve tried that makes me want to play indefinitely. And, more than that, the first multiplayer team game in a while that might threaten my daily Rainbow Six Siege fix.
“EVERY ASPECT LOOKS AND FEELS LIKE A GLAMOROUS SPORTING EVENT.”