System: Oculus Rift, Rift S
Price at Time Of Review: £22.99 ($30)
Comfort Rating: Yellow (Mild Movement)
Genre: Action Shooter
Input: Gamepad
Best Playing Position: Sitting, Standing
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: 15+
Description: From the makers of Conduit comes Damaged Core, the premiere first-person VR shooter built from the ground up for Oculus Rift. With a compelling 10+ hour campaign against the networked artificial intelligence known as the Core, you will be immersed in a war against robotic armies bent on destroying mankind to further their own evolution.
Review: To cut the story short of Damaged Core you are a program that has been tasked to help humans survive a war against robots. You don’t have arms, you don’t have legs, in fact, you don’t even have a head! You are just a program with one amazing tallent…the ability to hack and control other machines you can see. In the first mission, (after the tutorial) you are tasked with protecting humans as they try and escape in a ship. With wave after wave of evil robots trying to shoot them down you have to take control of a robot that can shoot. Simple right? Well…no. The moment you take control of a robot it will immediately shut down and will prevent you from walking anywhere meaning you can only shoot what you can see. Then you will also get shot yourself the moment the other robots notice the one you have hacked shooting at other robots, they will then start shooting at you.
I know that all that seems pretty confusing, but once you understand what to do in this game you will want to do it over and over again, hack jumping from robot to robot using tactics and even strategic retreats just to get control of a bigger and better robot. This is a game of fast shooting, fast action and above all fast thinking. It’s like a weird game of hack chess where you will often find yourself sacrificing a smaller robot to get control of a bigger one. While it all sounds confusing it is nothing short of pure genius.
I just don’t know where to start with what I love about this game. Its speed, its gameplay, its graphics & sound, they all seem to come together to make one of the most amazing VR experiences I have played so far. Plus they are not asking for a full price game making it great value for money. If only there was a multiplayer option, this game would have been perfect. But even without it, it’s pretty close.
