System: Valve Index, HTC Vive & Oculus Rift
Price at Time Of Review: Free
Comfort Rating: Green (No Movement)
Genre: Interactive Experience
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
Description: Gary the Gull is a VR Interactive Animated Short Film where you are part of the story! You’re about to enjoy a tasty lunch on a beach when a seagull shows up and starts talking to you. And you can talk back! Answer Gary’s questions by nodding or shaking your head, talking (using voice recognition), or by doing nothing at all. Your decisions affect how the story plays out, giving you different experiences of the same narrative when you try it again. Interact with the environment by using motion controllers to draw in the sand, pick up your drink, or toss your flip-flops around on the beach. Gary the Gull is directed by Mark Walsh of Motional, an 18-year Pixar writer-director and animation supervisor, including the director of the Pixar short film Partysaurus Rex. It was built in partnership with the ex-Pixar ex-Bungie team at Limitles.
Review: We have seen several VR short films on the Oculus store before, but none quite like this one. This one is fully interacting. You can even use the touch controllers with it. The story goes that you are having a relaxing day on the beach with a nice cooler full of drinks and sandwiches. But the relaxing scene is soon broken by Gary the Gull. He is a talking Seagull that just wants to say hello (and steal all your food).
Obviously you are not just gonna let him take it all, so he uses his mystical powers of persuasion to make you look elsewhere while he gobbles up a few. You might be nodding your head or shaking it and sometimes you will even be talking to him. This is a VR cartoon experience of the likes you have never seen, heard or played before. I have seen a few VR experiences that have made me smile, but if Gary the Gull doesn’t make you laugh out loud at least once, seek medical help immediately. It is just so well animated, so well voiced and scripted that it’s like interacting with a Pixar film! In fact, you would swear you would have seen Gary before in the Finding Nemo film. Definitely worth a download and I would pay good money for a 30-minute story mode of it.
