Polybius (PSVR)

System: PSVR 1
Price at Time Of Review: £13.99
Comfort Rating: Yellow (Mild Movement)
Genre: Arcade
Input: DualShock Controller
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG

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Description: Polybius is the latest trance-shooter from the creators of Tempest 2000 and TxK, Llamasoft. Drawing on more than 30 years of game and music visualiser design experience, Polybius’ smooth-flowing, bossless gameplay transports the player to a tranced-out pleasure zone that they will never want to leave.

Immerse yourself fully in this hypervelocity neon trancespace with PSVR at a staggering 120 FPS, or play on your telly at up to 4K rez. Strive for hyperspeed as you bask in the aural glory of the game’s outstanding soundtrack featuring 25 original tracks from our excellent musicians. Enjoy every second of the ride through 50 trancetastic levels.

Review: Looking back on my life, I often find myself shuddering at the thought of haw much I shoved into Coin-op machines in the arcade. Spending hours on Pacman and Space Invaders and even getting the chance to play games like Polybius (not the real game, but clones of it Tempest etc). Yes, the 1980’s was the era of the arcade game and while Polybius wouldn’t be the first game on people’s minds, it was one of the good ones. Did you know, Polybius was in fact an urban legend! Yep, people believed it was part of a government-run psychology experiment testing intense psychoactive and addictive effects in the player. Men in Black this game isn’t, but it still an interesting conspiracy theory.

Anyway, move forward almost 40 years (crap I’m old) and I find myself once again playing Polybius only this time in VR! Each level sees you moving constantly forward and shooting various enemies. There really isn’t a whole lot to learn about the controls, just strafe left and right avoiding anything heading your way and shoot at anything that moves. Then, every now and again a combo hit on the enemy will make the screen look like a nuclear bomb of colours sending most people into a trance-like state (hhmmm…maybe that conspiracy theory wasn’t so crazy!)

I’m always amazed at how good low polygon games look in VR. Even the most basic looking of games can feel deeply immersive and eat hours of game time. With other games in this “trance shooter” genre, you can often get confused at times with so much going on (especially in Rez) so it was refreshing to play this game and always be aware of what was going on. Personally, I really enjoyed Polybius and it’s by no means at all a bad game, but it’s also not really a VR game, it’s just a normal game that happens to look better in VR. Having said that, if you love your retro shooters, definitely give this a go. But if you want to showcase your PSVR off, pick something else.