The world of a moose should be a simple one. Just enjoy nature and enjoy life. But what if, as a moose, life was not as simple? What if instead of the life of the open air, eating all that food you could want that the world could provide, and one where it seems like it was just perfect, it turned out to be a trippy experience with shooting weapons and dealing with spaceships? Well, it would be a life to live. But does developer Llamasoft show us the trippy scene and make us want to keep playing? Let’s find out with Moose Life for the PlayStation VR.
Before we begin, keep in mind that Moose Life can be played in and out of VR, so it’s your choice how you want to play. But I will say, if you have PlayStation VR or any other VR headset, do yourself a favor and play it in VR. With that said, let’s continue.
Moose Life is a trippy, psychedelic trance shooter that is created in the style of a 1980s arcade game and offers you a one-way ticket to an exhilarating ride into the trance zone where you just may not want to escape from. Simply put, it’s a shooter where you, a rainbow voxel deer, are shooting forward at enemies as you try to move forward and backward in the most trippy way possible, but with a couple of other parts to the game. Yes, there are power-ups in the form of pills that will bounce around and have different effects, but you will want to also make sure that you try to rescue the tiny sheep from enemy spaceships. Yes, it is as much fun and wild as it looks and sounds.
So using the DualShock 4 controller, you will want to do one thing before you start if you are planning to play in Virtual Reality on the PlayStation VR. Hit the square button. If not, it’s not in VR. So make sure you do that from the start and enjoy the trippy zone of colors and gameplay.
There are a few different modes within the game; you have Normal and Pure. Normal Mode will use Llamasoft’s tried-and-true Restart Best mechanic to dip into any part of the game that you have unlocked at any time to put together and build upon your best possible score. In Pure Mode, play a single game from the beginning to see how well you can do. Then there is the “Free Ride” mode. This mode is for those who may not be so great at shooters or for those who enjoy just being in the zone and can have an unlimited romp through the levels. So really, you have a good amount of choices to select from. But like any shooter with leaderboards, your goal is to stay alive as long as possible, get the highest score possible, and climb those leaderboards as high as possible. Normally that may be easy for some, but here in the world of Moose Life, you have to think just a little bit, as you can switch between playing from the top of the screen or the bottom. So this is where things can and will get tricky for you, as the further you go, the more enemies you try to destroy. And just when you think you have this rhythm down and you got this in your trippy time here, and there, you see them…those wonderful, bouncing, moving pills of joy that will enhance your experience as you play. Just remember, if you miss that bill and try to go back to get it, the enemies that you thought would be gone are still there. And again, play in Virtual Reality to get the real experience.
I want to talk about the sound here for a moment. The music is just that electronic beat that brings the 80s arcade-style sound that listening to it alone would be a treat, but it’s when you combine the beat with the glorious popping colors from the power-ups, shooting, and the enemies all coming at you in Virtual Reality, that you get the complete psychedelic trance experience that should not be missed.
There was just one thing that I noticed and this is not bad by any means (it just messed with me). No, not the colors flying around me and coming at me, but sometimes the enemies matched other colors at times, which made it somewhat difficult to get to the next level and I lost a few lives that way. Dang, you trippy patterns of colors.
Moose Life gives us the trippiness of an 80s arcade style and puts it into a magic pill of psychedelics we needed and didn’t realize it until we took the double dosage of the pill that only Virtual Reality can give. It shows us that sometimes it’s not about having all loud noises and explosions of the distractions that our lives can provide at a time that’s full of so many distractions, but sometimes it’s more about the simple times when we can just escape and enjoy the colors of our dreams in our minds.
Moose Life is out now on PlayStation VR and Steam. A review code was provided.
To learn more about Llamasoft, please visit the site and follow them on Twitter.
In case you missed the trailer, please enjoy. Until next time, I have impressive leaderboards to try and climb.
