If there was a zombie apocalypse, what would you do to ensure you could survive to the fullest of your abilities? Would you be running away to go to some new place? Would you try to protect what is yours? Maybe your plan would be to get with other survivors to band together in hopes that you would not become one of them. It’s fun to think about what we would do if an emergency situation like that would ever come our way. But does developer Arcadia VR show us the crafting of surviving skills that could benefit us all? Let’s find out with REQUISITION VR for PCVR.
REQUISITION VR is an action survival shooter with insane crafting mechanics and the ability to make traps to fight hordes of zombies. Become a survivor of a zombie outbreak in a single or 4-player co-op mode to stay alive in the apocalyptic world all in Virtual Reality. So before going in and to the theme song of Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, there are some things you will want to know about. First, you can play standing or sitting. So play what makes you feel comfortable. Second, go through the tutorial. You may think that you already know how to survive, but go through it, learn all that you can, and don’t be afraid to go through it a second time. Third, make sure those controllers have enough power so they will not die. The one thing you don’t want is to become a meal for the undead because you forgot to check. Fourth, I am not going to spoil anything for anyone. And finally, just have fun. With all that said…let’s continue…
When you start the game, you do get the story of what is going on in a comic book-style sequence and learn how people became outcasts, killers, or marauders, but thinks to people getting together in small groups, you are able to find salvation in fortifying refuges. So once the overview is complete, you have some choices to make. Do you start with the Tutorial, play the Single Player, do you join in Multiplayer action, or go into Settings? I went with Settings as I want to make sure everything is how I would like from the Resolution Scale to having Blood on or off to even the audio and comfort settings. I mean you want everything to look, sound, and be as comfortable as possible, right?
After everything is said and done, it’s time to get into the Tutorial. And you have to give the developer credit for the #1 rule of “if you want zombies to stop hitting you, just kill them, duh”. Once the Tutorial starts, it gives you the basics such as reaching down to grab an item and then grabbing an item from the other side. In order to craft things together, when you press A or X, the different objects will have a blue sphere, but you need to adjust the position of the objects so that the blue spheres become green. This is a key thing to remember. Once you have the objects connected, you will need to grab with the non-crafting hand to grab the duct tape so you can make sure the objects are now held together. See, even in a zombie apocalypse, duct tape can fix anything.
You also have a backpack that can hold quite a few items that can easily be retried by pulling your hand over your shoulder so that any objects you find can be used to the fullest. And when I say anything, You want a rake combined with a wrench and also a saw, why not? If you want a leaf blower that can shoot flames, why not? It’s all up to you. Not only can you craft weapons, but traps as well which is always a fun thing to make as long as you have the parts to make so said desired traps. You also have a PDA on your wrist that is used to display important information, objectives, timers, and other important things such as health. So even though survival is key, if you don’t keep track of your health, you could be as good as dead with one hit from these zombies and you don’t want to have your last bit of breath gasping that you just got killed by a zombie in a Santa suit, do you? For testing purposes, it’s not fun…funny, but not fun. Of course, you don’t have to craft any weapons if you don’t want to and grab what might be the norm in swords and guns, but when you can craft the norm into the un-norm, then you have elevated yourself to the next level and even make the Zombieland crew proud.
Once the Tutorial is over, you may want to start up the Single Player mode to get a feel of what you have just learned. But before you head out, there is nothing like a little customization of what you will look like Nothing like having a rabbit head inside a shell of a T.V. to make you stand out and say to yourself “I shall be feared by all zombies”, but in reality, now I look more like a meal to them than before.
Staring out in Single Player, you can select different modes such as Horde and Story Mode, and select from the different maps or select randomly. Once I had my map picked, I started out on my faithful bus with a workbench in the back so I could begin crafting my weapon. With the tools in front of me, I decided to go with the sledgehammer, caulk can, and saw combo. Yes, I was truly on my way to being able to protect myself and attack these zombies. Using my new weapon as a two-handed staff-type weapon, I could easily just start the rotation of the arms the zombies became less of a threat. I mean, when you can cut off limbs, they can become less of a threat until they sneak up behind you and then you find a single object and just start bashing its head in and between the blunt force of the object with the zombie sounds, this could be an awesome Halloween mix.
After some time, I decided to check out the Multiplayer side of things. I will say, that I attempted quite a few times of going in Multiplayer, and at times, I found no one, but I finally found another player and we decided to have a snowball fight before starting up a game of Deathmatch. Yes, you can try and set traps and use your crafted weapons and traps against each other, and I will say, it’s quite fun. All was good until they threw something at me and you know what happens next, you start throwing something, players will run off and try to find bigger weapons into the mix.
Let’s talk about the graphics and sound. I really did enjoy the different atmospheres on each of the maps and modes. For example, in the Town map, just seeing the sky just have enough light before it was going to get dark, seeing how the light reflected different objects of the map to even the fog and having different things appear as you got closer just added to the eerieness of it all. When coming up against different zombies, it’s always fun to see the different textures of the models that are being used everything was very clear to make out and I didn’t notice any overshadowing that hampered the experience. With the sound, I really enjoyed the low background music as it didn’t overpower the objectives. Moving around, I started to laugh as to hearing this clinking sound and couldn’t figure out why until I realized I was still holding my staff-like weapon and it was going against metal. I honestly thought I put it in my backpack at one time after a zombie encounter. Even when the music would get more intense to even the flat line sound when you are about to die, it all sounded pretty good.
There are a few things that I would love to see added. First, more maps. Don’t get me wrong, the maps are fun, but we always want more. But the developer already has a plan on their roadmap to add more. Second, more ways to craft. Some objects require certain other objects to combine depending on what it is. I would love to combine anything with anything at any time. I was just having too much fun crafting here, so that is me just wanting more than the already 700 different items that can be combined and maybe it was zombies were attacking me and I was wanting to craft in a hurry. And third, more players playing. Having modes like Deathmatch and 4-player co-op in a game like this can be a blast when you have people to play with. With the game planning to release on PlayStation VR2, I do believe the players will be there and I honestly can’t wait to see what the developers add to this.
REQUISITION VR gives us the ability to craft and shows us how crazy our minds would try to work in crafting weapons in a zombie apocalypse. It doesn’t try to take itself too seriously but just allows you to have fun with it all. When the world throws everything it can at us isn’t nice to have a place where we can zone out the negativity and zone in on the fun?
REQUISITION VR is out now on Steam VR and also coming to PlayStation VR2. A review code was provided.
To learn more about Arcadia VR, please visit the site, follow them on Twitter, join their Discord, and subscribe to their YouTube channel.
Also, check out the REQUISITION VR interview.
In case you missed the trailer, please enjoy. Until next time, I am going to keep trying to find some survivors and see what else I can craft.
