As a huge fan of VR and Rick and Morty I was stoked to play this game, and after playing it I can, unsurprisingly, say it is in my opinion the new benchmark of what a great VR game is.
I was worried at first that my love for the show would skew my judgement of the actual game apart from the IP it's tied to, so in an attempt to come from a less biased perspective I had one of my friends play the game first, I didn't listen to the audio and I only checked into what he was doing and if he understood what he was supposed to do. I believe that a good VR game should be intuitive to the player, as complex controls can take away from the immersion of the experience. From what he told me and what I saw the game does a good job of keeping its actions simple, with out making it's puzzles or challenges feel condescending.
After playing it myself I feel like the the game doesn't overshadow the source material and vice versa, they work well together and the humor of the show's aloof nihilism really comes through in the game play. From the way you respawn after deaths to the ultimate goal of the game, and thus your life as the character, you understand how the writers care a lot about not caring about anything.
Another positive I'll give the game is having it's more gratuitous references be more than just references. For example one of the more creatives mechanics is the Youseeks. In the game you can only exist in your playspace which can be in one of three places of the main setting, Rick's garage. This leaves a lot of space impossible to enter and items out of the reach of your creepy floating hands. The game works around this by giving you this Pokeball like device that you can toss anywhere and spawn a Meeseeks that is, like the player, just two floating hands and a head, with a vr headset fused to its face called a Youseeks. It mirrors your movements allowing you to access things that would otherwise be out of your reach.
This game is joint venture between creators of Job Simulator, Owlchemy Labs, and Just Roilands game studio, Squanchtendo, who made the VR game Accounting. Both of those games are basically the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of VR game play. Job Simulator is a full sandbox game with environments densely packed with different objects that all seem to have some special action or property, such as staplers that you can shoot staples from like an underwhelming pistol, or a two liter of soda you can shake up and let rocket around the room. But the game is void of any form of narrative, something I dislike despite understanding that it was probably done to drive home the mundane feeling one gets from a nine to five job.
Where Accounting is a game that tells a really thought provoking, if not messed up, story that you are at the center of. While the story of the game is full the environments feel empty, mostly to not confuse or distract the player from progressing through the game. It's meant to be a 20-30 minute experience depending on how much you love hearing Justin Roiland squawk nonsense at you, something I am a huge fan of.
I feel that Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality strikes a happy medium giving you a good story that showcases the very interactive environment and I would love to see more games follow in this one's footsteps. Build an environment with a toy-box worth of things to play with and then tie in an interesting story that encourages you to have fun with them. The new evolution of the Point and Click adventure game the ironically has no pointing or clicking. I hope to see more from these two studios both by themselves and together, maybe DLC for this game or perhaps a sequel, though I feel these two studios could probably knock an entirely new IP out of the park.
My one complaint is that the story is a bit short, only about two to three hours long, and kind of leaves me wanting more when there is no indication of more coming. But where it lacks in story I feel like it more than makes up in environment and things to do, even if those things are pointless, just like our sad confusing lives.
All in all great game, a good buy even if you don't know about Rick and Morty.
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
