During Gamescom 2018 I got to try out Nostos in VR. Virtual Reality has always fascinated me, and my experience on beforehand have all been pleasurable, although mostly with small indie games – so how did a relatively big game take advantage of this rather new technology? Unfortunately the whole showing got of on a bad foot, with one of my teammates immediately having issues with his HTC Vive, when it stopped working… However, with several techies in place, this was soon fixed, and we could give it another go!
Once in the game for real, I was struck by how good it looked, especially since it’s still in pre-alpha. It ran smoothly, and the draw distance was surprisingly high. Adding the well working controllers, the whole game seemed almost perfect. At least until I got lost… I didn’t know how to get back to camp (and all of my equipment). This is where the game starts showing that it’s not finished. The map didn’t work at all, as in; nothing happened when I tried to open it from the menu.
This made the rest of my time with the game a bit pointless, as I had no idea where to go, and had no axe to chop down trees in order to build more equipment. So, what did I do? Of course, I started running around like a maniac trying to bring as much attention to myself from the wildlife as possible. Although much fun, it wasn’t very clever. Having an angry deer (I think it was a deer, but I don’t know animals) running after you is not a good experience, and soon I found myself stuck on a cliff with only one option – jumping into the river. Unfortunately, this caused my screen to go all black, and I was forced to stop the gaming session.
As you probably have understood from this article, the game is far from finished. But there’s one thing they’ve already been able to make the game; fun! I didn’t mind having screwed up what I was supposed to do, because just running around seeing the world was such a blast! The game needs more polish indeed, and it needs more buildable objects. And I wouldn’t mind a better tutorial, I must admit. All in all I am very intrigued by Nostos VR, and have already started saving up to my own VR headset! The future is now, and I want to take a part in it!
