Fracking review – IGN

Fracked just wants you to have fun, so it throws a lot at you. You will take part in shootouts, climb ramshackle structures, solve puzzles and jump from platform to platform. Maybe you’ve seen all the individual parts before in other VR games, but that’s not a big deal. As I funneled from one action scene to another, I had little time to think about which game did what first.

The setting here is a mining operation run by an evil corporation. Your job is to kill all the workers (don’t worry, they’re purple interdimensional zombies) before taking on the manic CEO, a talkative guy with a dirty mouth and a southern accent. This is a good configuration, but it is not original. How many times have we stopped evil corporations from depleting a planet’s resources? However, the voice acting is excellent and the whole thing feels classy in a way that many PSVR games don’t.

At first, you find yourself skiing at the top of a snowy mountain. You barely have time to immerse yourself in the attractive, cell-shaded world before an explosion causes an avalanche that you must overcome. Every now and then rhythm-driven electronic music kicks in, which fits the world style very well. It’s an exciting start that is perfectly in line with the action hero exploits that lie ahead.

To play Fracked, you will need a pair of Move controllers. In the headphones, these become his hands, appearing in his vision as fleshy, floating gloves that he will put to good use: he uses them to take cover, shoot and reload weapons, climb ladders, turn handles, and operate levers.

Despite the lack of analog sticks on the Move controllers, you have complete freedom of movement. The controls work exceptionally well, all things considered, especially if you’re familiar with games like Skyrim VR that use a similar control scheme. Also, when you have to climb, reload your weapon, or use your hands in general, it all feels great to the touch. It didn’t take me long to master the controls and I was soon navigating the mining operation on the mountainside with ease.

The pace of the campaign is highly varied, with environmental puzzles and exciting climbing sections scattered between the action-packed shooting areas. In fact, I preferred the quieter sections to the shootouts, which can seem long and repetitive after a while. One reason is because the variety of enemies is lacking, with only a few different types of enemies to take on. You’ve got some basic soldiers with weapons that usually stay in place and shoot you, and then there’s the explosive variety that runs at you and detonates in a one-hit kill if they get close enough. Finally, you will come across heavy ones trampling and littering the ground with land mines. There are no bosses to speak of and no other enemies to make you reconsider your approach to combat.

Weapons feel satisfying to use, but unfortunately the most powerful ones like shotguns and grenade launchers are single use and disappear when you run out of ammo. So the only two weapons you can always access are a pistol and an Uzi-type automatic weapon that shoots lasers. These are useful, but boring. It would be nice to have more variety of weapons available during any firefight.

Combat is fine in small doses, but later, in the roughly three hour runtime, you’ll have to kill a lot of enemies before you can move on. I died quite a bit in these sections, often in ways that felt unfair. For example, kamikaze enemies usually make noise when approaching, but sometimes one appears behind me and explodes without warning.

Fortunately, there is a lot to do besides combat. At various points you will find yourself skiing, climbing, zip-lining between platforms, operating a crane, and much more. I’ve done most of those things in VR before, but never in the same game. Climbing is particularly fun. From the outside, he may look like a fool flailing around with his Move controllers, but with headphones he’s moving around collapsed structures like Nathan Drake. The puzzles are also well executed, not too difficult or easy.

However, as I got closer to the final encounter, the combat sections became more frequent, the map flooded with more and more waves of enemies, stalling the pace before it came to an end. But before that, I had a lot of fun.