Gaming baddies don’t come much more unhinged than Far Cry 3’s Vaas Montenegro, coming at you like Batman’s Joker if he’d got a tropical paradise suntan instead of applying factor 100 sunscreen in some dingy Gotham alleyway. It’s set to be a big year for Vaas – he’s definitely returning for Far Cry 6’s upcoming DLC packs – and may even feature in the campaign in some as-yet-uncertain way. And now he’s starring in the Far Cry franchise’s first foray into virtual reality.<br /><br />But there’s a catch – yes, Far Cry VR: Dive Into Insanity does see the Far Cry character exist in a VR space. And yet, it’s a Far Cry game in name alone.<br /><br />As the TechRadar team found out during a recent playthrough, however, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. <br /><br />Far Cry VR: Dive Into Insanity is a free-roaming VR experience that’s being hosted at Zero Latency virtual reality locations around the globe (52 in total, with 3 in the UK and 11 in the United States). Returning to Far Cry 3’s Rook Island, you (and a gang of up to seven pals) find yourself captured by the villainous Vaas, and must work together to blast your way out of the pirate’s clutches.<br /><br />Though you may be familiar with PC VR, the Oculus Quest or PlayStation VR, Zero Latency works a little bit differently. For starters, you’re out of your bedroom or living room, and out in a warehouse-sized play space, hosted by a game master that will help get the experience set up. Each player is given an OSVR HD2K headset to wear, attached to a gaming laptop housed in a backpack and networked up wirelessly with your fellow players. You’re then handed a pump-action gun peripheral (complete with motion trackers) and, after a short set up screen to confirm your height and name tag, thrust into the virtual reality world. <br /><br />From there you’re free to run around with relatively few restrictions – a really freeing experience for anyone sick of the confines of “room scale” play in a pokey flat or house. At Zero Latency you’ve got roughly the space of a tennis court to run around in, with the headset UI smartly warning when you’re approaching a real-world wall or another player. In terms of full motion and immersive movement, it’s about as good as VR gets.<br /><br />Far Cry VR: Dive Into Insanity itself is very straightforward however. The interlocking emergent systems of the Far Cry series are gone – there are no stealthy kills, no animal taming, no crafting and no open world. Dive Into Insanity is very much a points-based, on-rails shooter. There’s more in common here with arcade staples like Time Crisis or House of the Dead than the free-roaming we’ve come to expect from Far Cry.<br /><br />And yet in the context of a multiplayer shooter, that’s fine. Chasing the highest score is far more of a novelty when side-by-side physically (read: virtually) with your pals. Dive Into Insanity does a good job of recreating the visual feel of Far Cry’s third instalment – all lush tropical jungles, bandana-wearing pirates, rusty container sheds and exploding barrels. <br /><br />There’s even a hallucinogenic shootout in a mysterious cavern through which sea creatures float and pirates take potshots at you from the ceiling – a high point of the experience. Zero Latency VR’s weapon peripheral is responsive and accurate too (provided you’ve correctly entered your height, that is), letting you switch on the fly between a bullet-spewing, Rambo-aping machine gun and a more refined and accurate one-hit-kill crossbow. <br /><br />Where the six TechRadar players would have liked to have seen it be a little more ambitious however was in its environmental level design – for the most part, you’re funnelled from one arena-like shooting zone to another, with distant enemies to be picked off from afar, while you’re stood shooting from a cave ledge or moving cable car. It’d have been great to have been able to take the inherent three-dimensionality of virtual reality to have been able to have sprung some pincer-style surprise team attacks. <br /><br />Also, the final battle against Vaas and his cronies was a bit drawn out too, overly reliant on waves of enemies rather than the show stopping spectacle a VR game’s scale could be capable of.<br /><br />Prices vary from city to city, but a session on Far Cry VR: Dive Into Insanity starts at £19.95 / $40 / AU$49 per person at off-peak times. You can add roughly an extra ten pounds or bucks to that price for a peak time playthrough.<br /><br />Read more - https://www.techradar.com/news/far-cry-vr-is-a-fun-and-sweaty-dive-into-insanity-before-far-cry-6-but-its-not-really-a-far-cry-game<br /><br />Like TechRadar on Facebook: https://facebook.com/TechRadar <br />Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/techradar <br />Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techradar<br />Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/techradar
