➤ Apocalypse in VR 🎮

There is no doubt that virtual reality viewers are not exactly the best surprise of this 2016 now running out. Oculus Rift with attached Touch, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR are on the market who have been on the market for longer, who are less but the result is always the same for everyone: sales strongly below expectations, a hype that ran out early and a videogame offer reduced to a minimum and rather questionable in terms of quality. It was quite complex for all these reasons, but not only, to be able to give due coverage to the phenomenon here on Resources4Gaming.com given that after the initial drunkenness, fewer and fewer readers have shown interest in the video games available for these devices.

However, we know that there are still many who have made the big purchase and you have often pointed it out to us in the comments and for this reason we have decided to turn a spotlight on Arizona Sunshine, the debut title of the guys from Jaywalkers Interactive who do not only he managed to quickly demolish our skepticism but he even entertained us with a handful of hours of good fun. Despite the usual delays we have to undergo every time we want to dedicate ourselves to some test session with HTC Vive. Let's start immediately by saying that the video game produced by Vertigo Games is a shooter with a first person view that more classic you die: we find ourselves catapulted into a traditional zombie invasion in the middle of a particularly stereotyped scenario of the American Southwest halfway between the prairies. of Texas and the abandoned canyons of Colorado. The single player campaign, which can also be played in cooperatives with an online friend armed with everything you need, is divided into nine fairly linear levels but which allow a minimum of variety in the access points to the clashes. There is also a horde mode, also this one can be faced in multiplayer for up to four participants. Basically, however, the action is always the usual one that can be expected from the genre: we take a few steps waiting to face some group of zombies hungry for flesh and blood, we listen to the sarcastic and irreverent jokes of the protagonist (who does so much Duke Nukem) and we prepare for the next battle. All this by solving some microscopic enigma that involves finding keys and cranks and pressing buttons to access areas of the level otherwise forbidden so as to prepare us for loading the next map.

Arizona Sunshine is a very fun shooter for Oculus and HTC. Yes, we repeat: it's fun!

Stop?

Told in this way this Arizona Sunshine would seem to be yet another VR experience of a genre that already thrives on a constant sense of déjà vu. Instead we must admit that from the first minutes in which you wear Vive and face the bright and colorful world of the game, the fun is tangible and the identification catapults us in a moment in a well-calibrated and extremely satisfying gameplay. First of all, it is the excellent recognition of hands and body that amazes, as per the tradition of the Valve device. In fact, the developer recommends facing the title standing up to manage your presence in the virtual space in the best possible way, especially in terms of coverage and interactions with the surrounding environment.

It is in fact possible to open and close doors and luggage racks of dozens of cars, drawers, filing cabinets, desks, doors and activate electronic devices and buttons of various kinds. All this by leaning and lowering us in an extremely realistic way. And then there is the paraphernalia. In the game we will have access to about twenty different weapons including pistols, shotguns, submachine guns and grenades and we will be able to equip two at a time relegating to our combat belt the positioning of discarded weapons (two more at most) and the storage of ammunition. Arizona Sunshine offers, among other things, an excellent fire mouth management system. First of all, starting from the normal difficulty level to go up we will not have any type of pointer and we will be forced to use the sights physically present on the weapons to center the heads and limbs of the attacking zombies. Secondly we will have to manually act on the ejection of the magazine and on the insertion of the new one by working with the circular touch of the Vive 3D controllers and then approaching the waist just as we will have to physically detach the fuze from the bombs before launching them by performing complex pressures of the various keys of the two input systems. Perhaps this last element is the first criticism that we feel to move to Arizona Sunshine: thanks to the movement that takes place through teleportation to minimize the sense of nausea connected to the movement of the body, the keys to press on the two controllers are many, too many during the most heated fights. Movement, ejection of the magazine, fire, grenade, each element requires a button or some interaction with the two peripherals of Valve and it is evident that the latter are not pads and the offer of the keys, as well as being narrow, is also often uncomfortable . Probably with the Oculus Rift Touch, things are better but at the moment we cannot go into details having not tried them yet. Once you get the hang of it, however, it will be quite immediate to slip into the apocalypse by properly managing the interactions with the game world and above all performing sniper shots while perhaps using the door of a car to cover yourself, or taking advantage of the windows to hit from the zombies nestled in a house. Everything happens spontaneously and from this point of view the VR and above all the controllers perform their task perfectly allowing the player to aim with great precision and with a particularly cinematic style and to really feel in the middle of the action.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Processor: Intel i7 6700K or equivalent
Video card: NVIDIA GTX 980 or equivalent AMD
Memory: 16 GB of RAM
Operating system: Windows 10

Minimum requirements

Processor: Intel i5-4590 or equivalent
Video card: NVIDIA GTX 970 or equivalent AMD
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Operating system: Windows 7 64-bit
Disk space: 12 GB
Oculus Rift with Touch or HTC Vive are required

Recommended Requirements

Processore: Intel Core i5 4690k a 4.0 GHz
Memory: 16 GB of RAM
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit

Hit and run experiences

From a technical point of view, Arizona Sunshine tries to do the homework and is clearly emasculated by the usual problems inherent in virtual reality. The title offers a barely sufficient visual horizon and the scenarios, although quite varied, very colorful and explorable, are all excessively linear, lacking in detail and have the usual excessive aliasing. More generally, the rooms are all rather basic and the interiors are negative for their poor furnishings.

On the contrary, the zombie models are all of excellent workmanship and even if they do not shine for variety and styles of behavior, they have a really very credible ragdoll and physics. Hitting them in the limbs, on the chest or in the head leads to important consequences in their ability to move and attack and will very often have to manage their killing with tactics, perhaps incapacitating a zombie near a door to prevent other monsters from entering quickly. in the house in which we are sheltered. We completely leave out the audio sector, practically absent if we exclude the standard sound effects and the protagonist's dick speech, to mention the only other limit of Arizona Sunshine: its duration. It will hardly take you more than three hours to completely complete the main campaign even at the normal difficulty level and maybe you will be left wanting to redo a couple of scenarios, the funniest ones, with a greater degree of challenge. To the total calculation you can add the horde mode which, however, is the most standardized one can imagine and, unless you have a couple of friends equipped with VR and possessed for this title, you will hardly face it more than a couple of times.

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam Price 39,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

8.5

Readers (5)

7.7

Your vote

Arizona Sunshine is perhaps the first VR peripheral title that really got us entertained from start to finish. Of course, it is trivial, it has a barely sufficient technical sector and it costs really too much compared to its longevity, but its gameplay works very well: it is engaging, precise in the controls and particularly satisfying when you start shooting and interact with the surrounding environment to cover up. If you, like many others, find yourself with Oculus or Vive already about to fill up with dust, this game might make you want to get back to wearing your favorite helmet.