Ven VR Adventure is a Third Person platformer in the style of Classic Playstion platformers most like Crash Bandicoot or Ratchet & Clank. you play as two characters 'Ven' a little fox man on a mission to save his people from an Evil alien named I think Brian Nelson, and from the first person perspective you play I believe a nameless Robot tasked with helping Ven on his adventure.
Along the way you collect coins and rescue his little ones from his planet.
In total Ven VR Adventure took me just under 4 hours to complete including collecting all the Babies.
I played this on an HP Reverb G2 with the Following PC
Intel I7 7700K
GTX 1080Ti
16GB ram
The Graphics in Ven are pretty good they are stylized and cartoony similar to PS2 games like Ratchet & Clank or Sly Cooper, it's not a graphical powerhouse but it really doesn't try to be either. The visual design is clear and uniform so it's pleasing to look at.
I think my only issues really are a lack of physics early on Ven stands on a pillow that deforms where he stands but this never seems to reappear afterwards, also a bit disappointing that if you are going to have your main hero be an animal I would think some fur physics would be nice to have.
The sound design is good there is one primary Voice actor, who plays the voice of the computer on the ship you travel across the planet with and there is also a minor voice actor who makes Ven's grunting and damage sounds (like Link)
The game also has some nice but not particularly outstanding music it maintains the feeling of a PS2 game possibly for better or worse.
The gameplay in Ven is really simple a platformer with really two attacks one on the ground and the other a ground pound performed with the same button but from the air. some enemies can be killed with that attack and nothing else and some enemies are immortal and must be avoided. then you must jump across and avoid various hazards.
In three boss stages, you (IE first person you) also gain an attack of throwing bombs and later swords.
The health system is really the most interesting element here lives are given every 100 coins you collect (more or less depending on difficulty) and these lives carry over through levels however everything is a one-hit kill to you, there are checkpoints but in effect, you need to get through without taking any hits which in theory should lead to a tough but rewarding system.
however, I played on normal and found I had way way too many lives as the platforming really was not challenging enough.
The game also has a good of level variety with almost every level being a different setting however there are only 12 levels and think there should have been closer to 24 even if that means repeating some of the settings.
The controls were fine but did not make the greatest use of VR motion controls only briefly using them for a few segments.
The potential issue Iis noticed If you are seseptible to motion sickness was the game's camera as you move Ven forward your player camera automatically tracks forward which might cause some people motion sickness.
for me however I found it more annoying that the camera was not always at the ideal angle for some jumps of heights of the levels, I suppose this might have been intentional it makes it more challenging but more often it was just annoying.
Value is where I really struggle with this game it costs $34 in my local currency for a fairly easy and simple sub-4-hour experience might be a tough pill to swallow, there is a bit of replay value in the time trials and collectibles if you are into that however from just the story this might not be enough.
Ven VR Adventure is a good first game from Monologic Games that perhaps leans to much into its PS2 influence instead of trying to step into riskier VR gameplay, with an okay story told over a fairly short playtime, I enjoyed my time with the game overall I just wish there was more of it.
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Ven VR Adventure
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