Crisis VRigade 2 is an intense arcade shooter that will give you buns of steel
S.Q.U.A.T. team.
I wish I'd called in the S.Q.U.A.T. team for this week's episode of Ian's VR Corner because it's not just my aim that Crisis VRigade 2 has been testing, it's also been working my butt muscles too!
This hard-as-nails arcade shooter is a close as you'll currently get to a proper Time Crisis style game in VR, but there's one big difference - there's no cover button. That means you're going to need to do quite a lot of squatting in order to avoid being hit by one of the many bullets fired by the game's trigger-happy enemies.
It's fast, it's fun and all that squatting made me fall over and almost wreck my green-screen - as you'll be able to witness for yourself in the video below! Apologies in advance for the stutter on my face-cam by the way, my version of OBS seems to be having a Time Crisis of its own recently...
The Early Access build of Crisis VRigade 2 released on Steam earlier this week and just like its predecessor, here you take on the role of a SWAT trooper who has been sent in to deal with various terrorist situations.
With gameplay inspired by old-school light gun games, the core loop is a test of your aim, and your ability to remember enemy spawn patterns. It's incredibly hard at first, but once you've memorised a few waves and gotten to grips with the less than reliable accuracy of your pistol, you'll start to get into the flow of the combat and that's when things become really fun.
As I mentioned above, you will need to do some pretty extreme physical manoeuvres in order to be able to hide behind cover in this game. Sometimes it's as easy as stepping behind a wall, but a lot of areas require you to do multiple squats in order to hide behind and pop out of waist high pieces of cover. If you don't do that, your game will be over in seconds as it's almost impossible to avoid taking a bullet to the face if you stand completely still.
This means Crisis VRigade 2 is a strictly standing experience only and it's one that requires a fair amount of room too play comfortably too - especially if you don't want to punch a wall while going for a headshot.
I had a good time playing Crisis VRigade 2 on my Oculus Rift via Steam VR, but in all honesty the size of my VR Corner combined with the wired headset definitely took some enjoyment out of the proceedings. These restrictions on movement made an already challenging game much harder to play so I'd urge caution if you're thinking of picking it up but don't have a nice, sizeable play area.
That said, I think an Oculus Quest version of this game would be an absolute classic and a must-buy for the platform, so here's hoping that the team at Sumalab are able to make that happen at some point in the future.
If you enjoyed this episode of Ian's VR Corner, you can catch up with my previous adventures over on YouTube in our VR playlist, where I've covered Valheim VR's motion controls mod, Doom 3 VR Edition and everything we know about PSVR 2 so far. You can also read our list of the best VR games.
