Fracked is a bite-sized chunk of VR perfection.
A fraction of the action.
Fracked has everything I've ever wanted from a VR game.
It's action-packed to the point where it's incredibly easy to get fully immersed by the game world and its breath-taking set pieces. It perfectly utilises the PSVR's motion controls in a way that makes every little interaction feel incredibly cool, and it trusts you as a player enough to give you the freedom to choose how you fight your own battles.
By all accounts this should be my VR game of the year, which is why I think I took it so badly when I found out that Fracked's run-time is a little under 3 hours. Why would you tease us like this nDreams?!
This is the type of game the PSVR has been crying out for for ages and to have it arrive in such a bitesized form is rather disappointing to say the least. It's like going to the cinema to see a blockbuster movie, only to be shown a trailer of that movie instead. But, when one of your main criticisms of a game is that you had so much fun you didn't want it to end, can that really be called criticism?
You can watch me fall in love with Fracked and then have my heart broken by its brevity in the special live edition of Ian's VR Corner below. In it, I play through the first two hours of the game, which amounts to 6 out of the games' 8 total missions.
Fracked is easily one of the most enjoyable PSVR games I've played since The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. It doesn't offer you quite as much freedom and immersion as that game, seeing as it's a linear shooter, but the combat here is fine-tuned to perfection and it makes every shootout feel thrilling.
From the way you can hold onto the scenery to push and pull yourself in and out of cover, to the simplified reload mechanics that favours arcadey action over fiddly simulation, this is a game that will instantly make you feel like a bad-ass.
It's like Blood and Truth let off the leash. In that game you were very much on rails, only going where it wanted you to, but in Fracked you're encouraged to run around the small battle arenas and experiment with your approach. You can jump on zip lines and fire as you slide down. You can use the games multi-floored arenas to confuse and flank enemies and you can turn them into fleshy-fireworks with a well timed red barrel explosion. Pretty much every little action you perform in this game is "whoop!" worthy.
There are a few bugs here and there though, which can be a bit jarring. For me they mainly occurred after dying and respawning and they often involved assests or enemies not loading or despawning properly. You can see a few examples in the video above, including quite a bad one that needed a full mission restart to fix, but in general, it wasn't enough to ruin my fun.
Even with its brief run time, at a £20 price point, Fracked is a must-buy for the PSVR and I couldn't recommend it highly enough. Be warned though, even with the many comfort options, it may be a little too intense for newcomers and you will need two Move controllers to be able to play it as no other control schemes are offered.
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.
