Buy The Wizards: Enhanced Edition

Thus far, most VR games haven't really made use of hands. There are a few instances where you'll use motion controllers to pull back and fire a bow and arrow or grab and twist a lever or knob, but that's about it. Most games are content to have you hold imaginary guns or swords or have you punch things in the air. The Wizards: Enhanced Edition tries to go beyond those simple things, but its execution varies rather wildly in an otherwise standard adventure.

In The Wizards, you play the role of a nameless apprentice summoned by a great wizard for an important mission. You learn that a horde of monsters — including orcs, trolls and even a dragon — is converging to bring destruction to the land. While the wizard has fought these creatures throughout time, it is up to you to take on the mantle and fight instead. For the most part, the story is forgettable, and while the narrator tries to act snarky without being mean, the jokes don't hit so often. There's enough of a plausible framework to get the game going, though.

Like the story, the basic gameplay is rather standard. Throughout the campaign, you'll go from area to area, solving a few light puzzles before going into deluge of monster closets. Monsters vary in size and type, so while a few chuck fireballs and rocks at you, others are more inclined to rush you and bash you with their clubs or fists. As expected, boss fights are more complex affairs that require a multitude of spells.

With a solid game core, even though it's similar to most average adventure games, it falls on the VR to wow players, and there are plenty of things in The Wizards that other VR games should try to emulate. For starters, the game lets you play both sitting and standing, and this is more of a preference, as one method doesn't feel more advantageous over the other. Movement is also handled in a way that incorporates the two more popular systems of locomotion in VR titles. Using the Move button on your left hand, you can move forward while the other face buttons rotate you left or right in certain degrees. The options are available to put up blinders so you can focus on the space in front of you, but if you get nauseous that way, you can use the Move button on your right controller to aim at a spot and warp there instead. These forms of locomotion are on at all times, and for those who prefer teleportation, that just means dealing with a few seconds of discomfort to get to the desired location as opposed to aiming and warping multiple times to get it right.

Actual combat is the real hook, since you're doing much more than pointing at things and pulling a trigger. While you still have to reach out and move your arms to turn cranks, other actions draw you further into the illusion of being a wizard. Conjuring up a temporary energy shield, for example, requires you to make a fist with your fingers pointing down while swiping toward your body, so you have some protection for a few hits. Push your fists forward, and lightning bolts come from them. Make a fist with your right hand and flick it up to get a fireball, or make some circular motions to conjure energy missiles. There are only a handful of spells, and all of them can be upgraded to become more powerful, but these motions are the real selling point, since few games have attempted to take immersion this far.

As immersive and fanciful as these actions are, the system comes crashing down due to issues with accuracy. When you do a system calibration at the beginning of the game, you know there's a problem when the system doesn't know where your hands are if you aren't looking at them. Fireballs are a perfect example of what can go wrong, as the game needs to detect throwing force, but time and time again, it doesn't know how to register it. You can throw a fireball one way and see it fall lazily to the ground in front of you, while throwing another fireball the same way will see it sailing into the air.

Accuracy is also hampered by the aiming system, which requires you to look at your target, so the game knows where your attack should go. For your fireball attack, this still meant that some fireballs would behave erratically, but you would hit at a higher percentage. The bow and arrow remains finicky, especially when the system repositions your bow enough that it becomes erratic on-screen. The lock-on isn't particularly stable, so some fights consist of you flinging spells and hoping that luck takes over and you get more hits than misses.

The campaign clocks in at about six hours, which is quite lengthy for a VR title, but the efforts to lengthen one's time with it are hit-and-miss. You can replay the campaign levels with cards activated, which act as modifiers. You can have scenarios like enemies with more health points or restrict yourself to certain spells, which can come in handy because every stage has a competitive leaderboard. Arena mode has three different sub-modes, where you're either destroying crystals before they take over the area, participating in some rudimentary tower defense, or attacking waves of incoming enemies. It works for a few minutes, but there's not much in Arena mode to hold your interest unless you're showing off the game mechanics to friends without worrying about the story getting in the way.

From a presentation standpoint, the title is fine. The sound works well enough, though the music seems rather invisible; you'll barely hear it, let alone remember it. Graphically, the environments are good, but you've seen these types of medieval villages and caves before. The enemies also look familiar, but at least they animate well when attacking, even if they sometimes get so close that you can phase into them. Where it falls apart is during their stilted death animations. Even if there's only one character on-screen, their clunky animation is befuddling to see.

If you dismiss the more apparent flaws, then you'll find The Wizards: Enhanced Edition to be an average adventure title. The quest itself plays out fine and enemies are fun to defeat, even if they don't pose too much trouble. However, the accuracy issues are simply too great that they transform what could be a game-changing VR wizard experience into an exercise in flailing limbs. It isn't a terrible game, but don't expect something top-tier in the VR space.

Score: 6.0/10