A full review of the explosive PSVR exclusive Fracked from nDreams.
The PSVR exclusive Fracked drops you into the role of reluctant hero in the middle of an adventure ripped straight out of the pages of a comic book crossed with the best bits from every 80s action movie you’ve ever seen.
Big thanks to the developer, nDreams, for providing me with a review key for the game, but as ever all opinions here are my own.
Without wasting any time you start off high up in the mountains not quite knowing who you are or what you’re doing there. There’s no lengthy introduction explaining everything, instead you gradually piece the story together along the way through various conversations and discoveries, with some things left for you to fill in the blanks yourself. Without wanting to ruin anything, the basic situation is that something strange is going on around a fracking plant in the mountains, hence the game’s title, and as such this is the setting for the majority of the game which plays out across a variety of indoor and outdoor levels.
These levels consist of a mixture of shooting, skiing and climbing all presented from a first-person perspective.
The skiing takes some getting used to, as you steer by tilting your head, but once you get the hang of it this is quite a good system as it allows you to glance left and right without unintentionally changing your direction of travel. This becomes useful in the later levels where you’ll be shooting bad guys at the same time as skiing. Initially the skiing starts off slow but soon picks up the pace and gives you a great sensation of speed as you weave in and out of the trees and jump off ledges. The levels where you’re shooting and skiing feel a little like the driving sections from London Heist or Blood & Truth, with enemies appearing from all sides, except here you’re also in control of the movement instead of just being a passenger, so it becomes a full-on assault of the senses.
The on-foot sections involve some light exploration and a lot of shooting. Luckily the gunplay feels fantastic with a great cover system and manual reloading process. You start off with a pistol with unlimited ammo and eventually go on to pick up a machine gun, with limited ammo that needs refilling, and a variety of special weapons which are one-time use only, such as a grenade launcher. Slightly frustratingly you can’t holster the special weapons, which means you have to drop them if you want to do anything else. The reloading is simplified but interactive enough to feel good, no need to fumble around for a clip, instead the clip appears below your gun meaning you just need to push it in and slide the chamber to complete the process. The cover system works by allowing you to grab walls, railings and boxes with your free hand and pull yourself down into cover, then using the same hand to peek around or over whatever you’re hiding behind. It works really well and allows for some great, intense firefights whilst also making you feel in control at all times.
The climbing sections dotted throughout the game work as you might expect, using both hands to grip on to highlighted ledges and moving hand over hand to propel yourself along. I should note that in some games that hand over hand motion can cause tracking issues with the Move controllers when they’re obscured from the camera, but in this case the hand tracking worked flawlessly and I never had any issues. In fact I never noticed any tracking issues throughout the whole game, maybe something to do with the comprehensive calibration process when you first load the game.
The game provides a selection of comfort options including optional click-turning and vignettes, but I’d still suggest it would help to have your VR legs to some degree due to the sheer amount of movements going on, particularly during the skiing sections.
Levels are fairly linear, although with a few branching paths in some places, particularly during the skiing. Much like watching those 80s action films, don’t expect to have your brain taxed too much, as there are sadly no real puzzles to speak of. There’s some lever pulling and button pressing to be done, but the game signposts where you have to go and what you have to do, quite literally in some cases. It’s worth doing a bit of exploration though as in each level there’s a hidden coin to be found, which I suspect leads to a trophy if you find them all.
There’s a choice of difficulty levels, with Easy providing laser-sights on your weapons, Normal being the default mode, and Hard giving you just one life. On the normal difficulty the game has a decent checkpoint system which means you won’t have to start each level completely from scratch if you die, which is good news if you’ve just scraped through a particularly intense section. There’s no manual save option but you can restart from, or replay, any of the levels you’ve previously unlocked.
As you can see, the game looks fantastic, with a colourful comic book style to it. I played the game on a PS5 which benefits from improved resolution and framerate, as well as reduced loading times, but even on the base PS4 the game looks great. There’s perhaps a slight lack of variety in the surroundings and enemies, but that’s mostly a result of it all being set in the one location. On close inspection a few of the internal locations are a bit sparse and simplistic, and a lot of the environmental objects are non-interactive, but on the whole the graphical style works well. I also really appreciated the design of the in-game interface, or rather lack of it. Instead of a health bar, the screen slowly turns red as you take on damage, instead of an ammo counter you tilt your gun to the side for an xray view of how many bullets are remaining, and instead of an on-screen radar any obscured enemies are shown as shimmering outlines. This all helps add to the immersion factor which is so important in VR.
The game also sounds great, with a catchy, synth soundtrack again evoking the feeling of 80s action films and increasing in intensity at key moments. Sound design adds a lot to the atmosphere with a variety of metallic klings and klangs and creaking girders while scaling buildings, and the howl of one particular enemy as they charge towards you still raises the hair on my neck every time I hear it. The voice acting was also great from all involved, with the dialogue adding some background to the story along the way and plenty of comic relief.
In terms of controls, only the Move controllers are supported, but the controls are well thought out and easy to use. With the same controls essentially being mapped onto each hand, and the ability to swap your gun hand at will, it should work just as well whether you’re right or left handed. I think my only issue with the controls was that very occasionally when trying to reload a gun I would accidentally swap gun hand instead, which creates a bit of a panic when you’re right in the middle of a gunfight.
So, in summary, what did I think of Fracked? I think it’s safe to say that it won me over with its style and gameplay and I loved every minute of it. But that leads me to my main gripe and that is that it was all over slightly too soon. It’s not one of the shortest VR game by a long shot, but I’d say your first playthrough, allowing for a bit of exploration and a few retries, might take around 4-5 hours. Once you’re more familiar with the game, you could probably run through in about 3-4 hours. What is there though is really well made, a huge amount of fun to play and really does make you feel like an action hero. The skiing and on-foot gunfights are incredibly satisfying and as a result it’s still fun to go back and play them again even after you complete the main campaign. That said, the main campaign is all there is. As the core gameplay mechanics feel so great it seems a shame not to make more use of them and it would have been nice to see some additional modes like an endless wave shooter level played for high scores, or some timed slalom skiing. Even a New Game+ mode would have been good, where you could play through the game again with all the weapons in your holster. Perhaps these things could be added in a future update, similar to how we saw shooting ranges added to Blood & Truth, who knows?
Despite these shortcomings I still absolutely recommend Fracked and would go so far as to say it’s a must-own title for PSVR owners. At the very least it’s a must-play title, so if you’re still undecided there’s a demo you can download to give it a try. In my opinion it’s definitely worth the asking price of £20 and a Deluxe version including some weapon skins and digital artbook and soundtrack is available for £25. The game releases on 20th August but purchasing the Deluxe edition will give you early access to the game on 17th August, so make sure you get on those slopes and get Fracked!
