Virtual Virtual Reality 2 (VVR2): First Impressions

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 (VVR2) is out! What kind of game is it?

Created by Tender Claws , VVR is a virtual reality game that's in high demand abroad and loved by many players. Its sequel, Virtual Virtual Reality 2 (VVR2), launched on February 10, and we're here with our first impressions and gameplay of the game.

VVR2, a new VR game, wants us to escape the metaverse and find our real world!

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 First Impressions

Virtual Virtual Reality 2

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 (VVR2) is the sequel to the beloved Virtual Virtual Reality, a game originally born for the Daydream platform. In this VR game, you put on a virtual reality headset that teleports you to other worlds. That's where the clever idea behind the game's name comes from, because you're in a virtual reality within a virtual reality. -friends-

VVR was a funny game whose goal was to mock the fear many people have about our future by imagining an absurd future where we're assistants to AI entities. If you have never played it, here's the official description so you understand what we're talking about:

"Virtual Virtual Reality (VVR) is a narrative-driven comedy-adventure game about VR and AI (artificial intelligence) with more than 50 unique virtual reality environments to explore. Players find themselves in a near future where artificial intelligence has transformed society and people are searching for a purpose. Players are greeted by Activitude, a virtual service run by an AI manager named "Chaz," where humans must help AI clients with increasingly bizarre tasks. Using dozens of virtual VR headsets to switch between different virtual realities, players dig deeper into the inner workings of Activitude as the story progresses, and ultimately must break free and reclaim their humanity before it's too late. The fun game has gained widespread acclaim for its unique humor and perceptive examination of how VR and AI are shaping our society."

Since all the current buzz (and also all the current fears) are aimed at the metaverse genre, the great team at Tender Claws imagined a VVR sequel built on a metaverse base where both AI and humans could coexist. Tender Claws explains it like this:

"Virtual Virtual Reality 2 (VVR2) is Tender Claws' latest project and the eagerly awaited sequel to the 2017 VR game Virtual Virtual Reality (VVR). VVR2 takes place a few years after Activitude's reset at the end of VVR, and introduces players to the newest virtual network: Scottsdale, a peaceful retirement metaverse where both humans and AI upload their consciousness for a digital afterlife. But suddenly Scottsdale's VC funding is pulled, and the servers begin shutting down one by one. With no ability to log off, players have no choice but to survive digital destruction — in the end they must escape the metaverse and find a new home."

As you can see, the story looks fun and absurd here too. But it starts from a rather interesting theme. This is what happens when you build everything on a metaverse-based platform and that platform disappears. Everything disappears: digital identities, possessions, NPCs. If the metaverse is going to be an important part of our lives in the future, this kind of destruction feels like a disaster: something very relevant to us, something we live inside of, plus some characters we have grown deeply attached to… all of it would be gone if everything we have built suddenly vanished.

The idea for the game was born from examining exactly this kind of moment:

"Development began two years ago when we started exploring the life and death of a metaverse. Sources of inspiration include events like the shutdown of EA-Land (formerly known as The Sims Online) and the real sense of loss and heartbreak felt among its user community. VVR2 asks: How can our abandoned avatars live through the apocalypse? […] This iteration focuses more on the tech hype cycle and the metaverse — what happens when VCs get tired of the metaverse and move on to "the next big thing"?"

We tracked down someone abroad who played the game and shared their impressions of VVR2. We have shared their views with you exactly as they told them, in the first person!

VVR2 is built on the same VVR foundation, bringing together fun, irony, adventure and a deep plot. It generated a lot of excitement when it was announced, because VVR had a large fanbase and people were eager to play a sequel. VVR2 officially launched on February 10, and I'll walk you through my thoughts on the game.

[WARNING: My review will contain mild spoilers. I won't ruin the plot (not at all), but I can reveal some details about the game to you.]

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 (VVR2) "First Impressions"

This review is going to be quite unusual for me, which is why I'm starting with this intro instead of the game's description. The reason is… I didn't enjoy the game much, probably because it wasn't very easy for me. Out of more than 10 hours of gameplay, I played roughly 2 hours and then decided that was enough. I decided to give it one more try and spent another half hour jumping between various chapters to see more of the game, and then I firmly decided to stop playing.

The interesting part is that I didn't like Virtual Virtual Reality 1 either. I remember playing it while reviewing the Mirage Solo, and I dropped it after 40 minutes because I found the game slow and frustrating. Everyone I talked to after that told me the game was a masterpiece and that the best part comes later, after that initial slow stretch.

I'm in the same boat here with VVR2: after 2 hours I found the game slow and frustrating. Given that the first title is considered a masterpiece under the same conditions, I can guess that this second title is also a masterpiece, but I just can't grasp it. Maybe it needs more time than I gave it to get used to the controls; maybe it's just not my sense of humor; maybe I'm someone who prefers pulling whatever's in front of me in virtual reality, rather than someone who enjoys repetitive tasks while a story unfolds or things like that.

So maybe read this "review" with the thought that I might not be the best person to review this kind of game. That's also why I chose to describe it as "first impressions" rather than a "review." Still, I decided to write this article because I think it can be valuable to offer a different perspective from other journalists... something that could be interesting for the VR community, and also for the people at Tender Claws. They know how to improve their games going forward.

With that out of the way, let's see what my thoughts on this game are.

Virtual Virtual Reality 2 (VVR2) Gameplay

VVR2 is an adventure game. Your goal is to wander around Scottsdale, solve some puzzles, kill the enemies that come your way, and uncover the story while continuing to rescue people from the metaverse that's about to be destroyed. The game is split into 20 chapters for a total runtime of over 10 hours.

You'll play most of the game inside Chad, a giant machine you operate with a set of controls and levers with your hands. This machine can move using its two large arms, jump, and also perform special operations. These arms can be equipped with special functions unlocked at various levels, letting you perform different actions with them. I don't want to spoil too much for you, but for example, at one point you can use your right arm to shoot at enemies. As I'll explain in the user experience section, moving and operating the machine was one of the things that frustrated me the most.

While inside the machine, you need to move around to reach various places that will reveal the story. Still, the movement won't be linear. First of all, the game is never entirely clear about where you need to go or what you need to do. You get hints like "we need to go to the wellness center," but you have no idea where that wellness center actually is, because there's no map. And the game generally doesn't make your life easier: you can find yourself in an open area and have to move the machine around just to see where the place you're looking for is; the app doesn't render objects that are too far from you for performance reasons, so you only see them appear once you're fairly close to them.

The game also has a lot of "platforming" moments: it's not just finding your destination, but also the path there and how you can follow it with your machine: sometimes there are disconnected platforms and, for example, you have to jump between them to continue. Or the platform you're standing on needs to clear before time runs out, so you have to activate super speed so you don't fall and die. Or you'll run into deadly obstacles you need to avoid by jumping or turning in another direction. Combine this with the "find your way" requirement described above, and you often end up not knowing exactly what path you're supposed to follow, because even if I found an obstacle while heading in one direction, I wasn't sure whether it was something I needed to get past or whether it was there to stop me from following the wrong direction. I imagine you'd love all of this if you're into exploration. Personally I found it frustrating because I never quite knew what exactly I was supposed to do.

Sometimes you also need to solve some small puzzles to get out of a specific location. You usually have Gavin, another character who stays with you and gives you hints on how you can win the situation. The game never explains 100% of what you need to do: the player has to figure out on their own what path to follow, how certain things work, and how to clear the room they're in. It's entirely a matter of exploration and experimentation. While I do like mysteries, I get less excited when everything is always a bit vague, because that makes the game slower and less fun.

You'll also find some enemies along your way: this isn't an action game, so there won't be too many, but there aren't too few either. Enemies need to be shot, or they'll kill you. Most of the enemies are quite small and fast, quite different from the big slow machine you're in, but there are also some bosses. The weapons you have are fun to watch, but rather ineffective to use, so killing enemies is never an easy task, and I died many times, which was one of the reasons for my frustration.

You have a health bar that fills up over time. You die the moment you hit zero HP, either because you have been hit too many times by some enemies or because you have fallen. When you die, you respawn from the last checkpoint. There's no other way to save. Checkpoints in the game are fairly frequent, and most of the time when you respawn you barely have to redo anything (though there are exceptions).

While you're driving a machine most of the time, it's interesting to notice that you always exist as a separate entity. You are not the machine. And in fact, at the start of the game, you can walk around Scottsdale on your own two feet. And even once you get into the machine, you can always let go of the controls and start doing things inside its cockpit, which is as big as a small kitchen. For example, when you take certain attacks, fires break out inside the machine, and you have to use a fire extinguisher to put them out. There are also other characters who stay with you in there, and you can interact with them inside the mechanical armor.

The story is absurd and fun, and throughout the game you'll uncover what happened to Scottsdale and how you can save its residents. There's a lot of dialogue full of puns and jokes, and the developers claim they wrote more than 600 pages of script for the game! Either way, the humor is another area where this game just isn't to my taste: while I appreciate that the dialogue is always fun and absurd, I never actually laughed.

If you enjoy stories, a lot of the dialogue is great, but it also contributes to slowing down how you follow the game and keeps it from progressing.

Those are the views of one person who played the game. Looking at the game overall, it's not hard to say it's very detailed but also a tiring one. But the number of people who played VVR abroad and gave it incredibly positive feedback is also quite high. As with any game, everyone's tastes and opinions can be very different. That's why, before giving up on a game, you should try it yourself and experience it live.