Vertigo 2 PlayStation VR2 review

Vertigo 2 is a charming shooter which involves a massive variety of enemies. From the start I found that there were more enemies than many VR shooter games – which is a huge positive as it hooked me straight away with varied gameplay. The gameplay is unique and it clearly has a lot to offer in the secrets department while playing the story.

The humour is top notch in Vertigo 2. Jokes are sprinkled in and never failed to make me laugh. This is what gives the game part of its charm, as it shows that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The voice acting to deliver these lines make them all the more humorous and it really makes the experience much more entertaining. It’s well written throughout, and the story is very strong and easy to follow, with epic moments all the way through.

An early issue with the aiming down sights being less than perfectly accurate can be fixed by going to augment stations (which are hidden throughout) and attaching a laser which makes the shooting mechanics feel incredibly smooth. Another small issue with the experience is the usage of certain items, and how it’s sometimes unclear how to use them I found that I had to experiment with ideas to make some things work.

The movement and camera has a couple of different options. First of all, there’s a mixture of the stick and holding down the left stick to teleport, which seems to work flawlessly. The camera isn’t so perfect when putting it on “snap”, as by default it snaps 90 degrees to whatever direction you are clicking. This is what I mainly used but it seemed to never put me at a straight angle so I was always walking slightly diagonally. The other option is “smooth” which is controlled by the right stick and looks around like you would normally see in a first-person shooter, however the issue being it can definitely make people feel uncomfortable or sick, so the option to choose from the settings is welcomed.

Even for a VR title, the game is massive. We’re talking 18 chapters adding up to over ten hours of gameplay at least to see the end of the story. You are pretty much guaranteed to spend more time than that though, looking for secrets; solving puzzles to advance, fighting challenging bosses, and generally having a great time exploring the world that has been created for you. There are set pieces galore, boss fights, fun characters,

Aside from the early issues that I had with the gunplay, once you work out their quirks (and some will have a stronger learning curve than others) everything feels very intuitive, and finding the gun that you love will be a journey in itself. Each gun has a unique and, frankly, superb reload sequence which makes you feel as though you can truly master each gun to kill the robots, flying eyes, hand men, cubes with their butts-out, magma throwers, dinosaurs, and other assorted enemy-types more efficiently, which gives a sense of achievement and progression to the game. Ammo clips auto-recharge while on your waist, which is an elegant solution to a problem other games have with you having to find ammo littered around every environment.

And that brings me to the sheer replayability of this game. Obviously the difficulty can be increased to match your skill and to take it even further, but the secrets that are hidden within Vertigo 2 shows the thought that was put into this game, and it has paid off in a very replayable game that you can take many approaches to. Being sneaky and killing everyone quickly works well, but so does going in guns blazing, and blowing up barrels to kill everyone in an epic explosion while you can listen to the hilarious jokes again.

It’s no surprise, given the pedigree behind the creator (and look out for Easter eggs nodding to previous work), that Vertigo 2 is such an excellent experience. People have been asking for more “proper” VR games on PlayStation VR2, and elsewhere within the world of VR, and Vertigo 2 delivers on that front. Despite a few bugs here and there, it’s a charming game which had me itching to play more, with great writing and replayability galore.