Developer: SIE London Studios
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platform: PS4 (PS VR)
Tested on: PS4 (PS VR)
Blood & Truth – Review
Shooters have been popular since the time of arcades. The feeling of holding a pistol or even a machine gun while shooting down enemies is something many people enjoy. If you can immerse yourself in the game, it is even better because you feel like you “have the power” while mowing down enemies. Since the invention and release of VR to the public, of course, shooters were something that couldn’t be forgotten. A lot of shooters are often just that, you shoot enemies and that’s about it. This is not what the developers of Blood & Truth were going for. Blood and Truth, allows you to crawl into the skin of Ryan Marks, take on his skills and be his eyes, ears, and hands. Blood and Truth has been developed by SIE London Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment and we got the chance to test the game out.
Story
In Blood and Truth, you take on the role of Ryan Marks who is an elite soldier. He is being interrogated by an unknown person. Every time Ryan tells more about situations that happened, you get to see and play a flashback of what he is telling the person about. Afterwards, you talk about what happened with that guy and then go back into another flashback. These flashbacks tell you a bit more about what happened before Ryan ended up in this situation.
His family got into a war with a big crime boss and Ryan has to do everything he can to help and protect his family. You will see events play out with small cuts in-between. You will get to discover more about Ryan and his family while you play. It might be a bit confusing to go from flashback to interrogation back to flashback, but Blood and Truth actually handles it pretty well. You never feel like you don’t know what is going on or at least not that you don’t know what you have to do.
Graphics
Blood and truth looks really good. It’s often really hard to make a VR game look good but the developers did a good job. The only thing that is a bit less detailed are the things that are located further away from you. It seems like it might be a bit hard to keep up the high detail when the subject you are looking at is further away from you. The highly detailed characters and the environment are also what cause you to notice it more that they aren’t as highly detailed as when they move further away.
Characters are really nicely designed and look really close to the real-life actors. Their expressions are realistic, and you even feel like they are really looking at you instead of just Ryan. The environments are pretty well designed, even though they aren’t overly filled with objects in some spaces. A comfortable mode has been added in the options, this actually adds a bit of black to the edge of the screen when you move around. If you are not used to VR this definitely helps against being sick.
Sound
The music in Blood and Truth is exciting and gets you pumped up during fights. There isn’t always music in the background, sometimes there is only the background noise of the place you are located in. This choice from the developers actually makes it a bit more realistic, since music sometimes overtakes whatever is happening. Sound effects are well done and properly recorded so you hear it in surround. It is quite important for a VR game to have proper sound, since, without it, it takes away a part of the immersion. Blood and Truth did it smoothly, so for example, if somebody starts talking from behind you, it does kind of seem like he is actually behind you.
Gameplay
Blood and Truth is an action shooter VR game where you take on the role of Ryan Marks. In this case you actually nearly become Ryan Marks since you see what he sees and actually control his arms or better said, you are more immersed in the role of Ryan Marks. Blood and Truth is playable with the regular DualShock controller but that would actually take away half the experience of the game. It is really recommended to play with the PlayStation Move controllers. They let you actually take control of Ryan’s hands. While you can’t move fingers with the controller you can grab different things.
As you hop into the game for the first time, you start out in the interrogation scene but after that, you start with a sort of tutorial level. Here you learn how to handle guns, reload, pick locks and a few miscellaneous things. You can use both your hands to shoot, but just as well only need one hand. The bigger guns are actually easier to aim with two hands. Reloading is done by taking ammo from your chest with your Move controller and then putting it into your gun(s). Sometimes it can be a bit tricky to reload in a hectic situation as you can also take your weapon in another hand. So sometimes instead of grabbing ammo, you might grab your weapon. Which can be quite annoying since it can mean you get shot more than once. The game lets you reconfigure the controllers at any time, so if you feel like the chest area is not working well, reconfiguring does help.
Ryan Marks always has his little bag of handy things with him. This green little bag appears at random times when you need to pick a lock, place C4, … There are often more tools in the bag than what you need, but the game does a good job pointing out what you actually need in the situation. Maybe a bit too much as everybody will figure out eventually they need the lockpicks to unlock a regular door lock. Other times it is handier that there is an explanation since you might not know what to do otherwise.
Even though you can’t actually control Ryan Mark’s fingers you do sometimes need to use them. The game just solves this by making the finger point immediately when you come close to something you need to press with it. You can grab and play with quite a lot of stuff, but sometimes you might question “why can I actually interact with this and not with this other object”. There is, for example, one scene where Ryan is in the airplane and you can’t actually do anything, not even open the tray in front of you. With the move controller, you will not only grab things, but you will also be able to crawl and climb. So, at one point you have to climb a ladder by actually moving your hands up one by one and grabbing the next bar. You’ll also be crawling through a vent by dragging yourself further with the controllers. These additions are actually really great and make it, so you feel as if you are in the game. This is also the reason why Move controllers are the better choice.
Conclusion
Blood and Truth is a great VR game and is a must-have for every PS VR owner. You don’t actually have to like shooters to enjoy Blood and Truth, it does a fantastic job telling a story and making it feel like more than just “a shooter”. The comfortable mode in the game also helps a lot against being sick too fast. Like any game and certainly VR games, it is still recommended to take a break regularly though. With the great input of the move controllers and the good graphics, Blood and Truth is another superb addition to the top VR games.
Blood & Truth - Review,
No Comments