Slinger VR PC Game Review (HTC Vive)
Summary: Navigate an abstract world by swinging and pulling yourself around the landscape while solving puzzles to move on to the next landscape.
3.9
Cyber Swinger
One of the experiences that we’ve wanted in VR for a long time is a Spiderman game, that idea of swinging through a landscape with total freedom is very appealing. While we do have an official Spiderman experience… it’s not quite as extensive as we might have wanted. But now there is Slinger VR and it’s a pretty darn good substitute.
The basic idea behind Slinger VR is that you “climb, fly and leap through vast spaces and abstract twisted structures”. What that entails is basically you making your way from one point of a landscape to the next with the end goal of reaching a portal that will take you to the next location. While the early levels are basically just swing from one structure to the next to reach the portal… things soon get more complicated with puzzles requiring you to not just figure out how to get to the end location, but how to get to tasks along the way to make the end goal useful. The first of these challenges is changing the colour of some beacon type structures… but things get a lot more challenging as you go along.
The actual movement dynamic is great. It would be quite easy to mess up, I would imagine, as you need take a number of factors into account and while I couldn’t say if the physics of it all is correct… it feels “right”. Swinging from a long way from your target results in you potentially swinging well past it as you pendulum back and forth. Once you get a second grapple you can better control where you end up, so as you are swinging towards your first grapple and are about to “overswing” you can fire off your second grapple and either use both or release the first and continue on your new path. But it’s not just the grapples that work well. You also have a close range grip that enables you to pull yourself along the landscape which can be very handy if you find yourself on the edge of a platform needing to get up or around it.
Visually the world is full of neon lights and what appear to be partially constructed buildings. There’s nothing overly special about the visuals, but there really doesn’t need to be. This is a game about getting from point A to point B… and sometimes also points C through Z as well… it’s not about the visual landscape, it’s about the physics of getting from one place to another.
Slinger VR works on a few levels at least (no pun intended… well maybe a little). The first is the core game which is a progressively more challenging puzzle world with growing dangers as you move further through the worlds. But the second is just the fun of being able to fling yourself around a landscape and you really do get that web slinger feel (yet totally devoid of anything that might be deemed copyright infringing!). To top it all off, the price is pretty decent for what you get too.
If you want a bit of grappling, swinging VR fun… I would recommend Slinger VR!
About the Author
Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.
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