Asgard's Wrath 2 is coming out next week, and we've started playing the beginning of the game for our full review.
在那之前，我们将保留我们的全部判定，因为这款游戏是如此的庞大，我们要玩过（和消化）这款来自Meta和Sanzaru GamesOnly after more than 60 hours of epic work can we know how we feel about it.
In the meantime, however, we want to give you a snippet of what we've seen so far: some things to expect, some things that surprise us, and some things we're wary of.
magnificent scale
From the get-go, Asgard's Wrath 2 is undoubtedly magnificent in more ways than one. Story-wise, it’s a tale of gods – you embark on a journey to find Benny, the Norse god of mischief, and eventually find yourself in ancient Egypt, where you’ll interact with familiar Egyptian gods and on a divine scale Puzzle solving, as well as action and exploration in mortals.
The premise itself sets the tone for a story of almost indescribable proportions. Even for someone familiar with many of the gods mentioned, keeping track of each god's identity can be difficult at times, and feels like the stakes of the story are being swallowed up. What this premise does do, however, is create some truly stunning, cinematic moments. Even in its first few hours, some parts of Asgard's Wrath 2 stand alone from anything we've seen before.VR gamescompletely different.
Many of these can be found in the plot, which demonstrates a really deep understanding of using cinematic direction in immersive virtual reality. Yes, some of what you see may be visually bigger and better than anything you've seen before, but it's the art and cinematography that make it impactful most of all. In VR, long plots can often be boring due to a lack of interaction, but here, the scenes are engaging and always keep you on your toes with tension.
A flashback scene that shows the origin story of the Egyptian god Horus as you ride on the back of an eagle as the giant god fights, flees and flashes before your eyes in a series of carefully choreographed animated sequences . What's impressive about these is not just its sheer size, but also its direction and fluidity.
Careful design and artistic decisions are obviously made to make a sequence like this possible on standalone hardware. For example, the eagle's feathers are represented by a flat, rather low-resolution texture. Maybe you don't even notice this because in your There were other exciting scenes taking place before our eyes. Likewise, the towering gods above you are not detailed, lifelike models, but are presented as ghostly blue forms with glowing wireframes and a surreal appearance. Again, this is a decision that the average player might not even notice because it's so seamlessly integrated into the scene. Still, it's an interesting example of a studio finding the sweet spot between art direction, optimization, and storytelling to realize the full potential of standalone VR hardware.
Comfort experience
As far as gameplay goes, at this stage, I'm still far away from my thoughts on the combat, exploration, length, and overall gameplay. However, what was obvious from the start was the absence of comfort options with good sensitivity.
Motion sickness in virtual reality continues to be a common problem for many gamers, myself included. For many, what causes nausea is artificial movement (movement that occurs in the headset but not in the real world, such as using the thumbstick to move a character forward in a game when they are actually stationary in real life).
One of the most common ways to combat this problem is to provide players with the ability to enable 'stun effects'. Typically, this will fade out into a round, feathered black border around the player's field of view when manually moving. This limits peripheral vision and can effectively reduce the feeling of nausea, especially in games that rely heavily on thumbstick directional movement like traditional tablet games.
Asgard's Wrath 2 does offer a suite of comfort options, but the way they're implemented is a bit confusing.
At the start of the game, players are prompted to choose between Comfort, Comfort, or the Default preset, with the latter providing a balance between the two. Players can then individually turn on/off options in the settings, such as constant rotation (or adjusting angle/turn speed), camera shake, and the 'tunnel effect', which is an in-game stun effect.
However, during movement, the stun effect is not fully enabled. The stun effect or 'tunnel' effect is enabled based on how close your gaze/head is to the environment, terrain, or other in-game objects.
This means that you can walk forward in an open space and the stun effect will not be activated at all because there is nothing approaching you in front of you; however, if you turn your head to the right towards a wall, you will be stunned when moving. The dazzle effect is enabled because your head is now close to the terrain around you.
The implementation of this stun effect completely goes against the standard of common integration in other comparable VR experiences. Not only does this make the game less comfortable overall, but it's also not very effective at reducing motion sickness.
I was told that improvements to the tunneling feature were planned for after the game was released, but it was also suggested that in the meantime, a more reliable way to enable the tunneling effect would be to tilt your head slightly downward. This does enable tunneling effects more reliably. The game thinks my head/gaze is closer to the ground, so the tunnel effect is enabled – but that's also not the most enjoyable way to experience such a massive epic.
The game also includes the option to switch between comfort, comfort or balance moves, such as sliding and climbing walls, with the former being more intense and the latter offering more stability.
Every player has a completely different propensity for motion sickness in VR, but it’s unrealistic to expect players to be able to complete a game of this magnitude without including fairly standard comfort options – I know it would definitely affect me The next game process.
war of gods
Despite my concerns about comfort, Asgard's Wrath 2's opening sequence is undeniably impressive - the real question is whether that shine will wear off after many hours of play.
The comparison that immediately comes to mind is Skyrim – both in and out of VR. This is an easy comparison due to its similar mythological setting to that game. However, the general atmosphere, world-building, dialogue structure, and even sound cues all feel like they're talking about a Bethesda classic.
The jury's still out on whether it's likely to rival Skyrim - Asgard's Wrath 2 may reach its heights, or it may just sit below its glory. Stay tuned for our full review.
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