Farpoint launched last year with the PlayStation VR Aim Controller and that was a welcome piece of hardware. The shooter played pretty well with this controller, which gave you the illusion of holding a real gun. That shooter, however, played out in space, so a more realistic shooter on earth would not be out of place. Which we have now received in the form of Bravo Team, made by the well-known studio Supermassive Games. This time we do not shoot on aliens, but on soldiers who behave like terrorists.
It runs completely into the soup
You and your team are sent on a mission in an Eastern European country where it is important to escort the president of the country. There are a lot of tensions in the country and this president could calm everyone down with her plans. Sounds good and the mission does not seem to be too complicated. The president feels at ease and even shows pictures of her children during the ride in the military Hummer. Everything goes smoothly, until suddenly a bomb explodes and you get pretty dazed after some time again. Terrorists take the president and then it is up to you to escape this hell.
These terrorists are in fact a club of soldiers who have gone rogue under the rule of a guy who wants to make a coup. Because they have succeeded in their mission, it is up to you and your team to survive and escape from the country. Soon you stay together with one person and that's where the adventure begins. The other person can be managed by the AI, but you can also look for a co-op partner. This can be a stranger who hits you online, but of course a friend. It is then important to get through the city together and eventually escape. In the meantime you are faced with a huge amount of resistance and the only solution is simply to mess up everything you find on your path.
From cover to cover
Bravo Team can be completed in roughly three hours and the game takes you from a bridge to alleys to a police station and even the roofs of the city, where you jump from roof to roof. So you do a lot of different locations and all this according to a predetermined route. The opposition is very strong at many times, so you will have to take your time to switch everyone off before you continue. Enemies are encountered in different types, so you have the standard enemies that you have so messed up, but you also find snipers and slightly better armored enemies, against which a shotgun is very effective.
The game can be a challenge at times, but that is not only in the many enemies you encounter. You run from cover to cover and from fixed positions you have to tackle your enemies. It is not possible to walk around freely in the game, because you are really bound to the spots for cover that the game offers. Pointing at it and pressing the button is enough to automatically move your character to the next point. This way of playing works fine in itself, but it still remains a pity that you can not just walk around freely. It provides some static gameplay where the immersion could have done so much better.
Also the cover is not completely good, because in the cover a little extra to move down for more coverage makes little sense. Enemies can hit you anyway and what is completely annoying is that if you shoot you have to keep your gun quite a bit above or next to cover objects if you want to be able to fire at all. The moment the game detects that something is in front of you while you are in the cover, the gun just does not shoot at all. Rather annoying when you hit a wall with a bracket, on which you want to use the gap to fire. That is not possible. Or what to think if you're sitting behind a motorbike and only fire your gun when it's far enough away from the mirror? In the heat of the battle, you do not want to think about it at all.
Repetitive and boring
It is also noticeable that the PlayStation VR Aim Controller is a lot less accurate than the DualShock 4. At one point we have also moved away from the Aim Controller, because the alignment with the DualShock 4 just went better. Still a bit of a shame, because the Aim Controller should provide a better experience, but if that does not work well you leave it quickly to the left. In short, even less immersion and that shatters the fun of a shooter in virtual reality. The points of criticism are not all treated, because it is even worse that the game has no soul at all. You work out the different levels in which you shoot a shitload of identical enemies and that's it.
It is incredibly repetitive, because you do nothing but just shoot off enemies. At times they are unrealistic and after an hour you have actually seen it. Not only does the repetitive gameplay take care of that, the enemies too are as stupid as what. They walk the most weird ways, do not anticipate what you do and at times have a lot of trouble to hit. In particular, your AI-controlled fellow player is a total idiot who needs six warehouses to take out another. He is very useful to revive you, since he is almost immortal. Anyway, luckily we can play the game in co-op, which is a lot more fun to do, because that player understands what the intention is, partly thanks to the communication between them.
Soulless
Bravo Team is not necessarily a very bad game, because it works pretty well in itself. However, it is very sad that it is so repetitive and you do not feel any bond with the characters at all. The game lacks a soul, so you do not wake up for a second what happens. You work neatly down the levels and afterwards you get the feeling that you did not really experience something special. I do not want to call it a total waste of time, but it could have done so much more with it. The game would undoubtedly have done well, because that would have been possible to add more objectives outside shooting.
Bravo Team feels especially like just not in various ways and that is just a shame. The immersion is missing, the AI is stupid and the levels are not too special. It is also possible that the game completely loses the landmark, causing everything to drift aside while playing. You can use the Options button to center your image again, but that does not work for a meter in this game. We have had to restart Bravo Team three times to be able to continue playing decently and although you often see these kinds of issues in VR games, restarting three times in a playthrough of no more than three hours is a lot.
Conclusion
Bravo Team had every potential to be an incredibly cool shooter for PlayStation VR. We have not seen this setting in virtual reality before and together with the Aim Controller this should be able to provide a nice experience. However, the game is very repetitive and even boring at a given moment. This is because the enemies are stupid, you do nothing but pop and the shooting is not as accurate as that should be, so you switch to the DualShock 4. Still a bit crazy. The recalibration of the screen works for no meter and the environment regularly hinders the action because the gun suddenly does not shoot. All of those irritating and unnecessary things in a further soulless whole. Too bad, we had expected better from Supermassive Games.
Pros
➕ In coop pretty fun
➕ Looks good
➕ Shotgun feels brutally
Cons
➖ Soulless
➖ Relationship in environments is strange
➖ Repetitive and pretty boring
➖ Lack of immersion
➖ Aim Controller less accurate than DualShock 4
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