**Storm Land: A VR Gaming Experience**

I recently had the opportunity to play Storm Land, a virtual reality game that offers an immersive and engaging experience. The game's protagonist is a robot who is trying to survive on a hostile planet, and I must say that it was a blast playing through the campaign and instances of the game.

One of the standout features of Storm Land is its upgrade system, which allows players to improve their character as they progress through the game. Each time you experience something new, you reset back at zero and get a chance to complete and reach the end of the terminus in your play session. However, when it resets all the enemies will be a little bit more difficult and you'll have elevated to the next level. The end of these instances is called the terminus, which I found to be almost a little bit climactic as well.

The game's design also allows for interesting locomotion mechanics that lets you traverse the world quickly and interact with objects in a way that feels like you're really there. Climbing up to the top of a mountain and enjoying the view was one of the most enjoyable parts of the game, and I appreciated the fine tuning of the interaction models that makes it feel right.

However, I do think that there's a little bit of missed opportunity in the campaign for more Borderlands-style loot variability and weapons shops. I want to be able to not just get the level 5 shotgun and level 5 carbine, but also some obscure weapon or variant that took me several play sessions to find. That becomes my favorite weapon of the game.

The game is also playable solo, which is a great feature for players who prefer to play alone. However, I found the most fun playing Storm Land in multiplayer with Jeremy through the campaign and one week of the cycling world instance. Playing with two players feels right and feels balanced because even with just two players, the game doesn't feel too easy to get through.

The AI in the game was also not challenging enough to really push the limits of co-op assaults, which made playing with two players a little more fun but not necessarily more challenging. However, I did appreciate the spatial audio in the game, which allowed Jeremy and me to coordinate attacks and communicate easily while we played together.

Another great feature of Storm Land is its ability to drop into each other's gameplay sessions. We would often drop into each other's strata and send go on opposite paths, exploring different parts of the world and communicating with each other about what we found. This made playing with two players feel like a seamless experience.

**VR Gaming Suitability**

Storm Land proves that VR can be suitable for an open-world game design. The game's level of detail allows you to feel like you're interacting with a real space, which is one of the best parts of playing the game. Climbing up to the top of a mountain and seeing how far you can look was incredibly immersive, and I felt like I was really there.

**Depth in the Game**

However, I do think that the game is missing depth. The campaign is a little bit short, and I think they're banking on the replayability in the future which at this point we're just a little bit unsure of. Will people still be playing Storm Land over and over again after week one? That's an uncertain thing right now.

**Conclusion**

Overall, Storm Land was a great experience for me as a gamer, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys VR games or is looking for something new to play. The game's upgrade system, multiplayer features, and immersive gameplay make it a standout title in the VR gaming world.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody's going from tested welcomeback to projections where this week I'mgonna be reviewing the latest game frominsomniac games it's the big triple a VRtidal storm land waiting for this for solong nowinsomniac has a lot experience in the VRspace they previously made edge ofnowhere as well as the unspoken which isone of the first games make use of handpresence and the oculus touchcontrollers when storm land is unique inthat it's one of the first bigopen-worldnarrative-driven games for virtualreality now the idea behind storm lineis that you're a robot and you and otherrobots are on this alien planet in thefar future humans have explored theplanet they've set up research base andoutposts but it's even after the humanshave left there are no humans in thegame so you and the other fellowresearch robots contend with anantagonist the mysterious tempest andit's really your job to kind of figureout what happened rescue the otherrobots and explore the storm land it'san open world game but it's not openworld in the same way that a Zeldabreath of the wild would be or a Falloutgame would be it's actually more akin toa winwaker game so the way the world themap is laid out is that you start off onthe ground level of the storm lab you'reon the planet's surface there is a mainhub of operations and you takeessentially what's in like an elevatorspace elevator that goes up into theatmosphere to reach the different threeor four different straw to the levels ofthe storm land and each of those becomethe open world areas that you explorenow each of these levels each of thesestrata are made up by a series ofislands it's not one continuous spacethese islands are separated not by wirebut by clouds and so getting around thisopen world is really interesting thereare two main types of locomotion that Ithink they do really well in this gameone there's traversing those betweenthose islands which is a combination ofrunning around with free locomotion andgrappling or climbing on really anystructure whether it's a rock or a treeor a human outpost space if you can seeit you can probably get there there'salso then the cloud surfing and that'show you get between the islandsthemselves the game calls itslipstreaming this is a reallyinteresting locomotion mechanic for VRbecause once you jump off of an islandonto the clouds you basically put yourhands out in a Superman pose and youglide and surf on the clouds themselvesit's really fun and even when you'redoing the surfing there are things to doyou're evading some obstacles you're inactivate speed burst or you can unlockthe ability to launch yourself hundredsof meters into the air to land on one ofthose islands or on a tempest platformwhere you complete your mission I foundthe game to be incredibly freeing andvery very comfortable I think it's oneof the Stormlands biggest achievementsand that they get this open-worldexploration locomotion right there are alot of locomotion settings in a comfortsettings so that even though you'reusing that thumb stick and using freelocomotion to walk around you can changeyour vignetting you can change distanceof the HUD from your face and I found itsuper comfortable almost no learningcurve to get around the world so what isthere to do in the world of storm landand what do these missions and tale aspart of the exploration you're not onlylooking for loot like containers full ofweapons or health packs but you're alsoharvesting parts of the world as wellall of the fauna and foliage you canshoot your beam into these metallicelements that then harvest alloy anddifferent types of alloy then lets youget redeemed for different parts thatyou can upgrade to or ammo or newweapons or you can actually grab plansso you can study there are tons ofdifferent plans and in that world andsome of them you can grab and harvest aswell it's really fun to go aroundfinding different trees grabbing thefruit squeezing them and then harvestingthem so that you can get the manaessentially to upgrade your robotchassis so as you're finding loot andcollecting these resources in the worldyou get to upgrade your body and acouple of different things that you getto develop in terms of your characteryour robot your chassis itself has abunch of different upgrade points soonce you collect enough of these Aonbuds or manayou go to an upgrade station and you canselect points of your body where you canupgrade things like the ability tocollect more mana or new locomotionmechanics like the ability to voteyourself off of the storm land off ofthe clouds while your slipstreaming ordoing things like a double trump orincreasing ammo capacity or retrievinghealth from enemies as you fight themlots of different upgrades that so muchso that you can't unlock them all withone play session through the campaignyou have to really play it over and overagain to explore all the differentavenues for those upgrades alsoupgradable are the weapons and there's apretty good weapon selection herethere's our standard SMG there's acarbine shotgun sniper rifle grenadelauncher and minigun and each of theseweapons have 5 tiers of upgrade abilitywhich you can discover in the world asyou're progressing through the campaignand your engagements or you can thenunlock by buying the blueprints theweapons themselves are incrediblyanimated they're gorgeous and theyhandle really well there are two handsfor most of the weaponsthat's a stabilize your aim and theanimation that happens when you gripthem with one hand or two hand is reallycool as well as the ability to tearweapons apart once you've used up theammo the weapons themselves don't weardown but if you find you know SMG on theground and has no animal you can tear itapart you get its alloy or you get theammo refilled to the current weaponsthat you have holstered on your body Ithought there could be a little bit morevariety in terms of the weapon designthey're just basically different skinswhen you go from a level 1 SMG to alevel 5 SMG but I thought there might beopportunities for them to vary them interms of maybe ammo capacity orupgradable damage or more variety andfiring rate or accuracy or cooldown tomake it a little bit more like aBorderlands style a variety andvariability in the weapons that you findin the worldwell the interaction design not onlywith the weapons but also with the worldthat's where I think the game reallyshines the two-handed grips the aimingdown the scope tearing the weapons apartall that feels great and it's not easyin VR for developers to get that stuffto feel right if when you walk up to acrate and you see a handle and you putyour a robot hand on it the way itlatches on and thenway you can turn these handles and tearapart containers to find new weapons allthat just feels natural there's nobutton pressing to unlock these thingsto open canisters it's made for VR andit feels like it takes advantage of handpresence and your physical body presencein VR to the combat with enemies I foundalso to be really fun and also tookadvantage of the freedom to climb vaultand hover almost everywhere that allowsfor fun exploration and the ability toapproach these enemy encounters from anyvantage point so you might turn on yourscanner as you land on the island see agroup of enemies on a base or on aplatform and you can attack themliterally from any direction so manytimes I would find myself climbing up aplatform and hiding on the underside ofthe platform seeing the highlightedenemies and then crawling us to wherethey're not looking when they'refollowing their roots and then ambushingthem or jumping in you know guns blazingmuch like a robot Rambo I mentionedearlier there is a scanner review youstopped the temple of your head and itactivates this augmented HUD whichhighlights in the world the resourcesand the fruit that you can harvest thealloy as well as the enemies that yousee them as these bright outlines behindplatforms behind mountain behind faunaand I thought that made the combat alittle bit too easy I wish there was adesign ability or the enemy's ability todisrupt your scanner view because havingit turned on for most of the game andyou can have it on for the game there'sno cooldown for any of that just let merun through the game know where everyenemy was and never feel surprised byany of the the combat encounters they Ihave the enemies isn't particularlysmart or tactical they go along theirpredetermined routes and they canoverwhelm you with firepower or theirshields but I found it too easy at timesto come in with guns blazing with twoshotguns out and with the ability if Iturned on the ability to steal healthfrom them as I'm firing with them Icould go through almost any encounterwithout thinking too much about italmost wish the enemies had the abilityto nerfyou to tone down your abilities whetherthat's ability to climb anywhere or yourscanning ability to make it moredifficult or a little more challengingmost of the challenge in the combat camefrom running out of ammo which is youknow fine as a game design decision forbalance but I think they could have gonea little bit further I've read thatinsomniac had previously designed thegame so that you couldn't climb everysingle obstacle or every single objectin the world there were just thesecolor-coded objects that were designatedas the ones you could actually climb andand I'm happy that they did enable theability for you to climb and Colne andgrapple onto anything I think that makestraveling around the world a lot morefun but I also think that makes thecombat a little bit too almost too openin a way and that the enemies aren'tsmart enough to adapt to that and theyand you're a little bit overpowered inthese engagements I felt like theencounters would be thrilling you knowjust in the sheer amount of action andexplosions the animations again lookincredible and the effects look greatbut it's never hugely rewarding the sameway that like a rec room quest would beso difficult that I would have to playit you know a dozen times and reallyreally plan out every single enemy andencounter and firefight to make it feellike I really earned that victory whenyou're not in combat you do have a lotof time to really explore the world andappreciate the gorgeous world buildingthey did here I mean the productiondesign on storm Land is incredible theanimations with the NPC robot toencounter there's a lot of dialogue alot of personality in those robots it'sso cool even looking at your own bodyand moving around this is some of thebest animation and best productiondesign best graphics of almost any VRgame I've played the scope and scale theworld I think is sufficiently massive Ithink do you think there could be youknow more islands to explore in thisworld but there is plenty of stuff todiscover there are these remnants of thehuman presence in that planet on thestorm land that you do uncover thingsthat don't often make sense I almostgive it a littlebit of a of a Twilight Zone or a lostvibe to it not all of this is explainedat least in the campaignthe game is a little bit of a system hogthere are higher system requirementsthen on other VR games and it's bestplayed right now on the rift s not justthe standard oculus rift I can't wait tosee how this looks though over oculuslink on the higher resolution of theoculus quest and I think it does workwith a little bit of patching withrevive if you have a steam VR system andwant to try it on that - I'm reallycurious how this looks like on a valveindex I haven't just haven't had theopportunity to play it on that yet thecampaign is a little bit shorter than Iexpected it's about three and a halfhours it really feels like a longtutorial that gets you acclimated to therules of the world and combat as youelevate on the strata in the storm landI kind of wish it was longer you know Ifelt like by the end of it I was askingmyself is this it is that the campaignbut then at when you finish the campaignyou unlock then what's called thecycling world the game actually has thisrogue light element in that you're goingthrough parts of this campaign over andover again and they reset it every weekthe same four layers of the storm landget reset on Tuesdays all the stratawill have the same kind of flavor andvisual design but the placement of theislands will be different and themissions will be mixed up also resetwill be your upgrade so you do startback at zero every time you have yourexperience and you get a chance tocomplete and get to the end of the theterminus in your play session then whenit resets all the enemies will be alittle bit more difficult and you'llhave elevated to the next levelthe end of the these instances is calledthe terminus it's this top level and Ifound that to be almost a little bit andclimactic as well there's no giant bigboss battle and you get glimpses of thetempest military on that level I wishthey explored further from drop shipsand other aerial structures I reallywanted to be able to get to but just alittle more decor than explorableenvironments I do think there's a littlebit of missed opportunity in thecampaign for more Borderlands style lootvariability and weapons shops to makethose repeated play sessions morehi Singh I want to be able to not justget the level 5 shotgun and level 5carbine which I know that might go toweapons but fine you know some obscureweapon or some some obscure variant thattook me several play sessions to findthat that becomes my favorite weapon ofthe game I never ended up finding theweapons being the reason on replayingstorm land it's really just getting moredifficult enemies now you can completestorm land and campaign by yourselfthat's an entire game is playable justas a solo adventure but I found the mostfun playing storm land an in multiplayerand played with Jeremy through thecampaign and also through an instanceone week of the cycling world andoriginally insomniac had talked aboutthree player multiplayer but I thinktoning it down to two players feelsright and feels balanced because evenwith just two players the game and thedig up again feeling almost a little bittoo easy to get through never reallyfelt that it was more challenging withtwo players or that we got increasednumber of combat encounters things I dothink would have made being - playingwith two players a little more fun andAI again wasn't challenging enough toreally push the limits of of co-opassaults there's great spatial audio inthe game so when you have your anotherperson that you're playing with and youcan just drop into their middle of theirgame session you can get a great senseof where they are and you can docoordinated attacks that's still fun oryou can divvy up the exploration youknow many times Jeremy I would drop intoa strata and send go on opposite pathsand we can be able to communicate andit's really easy to bring up themultiplayer menu and click warp andteleport immediately to where the otherplayer is to join in and on one of theirbits of action you can even do thatwhile they're in the slipstream which isquite funoh god that's enemies fun going throughstorm land playing the campaign like Isaid one week of that cycling world andit really proves the case that VR can besuitable for an open-world game designyou know you can have interestinglocomotion mechanics that lets youtraverse the world quickly and also withthe amount of detail where you feel likeyou are interacting with a real spacethat was some of the best part aboutstorming was climbing up to the top of amountain and just enjoying the Vista andseeing how far you can look I see thatship over there maybe I'm trying tovault and climb out of that ship thatstuff was awesome and I reallyappreciate the fine tuning of theinteraction models and insomnia I've hadto do to make it feel right as well makeyou feel like you really aren'tembodying this ultra cool powerful robotwith weapons holster and your back andyour hips with objects that you can grabin the world and interact with thatisn't easy to get right in VR I thinkthey spent so much of their time gettingthat part right the thing I feel likeI'm missing in storm Land is depth thegame the campaign at least is a littlebit short and I think they're banking onthe replayability in the future which atthis point we're just a little bitunsure of you know the game at week oneyou're gonna get eight hours of solidgameplay but at the end of week 10 Idon't know people gonna be playing thisover and over again the same way thatpeople are still making the way throughAsgard's wrath 40-hour single-playernarrative so line is out now and I thinkwill be really interesting once theoculus link comes out to see how thatlooks on the quests and if you googlearound you can find ways to play it andsteam VR as well but thanks for watchingprojections this week and let us knowwhat you think about store managerplaying it on your system and we backnext time with more coverage see youthatyou\n"