Espire 1: VR Operative

Espire 1: VR Operative is not a mechanically perfect game. Sometimes, the controls can feel a little clumsy in the way that many VR games tend to do, and I wish you could find more handgun ammo to make that class of weapons more useful. With so many VR titles that feel like glorified tech demos Espire 1: VR Operative has some real meat to it, and for most of your time in the game, you will feel like some sort of shadowy, robotic badass. Use all of the mobility and stealth at your disposal, and you will find that Espire 1 sets a pretty high bar for what a VR game can be.

Espire 1: VR Operative is unquestionably the best expression of the stealth action genre we’ve seen in VR yet. The small touches of polish go a long way towards selling the immersion and opening your mind to the creativity on display to complete missions and the inventive VR-focused mechanics make it a pleasure to play actively in a roomscale space. While a larger budget, more time, and overall more resources could have elevated Espire 1: VR Operative to the status of being a landmark VR game that pushes the boundaries and redefines the genre even further, it’s still extremely good and certainly worth playing.

Espire 1 is a decent stealth action game. It contains replayability through its Challenges mode, but what it offers in terms of main story is a bit short – roughly four hours of story, padded to five or six hours via gates that force you to finish a certain number of Challenges to continue to the next mission. Of course, the main draw of Espire 1 is that it takes place in VR, and it uses that to its benefit. Sneaking around and using the bevy of Espire gadgets and traversal options available to do so feels great, but is overshadowed by a combat system and AI that is so exploitable that sneaking around quickly loses its purpose in the first place.

Espire 1: VR Operative excels in delivering some familiar stealth combat in a new, more immersive package, albeit with a few hiccups along the way. In addition to its superhuman acrobatics, you may find Espire 1 a serviceable Metal Gear-style game, although it is still somewhat rough around the edges due to stupid AI, a standard but forgettable story, and a general lack of haptics and solid world geometry that might otherwise have sent this high-flying stealth combat game yet higher.

Espire 1's VR stealth is brimming with neat ideas, but the end product is slightly less than the sum of its parts.

With good intentions and interesting ideas, Espire 1 - VR Operative unfortunately doesn't live up to all its ambitions. If the voice control is effective and the gadgets appreciable, the enemies' AI is quite limited and the disturbingly easy fights are not worth being sneaky. Fortunately, the world leaderboard is there to remind us that the goal of the game is to be stealthy. The Control Theatre, on the other hand, has turned out to be disappointing and will probably be deactivated. If we appreciated the possibility of playing seated, the graphics are too bland and the collision system can be improved. At the end of the day, we get the impression that the developers lacked time and/or resources, and it's a shame.

Good ideas and a charming presentation are held back by bugs, AI problems as well as technical and control issues.

A retro, fun VR game in means of ways with creative level design, maps, and vast load of content and freedom. You're able to use a vast set of cheats if you feel the need, multiple difficulties, and a nice selection of challenges with a pleasantly thought out story. Not perfect but polished and a real heafty game.