Hey, did you ever play Hitman Go? That game was awesome, right? Did you ever play Splinter Cell? That was pretty rad, too, right?
Well, what if I told you that you could sorta play aspects of both of those games in 3D VIRTUAL REALITY OMG CONTROLLER OPTIONAL HOLY SHIT IT'S REALLY GREEN on the Gear VR? Well, it's awesome.
And really green. Protocol Zero probably fancies itself as a first person shooter, I honestly see it (and played it) more as a puzzle game, like the aforementioned Hitman Go. You move in spurts (sorry for the technical terminology) from one spot in front of you to another. The available places you can go are highlighted with yellow/orange boxes, and you basically click on them to walk toward them. You have a full view of everything when you turn your head, but those waypoints keep you on a mostly linear path. I'm sure this was done to both make the game playable without a controller, and also to reduce motion sickness, but as a weirdo who seems to be relatively immune to VR dizzies and even likes the disorienting feeling, I sometimes wished I had full control. No matter, it was still fun and effective. The only REAL disappointment was that if you have to go up or down stairs or ramps, you warp to the top or bottom. You do occasionally have the opportunity to choose from a couple different waypoints to tackle a problem in the manner of your choosing, but that's about it as far as traversal goes. Once you get to where you want to get, if there's an enemy, you can shoot them, aiming the targeting reticle with your face, or, if there's a camera, you can hack it with your face, or you can get run over by speeding subway trains with your face. The hacking part is a particularly startling effect to me for some reason, as your arm pops out and holds a little electronic hacking gizmo that lights up in stages as it disrupts the nearby camera or door lock. That is the fun part for me, in all this early VR - these little things that pop out and make you go, "Whoa." There were a couple bits of that in this game. It looks pretty decent (think a sharp late PS1 game) but the sense of presense (ugh, I'm sorry) really got me. It really felt like I was walking past a pile of trash in a green lit room!
Oh yeah, everything is green. It works for this game, though. In fact, when I said everything was green, I was lying. I'm sorry. There is sometimes blue. You have a special thingy you can do which allows you to see through walls. Very handy. Seeing through walls is blue. You can use this ability, along with your gun and hacking device and choice of pathways to make your way past enemies and cameras. If a camera sees you, or a dead guy of your doing, game over. If another guy sees you or a dead guy, game over. If you get hit by a train, game over. So really, you're looking at enemy patterns when possible, timing your little predetermined paths to make it past them, while taking into account whether or not an active camera is going to see you doing your shit. It's kind of a cross between a shooter and a puzzle game. It never gets too difficult, but there were a few parts where I got stuck or dead and had to restart a level. A particularly nasty part involved two subway trains zipping back and forth and me negotiating between them and a line of cameras. This was fairly early on in the game, so please don't take this as a spoiler. I won't spoil anything for you.
SPOILER: I haven't actually finished the game. I can't spoil anything.
But yeah, this game is really fun. There's a demo version available, which is super nice, but if it's somehow missing now or whatever, I still would recommend this game.
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