Arcade Saga Reviews

I am really enjoying this game! The brick breaking game is fun and challenging and has for "worlds" to unlock which equates to 40 levels, four of which are boss fights. I have already gotten 8 hours of gameplay out of it and I still have a lot more content to unlock! The archery is fun and also has 40 levels I think. The shield blocking game as well. It's super polished. I thought it was worth the price! There is a bug or "feature" where world 2 of the brick breaking game doesn't unlock unless you hit "Next" after beating the first boss. Don't hit "Select level". Then you need to beat the bonus round and 2-1 in order for it to unlock! I don't know if its the same for the other bosses because that's the only one I did. Took me awhile to figure it out. It was frustrating.

I really wanted to like this game, but I think I hate it: - In Smash, the ball will rebound at crazy angles or gain unexpected amounts of speed so frequently that there's little point trying to predict where it will go and it becomes purely a game of reflexes. Don't try to tell me it's the product of a realistic physics engine, I don't believe such exaggerated spin effects would occur in real life. Also, many opponents can cheesily fire it back at you from the middle of the level; the player is given no such power-up. - In Bowshot, the enemies shoot at you and their indestructible shots are often very large. In my 2m x 1.5m play space, it's not possible for me to get out of their way without flattening myself against the furniture or onto the floor, often ending up in corners of dodgy tracking and having the world spin nauseatingly. - I feel like the huge global high score table at the end of the level is taunting me. When I complete a song in Audioshield, I feel elated. When I finish a level in Arcade Saga, unless it was one of the first few levels on Casual difficulty, I feel like I've been beaten up.

This is basically Holoball, Holopoint and Racket NX in one, with some differences. The archery game (Bowshot) is a good workout and it got me exhausted pretty quickly even though I thought I was doing okay with 30/40 minutes workouts in Box VR. The game makes you shoot your arrows, dodge and squat. One good thing it has over Holopoint is the fact that it won't make you quickly spin around 360 degrees, thus getting yourself entangled with the Vive cable. Fracture (the one similar to Holoball/Racket NX) is good fun, although I find it is very difficult to aim the ball where you want it to go. The first boss had me completely beat. Although I prefer the looks of Racket NX, the problem with that game is the amount of turning I need to do. If my headset were wireless I would have no issues with that and I wouldn't even bother playing Fracture, but since I am constrained by a cable, I might wind up playing Fracture more. Smash is sort of a "3D airhockey" where you use both hands equally and it is actually my favourite of the 3. I am going to list the 3 games in order of preference: 1. Smash 2. Bowshot 3. Fracture As I mentioned before, the game doesn't make you spin around but still manages to keep you moving (especially if you play Bowshot). My biggest beef is that the game doesn't seem to respect your boundaries for Fracture and Smash. Fracture spawns your ball at the beginning of each match right outside of your play area. I suppose you can use your left controller to pull it towards you, but you shouldn't need to. Luckily, while I have no feet space where the ball spawns (my sofa starts there) there is space above it for my hands to move freely. Other than that I haven't found it problematic, but that is again probably due to the fact that there is a sofa in front of me (outside my play area) and not a straight wall. Smash on the other hand, while it is my favourite from a gameplay point of view, has had me hit my bookshelf/printer two or three times. That is frustrating, especially since I like that game more than the other two, and since it is using the wider side of my play area. My play area is 2.5 x 1.6 m which is a bit bigger than the minimum recommended, although it isn't huge. Mainly due to the way it treats your space, I give this game a 7/10. If it handled it better it would be higher. While for some it might get repetitive, I have found very few VR games with full hand controller support that are more than a one trick pony. Arcade Saga throws in 3 games into one, which basically means you are paying them £5 each. I view VR as a workout outlet with the added fun of gaming, and this game serves this purpose well.

First of all, I got this game on sale. If I had paid full retail price, I wouldn't have recommended this game. However, I do recommend this game at $5 or even $10. Each mini-game runs smoothly without any errors. There are power-ups and bonuses that enhance and add variety as you progress (along with added difficulty) and, of course, there are leaderboards. The main benefit is that you will get a workout (for those who hate to exercise otherwise). Not all 3 mini-games are of equal value however. Also, if you have a friend, you can PvP (you probably won't find a game otherwise but add me as friend if you want to PvP). Here's my review broken up: 1) Bowshot 9/10. This is the real gem from the "arcade saga." A lot of fun. Very fast action, you have to move around to avoid shots and quickly shoot back and/or powerup your shots. 360 degree moving targets, shooting at you so you have to keep moving, you get the idea, very challening and unlike some reviewer said, the LAB bow mini-game is NOT more fun LOL. I don't know any other bow game that is this fast paced and makes you move around as much as this with enemies everywhere. There's prettier graphics on other shooting games, but not one that will make you move as fast and shoot as fast as this. 2) Smash 7/10. Very fun, you get a nice workout. Reminds me of Ripcoil (Oculus) or Holoball. The graphics aren't as good as Ripcoil, but it has more variety in the gameplay. I like the small hallway, as it means you can focus more on small movements to return serve. So it's more about strategy and timing than moving physically fast. 3) Fracture 4/10. Very much like Boom Ball Kinect (almost exactly the same) or RacketNX (RacketNX is way more fun). It's hard to control the swing of the bat to make the ball go where you want. Very frustrating. Just not too exciting even if it was easier to aim. You move the least in this game as you mostly just swing (you can summon the ball close to you to hit it) So 2 of the 3 games are fun and even the last one is not bad for a change-up. Definitely buy on a deep sale.

This game is actually pretty fun, even though it doesn't break much new ground with the types of things you do in game. It's comprised of three different parts: Bowshot (an archery game with powered up projectiles), Smash (Like Pong in a long hallway with powerups and slow-mo beams) and Fracture: which is a bit more like breakout, except to make it different from smash, they gave you a bat and a Tractor beam thingie to grab the ball. The game also seems to have an announcer that is autotuned, but instead of sounding like GLaDOS, she sounds like a squeaky autotuned mouse voice. Not that unpleasant but not a bonus either. Since each game is kinda different I'll have to do a "What I liked/disliked" for each section. So Bowshot...Pretty standard archery game, only you can choose between a single shot or a triple shot (you must choose before the round starts and you stick with it all through the round). Triple Shot is as it sounds... you have three arrows that are launched at the same time, and depending on how far you draw back the bowstring, they'll be spread out or more or less aimed at the same target. Each arrow in the triple shot isn't very powerful so unless all 3 hit the same guy, you're not doing as much damage, but you're probably better off on clearing a crowd with this style. The triple shot also allows you to power up a shot that fires in a straight line (I think aligned perpendicular to your bow). It's somewhat useful if the enemies spread out in a straight line, but the times where this happens are kinda brief. The "line" is also rather narrow so the enemies can just move up or down a bit and it'll pass them entirely. On the other hand, you can use the single shot to focus more power on one target at a time, and the powered up version of the shot shoots a sort of shotgun blast type power in a little circle around your arrow... this is useful for plowing through enemies that are lined up single-file in front of you, but as before, the times where this happens is few and far between. However, since the single shot focuses more on power, you'll more than likely destroy the enemies you DO hit. Your enemies are all boring cubes that fly around you, but every so often they take shots at you, so you have to dodge a bit. More Room-scale space is better here. On the plus side, there's powerups that you can buy both passive and active, though to use the active powerups you have to spend points on allowing you to assign the powerups to a controller touchpad. You can also refund the points if you haven't used the powerups, and the point refund even includes the passive powerups as well, so if you spent too much on some passive powerup and need more of an active power up, you can do that between rounds. There's also separate powerups for each bow style (triple vs single shot) Things I liked: [list] [*] Each round has a set of goals to achieve and if you achieve all three goals, you get more points to be used for powerups. [*] The bow looks a bit cooler than some of the other archery games, and thankfully they don't make you reach back to a quiver to grab another arrow. [/list] Things I didn't like: [list] [*] Boring enemies [*] No realistic physics (So you might as well been given a small missile launcher that you fire with a single button press) [*] It's not really this game's fault but I'm kinda getting tired of bow and arrow games in VR. [/list] Smash has been described as 3D Air Hockey but really it's more like pong in a long narrow hallway. You have two paddles and you can hit the ball, or apply some spin to it by moving the paddle as you hit the ball. If you do it right, the AI will slowly try to follow the ball and the spin will give it a more unpredictable movement after a bounce. Spin won't help at all if it goes straight down the hallway though. As before, each round has a set of goals to achieve and those goals turn into points you can spend on one-time use powerups and passive (permanent) powerups. Also as before, you have to spend points to be able to attach these powerups to each controller so it's kinda deceptive on the price... also as far as I know, each controller only holds ONE powerup so that limts you to two. HOWEVER, in addition to the powerups you buy, there are some powerups that show up midway down the hall that will immediately take effect if the ball hits it. These include one that makes the ball huge (easier to hit), one that increases velocity on each bounce (which is deadly if used right) and also a multiball powerup that can cause your score to go from 0 to 5 in a hurry....it can also go the other way if you're not careful. Things I liked: [list] [*] Smashing the ball down the hallway and making that stupid AI bot miss the shot [*] Hitting the multi-ball powerup in such a way that the AI could only stop one or two shots (while the other 3-4 went in the goal) [/list] Things I didn't like at all: [list] [*] trying to smash the ball and instead, smashing my WALL... because yeah, you can really lose track of where you are in your room and when you see the ball coming towards you, your instinct is to sprint forward and slam it... don't do that. [*] The Bots have that annoying "Fake robot speech filter" that everyone is using in their games... the result is that the speech turns into a scratchy mumble that is tough to understand. Imagine if you were talking into a kazoo and that kazoo buzz was loudly playing over every word you said. Congratulations, you're almost as annoying as the bot speech! [*] The enemies also spit out these "mines" that can intercept the ball and cause it to go flying back at you unexpectedly. This occasionally happened to the AI as well, but really those mines are just an annoyance. [/list] And finally we have Fracture, which is basically what I'd expect Breakout to be like in VR, only it doesn't seem to have as much of a point when the whole room is a target for breaking bricks. The "enemy" here is time since you have a limited amount of time to hit all the bricks and your combos are determined by how many bricks you break in a short period of time. The ball and ball grabber is similar to another game (Racket NX) but the grabber seems to pull the ball from anywhere, so you can shoot the ball and grab it again quickly (which is probably the best strategy). I didn't really find this game engaging though. Once again there are powerups and stuff to earn, but I'm not sure you'd even need them, though I didn't play it for long so maybe the score needed to pass the levels goes up sharply or something. Things I liked: [list] [*] Well, the bat was somewhat new. I figured they'd just use a paddle again. [*] If you manage to break a lot of bricks in a short time period, the ball changes color to signify the combo level. [/list] Things I didn't like: [list] [*] It was actually kinda hard to aim the ball where I wanted it to go with the bat. I think I would have done better with a paddle/racket. [*] Since there were no enemies, it felt the least exciting of the three games. It seemed more fitting for a separate game mode or something. [/list] I actually bought this game even though it was given for free on Viveport... Two reasons: 1) I liked the game and wanted to support the developers and 2) I hated having to have the vive home software running just to play the game. (also for a 3rd reason, I wanted the steam achievements). There's a whole multiplayer aspect I haven't even tried yet, so I may need to edit this review later. Single player is enough to keep me somewhat busy for a while though. Anyway, I'd say this game is worth the money... Fracture is the weakest link but it's still fun...and maybe it's more fun in PvP than single player? We'll see eventually.

This is a quality game. Textures, animation, voice are all excellent. It's an arcade game and has online scoreboard where you can compete against many others for high scores. Love it!

I love VR and have been so excited to see it grow, so I've been happy to buy a lot of less polished games for the sake of experiencing something new and supporting new studios doing VR. I was excited to see this because I imagined it as "first party" content. Something polished and worth waiting for. Wow. No. I was very wrong. This is probably the least polished and least fun game I have played on the vive. I bought it one of the first days it was out and all the reviews were glowing. "The kind of game that sucks you in" "You will want to play for HOURS." "The sound and visuals are top notch". It sounded perfect. I would be disappointed by this game if it cost even $5 because of how unfinished it feels. Free VR games have felt better. I look forward to each level ending to give me relief from having to play these games. The three games are incredibly simple and, more importantly, not fun. In all of them the physics feels so sloppy and floaty that it's hard to predict how to actually play/move. Bowshot is fast and chaotic but feels like you're just being assaulted by so many things that it's a race to (your) death. I would pick The Lab's archery game ANY day. Fracture has just the most insane physics, and to 3-star the levels, you have to destroy EVERY block. That isn't hard in a regular "brick breaker" game, but in this one you're standing in a room with block floating 100ft above you trying to hit a 1ft diameter ball at it. Not at all satisfying. I would guess that maybe I'm awful at this game, but even doing what seems to be terribly I'm in the top 100 global scores so...either no one is playing, or no one is winning. Smash is a little fun...it's like Holoball but worse. The physics again are weird and floaty, the impact of the balls feels off, the randomness of the powerups is bizarre. And it all takes place in what feels like a futuristic sewer pipe. That brings me to my next point. The visuals? Garbage. Muddy textures, no shadows, poor reflections, static background. It's really about as poor as I've seen in any VR game. The sound too makes me embarrassed for the creators. The voice of the main AI sounds like an announcer at Chucky Cheeses and they call themselves the "We" which, in that high pitched enthusiastic voice, is impossible to take seriously. All in all, I have not had any fun in this game, I am disappointed by what they delivered, and I feel faily lied to about what it was. The $30 price tag is outrageous for this type of game, but I can only hope they use those funds to make something more...

Not enough in this game to warrent a $30 price tag. There is barely any depth to the gameplay that is here. Bowshot is decent but less satisfying than The Lab. Visuals are polished but simple to a point where not much amazement can come from a series of cubes. If you are interested, wait for it to go on sale, paying $30 will leave you dissapointed.

This is probably one of my favorite goto games of the 90+ VR games I own; but lets be honest, this game is priced a bit high. :) Each game is essentially $10 and though there are upgrades you can save up star points to purchase and arguably there are endless hours of gameplay to try and beat your previous score or work the public leaderboards and different game modes to change things up; end to end though you're looking at a minute or two per level. With that said, this game is a lot of fun. Fracture by far is my favorite. It plays like HoloBall and has a classic Brick Breaker feel to it. What is nice is as you advance the levels, not only do the bricks change and technique requirement changes, but so does the arena. Sometimes you're in a square or sometimes in a dome making the physics of the balls bouncing different so you have to plan your shots accordingly. The summoning of the ball is a unique feature as well. Took me some getting used to but once I got the hang of it, it’s a handy feature! Smash is a variant of Fracture in that you’re in a narrow corridor and try to get the balls past the opponent at the other end. As you advance there are more obstacles, speed variables, mines, etc. to make it more challenging. You use shields in each hand to hit the ball and add spin to send it to the opponent’s side. Still ends up feeling the same as Fracture from a mechanics perspective but that is not a bad thing. Bowshot is my least favorite but not terrible. It is another bow shooter like many others out there. The charge shot which sends a blue ray to hit more blocks is probably one of the more unique features I’ve seen compared to others. If you like bow and arrow games, it isn’t bad, just not as fun as the others in my opinion. I posted some raw gameplay footage of a few levels from each game if you’re interested: https://youtu.be/9VIEI7-ab-U

ARCADE SAGA is great! imagine games like holoball, racket nx and those longbow games on steroids! 3 polished games with high replay value at a fair price. i like "fracture" most, it's an insane fast first person breakout in vr. lots of upgrades and online leaderboards, it's VERY well done!