1, 2, 3 . . . it's Vader Immortal!

As per typical Marketing demands, the entire Vader Immortal suite of VR games was on sale when May the 4th was being with us. I obliged of course because, dude, getting 3 highly rated VR games for 15 bucks is totally worth it!  Of course, finding time to actually play said games amidst everything else I'm committed to is a bit more difficult.

That said, there's really only about an hour of game play in each of the three games, which for most games out there would be a death nail in the game, but this is VR we're talking about.  I'd lay down $60 for all my kids to have a VR experience at some random vacation resort and that'd be for a half hour of play at most. And that's the thing, when it comes to Vader Immortal you're paying for the experience of standing there right next to a life-sized Darth Vader holding his lightsaber menacingly right above your head.  It's awesome.

Nothing quite like big life-size characters standing right next to you

Vader Immortal is not a difficult game in any of its incarnations, and they don't need to be.  Just playing in VR can be difficult enough at times. I was reading a really great article the other day that talked about how much slower people actually move in VR, and I totally agree:

Even simple concepts need to be redefined for VR. For instance, players take things much slower in VR than they do in a flat screen game.

"People slow down so much [in Half-Life: Alyx]," says Valve's designer and writer Sean Vanaman. "That's in contrast to how fast your character moves in Half-Life games traditionally. You're very, very, very fast in those games, and at the furthest end of the bell curve on the other extreme is how slow people go [in VR]."

To those ends, when Darth Vader is training you to be his apprentice and is throwing giant rocks at you while you're learning to catch them with the force, you may take "damage" and he may insult you as being pathetic when you duck instead of catch the rock, but you'll never die and have to restart the chapter. 

This makes the whole experience very much like living inside a Vader Immortal Movie in three parts. The only thing that sucks is they leave the whole series with a cliff hanger, so no . . . there's no Vader Immortal 4.

Vader listening in to my great great great grandma telling me not to trust him

Outside of the hour of gameplay there is also a lightsaber training dojo game inside each of the Vader Immortal games, and that definitely increases the value of the games. The dojos are a good work out and each of them is slightly different than the next.

• The first dojo in Vader Immortal 1 really concentrates on the remote training droids made famous in the OG Star Wars with Luke Skywalker.  You'll be deflecting shots back at the droids and slicing them in half.
  
  
• The second dojo you'll find everything you found in the first dojo PLUS wield force powers and use a saber throw that is incredibly satisfying.  Chucking your lightsaber out and having it boomerang back to you is super fun.
  
  
• The third dojo is the most challenging of the bunch. You'll get training droids AND stormtroopers armed with blasters. Once you strike down a stormtrooper you can use the force to pick up his blaster and shoot things, so you end up shooting with your left and slashing with your right.

Let's go, training remotes!

There were a lot of fun moments in these games, and at some point I may return to play through them again . . .just like I'd watch one of the star wars films all over again. 

I captured some fun footage yesterday while escaping a tunnel system deep below Mustafar. I have to say, it's really fun to force choke storm troopers and throw them into each other.

Happy Dueling!