Martial arts come to VR in the new game from the Trek to Yomi developers
Leonard Menchiari is best known for his previous game, the excellent Trek to Yomi. A lover of martial arts and Chinese kung fu battles, his latest project capitalizes on that and takes it into a thrid dimension. Path of Fury is martial arts in VR, and aims to let us throw punches at streams of enemies down Hong Kong Hallways.
Set against the backdrop of a gangland, the game has little exposition and lots of action, essentially asking us to walk through the world and beat the living shit out of people left and right. Once there, once our hands are flying and our head is turning left and right at the enemies in the room coming at us, it can become a real workout. It doesn’t slow down or give us a break, and there’s not a lot of exposition. In fact there’s only a lite drop of narrative in the beginning of each area before a bunch of dudes start to pour in, getting in our way or reaching our goal.
The game has a sort of rhythm fighting experience, like classic Punch-Out! games, where we have to hit enemies when they’re open. They have weak spots that we have to hit and attack patterns that we have to be aware of. Head, Ribs, Head Head Head, Ribs, Block, Head. If we miss a punch, or misinterpet where an enemy’s punch will be, we could leave ourselves open for some nasty damage. Because this is in VR motion controls are our key interface, so swinging correctly is important. We can block by watching an enemy’s swings and put our palm out, and if we need to focus on a second fighter then we have to physically turn our head toward them to look.
And boy are there a lot of enemies. It feels like we’re fighting dudes relentlessly. Knock one down, two more come in. That’s not a bad thing — I’m glad the game gives us something to keep doing besides just walking. And the fights are interesting. The whole experience is interesting. It doesn’t look especially great, but it has a cool art style. Static images and HD video of the game look great, but in VR things get a little muddied down, almost like a PS2 level. I don’t want a game like this to be super realistic, but a scoche up in fidelity would be nice.
The way Path of Fury presents itself, that experience, is really cool. It’s fun to play, it has a good enemy system, and a consistent design. It’s just not really trying anything new, and for folks that are still playing VR games that isn’t always something we want to hear.
This review is based on a Meta Quest code sent to SideQuesting by PR. Images and video courtesy the publisher.
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