Altair Breaker is a multiplayer sword-fighting game from Swords of Gargantua developer, Thirdverse. It's set on the floating island of Vastus Isle, once a magical workshop but now turned to ruins by LAWS (Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems). As a sword-fighter, you're tasked with helping Stella, a humanoid AI, in clearing the various environments of deadly robots.
The entirety of Altair Breaker revolves around playing the same single level repeatedly. This level has you play through four samey, barren areas, clearing a couple of waves of enemies in each before moving onto the next. These waves consist of just three enemy types; a sword-fighting robot, a shooting robot, and a slightly bigger unit that combines the abilities of the other two.
The entire level takes about 10-15 minutes to clear and is the only content available, other than a very empty hub area for managing your loadout and meeting with other players. You must grind up to level 20 — roughly 20 unrewarding runs through the one level — at which point you'll unlock a special sword, which is considered the end of the game.
Although in the hub area there is a pedestal for a second level, The Depths, after four hours of playing to reach level 20 it was still locked. The game gives you no indication of how to unlock it, and after speaking to multiple other players and researching the issue, we were unable to find any way to access the stage. It's possible this is simply a bug, but if so, it's a pretty bad one.
Speaking of which, the entire multiplayer experience is littered with bugs and glitches. Enemies leap backwards off platforms, only to respawn and do the same again, stuck in a continuous loop making it difficult to attack them. The hit detection on enemies is also completely off, making all the enemies frustrating to take down — even though they're relatively harmless as they miss most of their attacks.
The few redeeming features in the vibrant visuals, accurate hand tracking, and the somewhat enjoyable traversal when using the glider are just not enough to resurrect this unfinished title. Altair Breaker can barely even be classified as a fully-fledged game; it proves the VR software stereotype correct by just being a glorified tech demo.
Comments 11
We need blood and truth,astrobot wipeout omega collection,farpoint,I could go on but all the big psvr1 games on psvr2 instead of this
Always get a few of these at a new platform release. Trying to just get stuff out while people are willing to play anything on their new machine. Many far better games to choose from people (such as Resident Evil Village and GT7. Amazed we haven’t had reviews of these yet, but guess they are taking their time with the big guns).
This looked neat in the trailer, but reading this and the Steam reviews, it’s a hard passes thank you so much for so many VR reviews! This is very helpful with so many launch games.
I ended up buying this, not knowing it's online only because the game description doesn't say it. Visually it's impressive, and the combat is actually really good. But it feels like it's a GaaS without that aaS. The lobby has rows of terminals to launch missions implying it was meant to be a large room if dozens of players mmo style but there's only 3 other people at most. Really good concept that seems to be missing most of the content and forgets to tell you it's online only before you buy.
My first no voice chat muted experience was the random next to me groping the npc quest giver......
@NEStalgia The biggest negative for this game is the developer with it being always online. Swords of G didn't last long before the Devs pulled the plug rendering the game unplayable. What made it more annoying is that it took ages after the shutdown announcement and the removal of it from the psn store.
Always online sucks.
@JP80 I would say I’d rather have new games over ports, but in this case PSVR 2 is such a massive improvement with the tracking and controllers alone that I agree I’d like to see more of the big PSVR games get ports. I’d like to add to that list Marvel’s Iron Man, and I’d like to see an enhanced version of Vader Immortal similarly to how Tales of Galaxy’s Edge got an enhanced release for PSVR 2.
@NEStalgia You might be able to swing a refund if you state your case clearly.
@Darthmoogle yep all for new games as well as long as they are good unlike in this case lol but new games with a few ports of classics in between while they are being developed is a nice balance 🙂
@Sequel hmm, it's tempting but you probably have to do that within a day or two and I bought it several days back. Probably too late now.
@CaptD eew, you can say that again! It's a shame because it's not like they're not a skilled dev and peddle shovel ware, it's actually visually good game, at least the lobby, and they have good combat design for sure. And the lobby is a nicely designed map. It's just..... There's little else there and it's obvious it was meant to be very different.
@Wheatly Honestly I'd be tired of myself seeking for the killer app on things. When it comes to VR, I enjoy the so-called small experiences more than I would enjoy a 30 hour complex adventure. I think that VR is a matter of focus because it mostly requires consistency, and that consistency is easier to achieve with simpler mechanics. I'm giving it very short sessions anyways... except for a 1 hour long GT7 race from yesterday, but being in a car with the wheel's force feedback feels more natural and causes (at least on me) much less motion sickness. (Tip: if motion sickness is bad try with a wind fan pointing at you, it usually helps a lot).
@Wheatly Sure, value is relative.
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