REVIEW: Telefrag VR

Unreal Tournament-esque gameplay on a budget

Author: Avatario
Steam: Released
PS4: Coming Soon
Type: Multi-player FPS
Genre: Virtual Reality, Action, FPS
Developer: Anshar Studios
Publisher: Anshar Studios
Release date: 15 Nov, 2018

Intro

Telefrag is a first person shooter that is all about speed and precision. It’s a game where every screen capture looks beautiful and the maps appear to be well crafted. From the same developers that brought the VR community Detached, Telefrag looks to be a Combination of Quake level speed and Unreal Tournament maps and weapons.

Let’s hope it holds up in person, here are some features for you list-philes

– 3D Rudder Support
– Flack-Canon, Plasma Rifle, and Rocket Launcher
– Tele-fragging alternative fire & teleport
– Weapon Load-outs
– Hyper-Dashing
– 1v1 arenas
– Armor & Health pickups
– Warp gates: One-way & Bi-dire4ctional

Story

Set in an alternate Earth timeline where the Romans conquered all and eventually set out into the inky void of space, you now fight in a tournament to see who is the most powerful spartan!

The “X” Factor

Above all else, it is the beautiful graphics and exotic MC Escher/Inception-like locations in which you do battle that set this game apart from the rest of the VR communities FPS crowd.

I was caught off-guard and murdered more than once while taking in the sights. The way the maps wrap around you and float in mid-air is truly something to behold.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t have other great qualities, such as the incredible movement system and the true raw speed of its characters. This is also one of the downfalls, though, as you are playing a twitch response game with clunky Vive wands. More on that later…

Technical issues & Glitches

I had no dropped frames, no issues with sound or graphics, and the UI worked great. While I did experience some lag, I think it was on my opponents side of things.

Music & Sound Design

The music is adequate, not wonderful, but not grating or irritating like some games that try to inflate the sense of action with loud or heavy metal soundtracks.

The sound effects are actually very similar to that of the Unreal tournament era of games and are a great fit.

Key Audio Features:
• great weapon sound
• sounds that emphasize the movements of the players and weapons
• positional audio

Missed Opportunities:
• more variety



Graphics

Telefrag is a beautiful game to behold; the maps are enormous and interesting, just oozing with detail.

The weapon models are some of the best in any game I have ever played ever. Without exaggeration, you need to download the title while it is still free just to gawk at the Smexy gunz.

Gameplay

One-Vs-One Arena combat is set in exotic locations, with fun toys to fight with. The name of the game is speed and agility, with some tactical thinking involved.

The teleport mechanics are great and feel right, the ability to alter the beam course after it is fired makes the landing zone for your shot hard to predict for your opponent. You have places to hide, ways to mitigate damage through armor pickup, heal with health pickups, and you can even plot a path through static gates, or lay in wait on the back side of a one-way portal to ambush your foe.

The concept is sound, obviously as this style of gameplay and combat is a mashup of two of the greatest FPS games in history. The first time you frag an enemy is a great feeling but the STRONG disadvantage you incur vs oculus or possibly in the future Playstation VR players will cause extreme frustration and more than likely suck all the fun out of the game. #ragequit!

Controls

THE WORST PART of the game by far…

On several occasions you will find yourself face to face with another player where, to avoid being shot, you will likely find you both keep sliding side to side rapidly. Whoever has the least amount of delay between slides will always win. There needs to be a cool down for the side slide movement, an oculus player can teleport side to side with so little delay they practically exist in both/neither place while you stand there getting blasted in the face or telefraged.

Vive wands are notorious for having an issue with pad click movement, over time they wear out. It isn’t skill that will win the day but a better hardware layout/button options. The good thing is the dev is branching out and adding extra peripherals, like the 3D Rudder from PlayStation. So who knows, perhaps we will get Treadmill or knuckles support.

Verdict

The Good:
• Gameplay is tight
• Guns are fun and familiar
• Nostalgia is through the roof
• Good sound effects
• Maps are awesome
• Graphics are amazing

The Bad:
• Music is only decent
• Not a whole lot of content at the moment
• Some lag

The Ugly:
• Controls are very poorly configured for the Vive

Verdict:
Telefrag is fun and exciting, but lacks balance and gives huge advantages to players with particular control schemes. Due to the slide mechanic, the player with the fastest side to side movement on their control will win the match 90% of the time.

The game’s graphics are some of the best I’ve seen. However, you will likely grow bored very quickly of the same three weapons and the few maps offered at this point.

Another thing I feel needs to be considered is that without a single player campaign there isn’t a whole lot of replayability at the moment. You can see all there is in a 30-minute window, so if the game doesn’t trigger something in you and get you hooked for more, you won’t be around for when the game patches in additional content.

What is here is a great sign the developer knows what they are doing and it has a lot of potential, but you might want to hold off until there is more to see. Otherwise, you may burn out before it really grows enough to shine.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the review!

Written by
Dead Parrot
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