League of War: VR Arena is a head-to-head, hands-on, fast-paced tabletop war game now available on PS VR. Learn more about it in our League of War: VR Arena review!
Swiftly deploy your tanks, infantry, and choppers on to the battlefield to destroy your enemy’s base before they destroy yours! You control armies of twelve distinct military units – mighty tanks, tenacious infantry, speedy recon units and more, all yours to deploy against your enemy’s fortified base. Meanwhile, your opponents have their own armies to deploy against your base, and they’re not going to sit on their hands waiting for you to blow them up!
We are given two game modes: Campaign and Arcade. Campaign places you in the boots of one of nine different characters, all with their own story and a short story tied to them. Overall, there isn’t a big difference between the available characters, except for which units you start with as well as the number of said units at your disposal.
Arcade Mode is essentially the same as Campaign Mode, but rather than starting with a predefined opponent you can choose who your opponent is or even play with a friend. This is achieved by you using the PlayStation VR headset and Move controllers, while player 2 takes on the action with a Dual Shock 4 and the display on your proper TV screen.
While in battle you will have five vehicle/troop launch pads in front of you, one for each unit type, and you also have four towers that make up your command base – this is what you have to protect. On the unit pads, you can see a ring that goes around it and a hologram of the unit assigned to the plate. Once the ring fills up, the unit becomes solid, and you can place it on the table for playing. The units on offer can generally be split up into three categories: ground troops, vehicles (such as tanks and jeeps), and aircraft. A rock-paper-scissors system is in effect where some units are weak to attacks from one group while they can also demolish another group with ease. As you progress through the campaign, your units will also be upgraded with more health and the odd new attack, but any hint of customization stops there.
The game has no tutorial, which isn’t a deal-breaker since the premise is pretty simple for players to understand. Due to the rock, paper, scissors mechanic on all the units, it would have been useful to have some more information on what which unit type counters which, but you’ll quickly learn this after a battle or two. There is another piece of information that would have been useful to have from the start: when you hold down the trigger on a unit you require, it diverts all your building resources to build said unit faster, which is a very welcome option mid-battle when your opponent might be getting ready to rush you.
The graphics are nicely rendered and look fantastic in VR. I found myself moving my head around the battlefield to see the units up close. But even though the graphics are impressive, the audio could do with some extra work. For example, the music is quite generic and there are some parts that sound like a scratched CD. The voice acting is decent and provides more personality to the cast of characters, but their limited vocabulary and the lines they are given are repeated to an annoying level. On the plus side, the sound effects are great and add a lot of satisfaction to each battle.
The title contains 13 trophies, so not really a huge task to collect them all for any trophy hunter out there. Most of these are obtainable by completing each character’s story path, so keep that in mind! As long as you stick with the game and check out each storyline, you should be good to go.
My conclusion on the game is that despite the bugs and issues mentioned above, when everything comes together, it plays fairly well and is enjoyable for the first few hours or so. The title gets dry real quick, however, unless you have other people to play with. Points for improvement would be the inclusion of a tutorial at the start and maybe adding a new game mode or two to keep things interesting. The team at MunkyFun has said it is looking into bringing online play into League of War: VR Arena, so you know they are indeed listening to their player base!
Disclaimer
This League of War: VR Arena review is based on a PlayStation VR copy provided by MunkyFun.
