Take a break from your gaming to go on a quick vacation… but you gotta keep those vacation metrics up! Check out our Vacation Simulator review!
Vacation Simulator – Launch Trailer – Owlchemy Labs
Welcome to the Vacation Simulator, a rough approximation of VACATION inspired by real human NOT JOBBING, brought to you by the same robots behind the Job Simulator. Reallocate your bandwidth and get ready to splash, s’more, snowball, and selfie your way to optimal relaxation!
Amenities:
● Experience Vacation Island, your destination for optimal relaxation and/or efficient memory-making!
● Customize a virtual YOU for picture-perfect selfies!
● Wave to interact with a colorful cast of Bots!
● Enjoy RECREATION beyond the theoretical limit in immersion-inspiring destinations!
● Splash in the silicon sea and bask in simulated sunlight, all without getting sand in your… hands!
● Get lost connecting with your roots, nodes, and branches… then get actually lost on a hike!
● Elevate your ice-sculpting skills to new heights and reach peak cozy by knitting mittens for a snowhuman!
● Exist in a comfortable, all-inclusive VR experience— free of motion sickness AND seasickness!
If you played Job Simulator back when it released on PlayStation VR – and if you haven’t, you should do it right now – you will have a general idea of what you are getting into with Vacation Simulator. This game takes place in the future as robots are trying to simulate the tasks that humans would do many years ago to try and find out why they did them. This often leads to comical results since they end up making even the more basic tasks very complicated. This time around, the robots have moved past the workplace and are now trying to understand how vacations work. With that out of the way, let’s talk a bit about Vacation Simulator on PlayStation VR!
And as I always do when I review a game for Sony’s virtual reality hardware, let’s talk about requirements to play this game. Since it’s a PlayStation VR game, you’re going to need the PS VR headset to play this one. Along with that, you will need a set of PlayStation Move controllers, since this one does not support the DualShock 4 controller.
Vacation Simulator actually caught me by surprise, as it had me create a custom avatar for my character. There is a mirror, and you can create how the character looks before you set out on this new journey. It then all started to click as I played the game since you’re given a camera that you can take pictures with while you are on your vacation – and yes, this also includes selfies. In fact, certain missions require you to take selfies to complete some objectives!
After getting set up and leaving your room, you enter the main lobby area where you’re presented with Vacation Bot and Efficiency Bot. Vacation Bot introduces you to the game and the concept of taking vacations. You can see you have a beach, a forest, and snow mountain areas to go on your vacations. Before you embark on this exciting journey of vacation discovery, Efficiency Bot shows up and talks about needing metrics to see how much you are really enjoying your vacations. He straps you with a wristband that will collect memories that are awarded to you after every mission you complete while on vacation. This sets up the story for the game, and it’s a pretty simple but effective way of getting Vacation Simulator rolling.
Once you get your freedom, you can choose to visit any of the three areas and start vacationing. When you arrive, you will see different robots scattered throughout the environment, each of them with quests and things for you do to have fun. You will use a teleportation system to move from area to area in the environments. The tasks they will have you do are all over the place. For instance, in the beach area, you will play water sports, build sandcastles, paint, and more. As you complete the tasks and earn memories, you will unlock some different bigger activities that are quite a bit of fun.
And here’s where I really started to enjoy my time with the game. As you complete some of the entry-level tasks in the game, the next set of objectives you’ll need to complete will require items from other areas for you to complete them. So you would have to pull your handy backpack by reaching for it with your PS Move controller towards your back, where you can store items in it. It also has your handy camera on its side. Your backpack will allow you to ferry items between the worlds and help you solve the missions presented to you. You might need to find different ingredients for food orders for the different bots, or just carrying something like a slingshot with you so that you can find targets in the other areas. This means that you need to pay attention to what you can find in each area so that you can be ready to make the most of each item. I also appreciated the lack of loading times as you exit the area you’re in and move to another one. I also found that teleportation makes it very easy to move around.
All the minigames, quests, or puzzles you will find are pretty fun, with some great humor thrown into the mix. They will keep you going for a while. Even tough puzzles start out simple, things get more complicated the further you progress in the game. What I really is there something for everyone here, making it a great game to act as a showcase title for your friends to try what PlayStation VR has to offer, especially with how players interact with the environments. Almost everything you see can be touched, picked up, stored, or used in some fashion. Heck, I could take the hats of the different bots and put them on my head.
There is some open form puzzle solving as well. In the snow mountain environment, I found a hot tub, but it was freezing. The control panel was actually in a block of ice, so I went to the Chalet and found a coffee maker, took a fresh brew and dumped it on the control panel. Thanks to this the ice melted, and this allowed, me to turn the temperature up, unfreezing everything, which made it possible to listen to the fun stories of the bot that was too cold in there.
Visually the game looks great good, keeping with how the team did things in Job Simulator. Everything is blocky and looks minimalist, but it makes sense considering what the robots are trying to achieve, as well as how the team behind this game is giving us a lot of liberty to do many things with the project.
I really did like the personality of the different bots, making talking to all of them feel very rewarding as I played. I love the “Simulator” worlds, and I can’t wait to see what they have planned next, now that they’ve done things for our workplaces and our vacations. Perhaps we’ll get an Exercise Simulator?
Final Thoughts
I think you can tell from the review I had a great time playing Vacation Simulator. It improves on what its predecessor did, creating a more open world feel to the game. The humor is spot-on, and playing through the different vacation activities are fun. What’s really impressive is how great of an entry point this is for people who are just trying PlayStation VR for the first time. Simple, Easy to Navigate, yet fun and engaging to play. Don’t miss out on Vacation Simulator!
Disclaimer
This Vacation Simulator review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by OWLCHEMY LABS..
