After so many hours of Beat Saber, I have to say it felt damn good to have some officially licensed sound effects as I swung my honest-to-goodness lightsaber around in Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series - Episode 1 (of three). This 45-minute Star Wars game (which is exclusive to the Oculus Quest at launch) is fairly simple mechanically and the story hasn’t yet gone anywhere all that interesting, but it delivers on what’s promised: to put you into the Star Wars universe.

The story has Vader scooping up your generic smuggler stand-in character and sassy droid sidekick (voiced by Maya Rudolph) as part of a quest he began in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; he needs someone of your Force-sensitive bloodline (“Surprise!” said no one) to seek out a cliche magical artifact from Mustafar’s distant past. I wouldn’t call it especially interesting thus far, since the stylized cinematic that tells the mystical tale of the artifact’s origin and your family ties to it feels like it could’ve come from any fantasy tale with no Star Wars association, but it takes us where we need to go.

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Once you’re inside Vader’s castle, it thus far doesn’t feel terribly distinctive next to your typical Imperial fortress, but the good part of that is that it’s certainly nice to be immersed in so many familiar Star Wars sights and sounds. That is, after all, what we’re here for! The Oculus Quest’s limitations are hard to miss in places, though, and I couldn’t help but stare at some incredibly low-polygon TIE Bombers in the hangar bay when I first arrived.

“ Coming face to face with the Dark Lord of the Sith himself is pretty impressive.

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There’s a new Imperial character who feels pretty redundant to Vader, considering his distinctive trait is a cyborg arm and partial cybernetic face that gives him a deep, muffled voice. Also, he doesn’t really do anything. We meet some Mustafarians as part of the story as well, and though they would fit right in as extras in the Mos Eisley Cantina, they haven’t yet done much to set themselves apart from the rest of the Star Wars menagerie.

Very little of what Vader Immortal: Episode 1 does will feel mechanically new or innovative to anybody who’s been around the VR block a few times, but the various activities do feel well put together. It has a handful of pleasingly tactile puzzles for opening doors that involve ripping open and reconfiguring control panels, climbing ladders and pipes by reaching out and pulling yourself toward handholds, deflecting incoming blaster bolts that are lobbed at you like a Little League softball pitch, and of course, lightsaber combat. (Yes, one of the first things I did with the lightsaber was to point it directly toward my face and ignite it - I was only slightly disappointed I did not die.)

“ The lightsaber battles feel amazing at first.

As far as controls, Vader Immortal offers the now all-but-standard options for either teleportation or free move, with some customizations in between. The one thing I found annoying when using the free-move control option is how often control is taken away, locking you in place.Finally, there’s a lightsaber training mode where you fight waves of the hovering drones that Luke fought when he first held his lightsaber. You’re not made to do it with a helmet blast shield down to blind you as he was, so it’s fun for a few rounds to bounce back blaster fire and slice them in half when they get close, but I don’t expect to trade in Space Pirate Trainer for this.