Platforms: PC (HTC Vive)

Hover Junkers could very well be the best gaming experience on the Vive right now and a glimpse into the future of competitive first person shooters. If you’re looking for that FPS tournament VR mayhem, Hover Junkers will scratch that itch.

Before we get to the review, it’s important to know that VR is the wild west, every game developer big and small is pushing to make VR the Next Big Thing. While Oculus dominated the press, HTC is the platform with the ultimate VR games. After all, Vive lets you reach out and touch someone. Oculus lets you reach out and touch your XBox controller.

Until Oculus releases their Touch controllers, Vive absolutely dominates anything involving movement and aiming. Meaning, Hover Junkers and other Roomscale-only games are de facto Vive exclusives.

Mind numbingly fun

So let’s get to it -- I love this game. It’s intense, it’s strategic, it’ll make you sweat and curse and celebrate like no other competitive shooter out there. Excited for Overwatch? Be excited for Hover Junkers and VR shooters. This is a whole new world of action.

And it’s proof that VR isn’t a gimmick but the next evolution of FPS. Really, Hover Junkers is a glimpse into the future of Halo VR, Battlefield VR, Overwatch VR, and anything that involves running and gunning.

More importantly, the Vive controllers are so damn accurate, the gameplay depends on your raw shooting skill, not flicking joysticks or twitchy mouse fingers. This is pure aiming action. In fact, after playing Hover Junkers, going back to a traditional FPS is like going from Halo to Contra. No joke, playing the Doom Beta just made me long for more Vive action. By next year, the premium shooters will be VR shooters. The experience is bonkers good.

Early Access

Let’s get a few things out of the way: Hover Junkers is brand new, more like a working demo and, honestly, I expected it to be a Steam Early Access Game. As of April 11th, Hover Junkers only has two weapons, a handful of maps and a small but noticeable number of bugs.

If you jump into this $34.99 game right now, expect to see more weapons appear in your delightfully steampunk arsenal in the coming weeks/months. The Junk developers at Stress Level Zero are being up-and-up about the half-baked status of the game. If this were a final retail console release, people would be rightfully disappointed. With Junkers, we’re basically getting the multiplayer tournament mode without a story mode for $35.

Really, the people who get crazy good at Hover Junkers now will be ready when the Junker Tournaments begin. You haven’t heard about the Junker Tournaments? Me neither, but I wouldn’t be surprised if see competitive Junker battles in the near future. In fact, learning VR gun gameplay is like learning to use WASD for the first time. Hear me now, competitive gamers -- if you don't start developing your VR aiming skills, you're going to get left behind.

Hard Core Gameplay

So let’s get to the good stuff. Hover Junkers is, despite the way it looks, a hardcore competitive shooter. In fact, that’s really all the game is about, in case you were confused about the pictures of scrap metal and tractor beams. You’ll be shooting with your pistol, shooting with your shotgun, and driving your floating dumpster around Mad Max’s back yard.

When you start, you’ll be surprisingly lost. It’s clear Stress Level Zero is spending their time improving the core gameplay (and adding weapons), rather than building a friendly tutorial.

So let’s get into the basics of the game:

Diet tutorial and intro

When you appear in the junk-o-sphere, your options are to do some target practice or get into the good stuff. You can take a trip to the target practice which involved getting your best Clint Eastwood impression on and plinking bottles off fences. You’ll notice the pistol is seriously accurate.

Aside from the pistol, you get a tri-barrel shotgun. That’s it. And that's the end of the "intro" or "tutorial" -- they expect you to learn fast or die, just like life in the dusty wasteland. Now, since Hover Junkers is all about splattering brains, two guns is about five (or five dozen) short of what I'd like to see. But when you start the current build of the game, you’ll see future guns like a machine pistol, long rifle and a flare gun (or what appears to be a flare, maybe it shoots grenades or trash or something). More guns are coming, that’s for sure.

Regarding accuracy, Hover Junkers seems to be one of the more accurate games, using a custom calibration within the game that goes above and beyond the standard SteamVR calibration.

In fact, go to the shooting range and you’ll be able to hold up your pistol, close one eye and line up the sites on your target. And, damn, if it doesn’t work perfectly. Of course, this means is you have to actually be accurate when trying to blow someone’s thinker all over their beautifully decorated recycling bin.

Getting your game on

In the main cantina, you’re greeted by a friendly robot with, again, more confusing choices about what the heck you’re supposed to do. At the end of the small space, you’ll see character selection: dude, dudette or robot. You can also choose their outfit color, but no unique outfits yet, I’m sure we’ll see some crazy options in this wonderfully bizarre world.

You also get to select your ship, from tiny to huge. The ships roughly conform to your playable space, but it’s not anywhere near exact. Does it matter? Sorta, not really.

Finally, above the robot you can see open games. Or you can start your own game. But don’t do that, just jump into a FFA six person match and get to killing.

Driving your floating dumpster

hover-junkers-vive-review-5.jpg

The “hover” part of Hover Junkers solves the main issue of VR -- movement. Actually, it doesn’t “solve” it so much as make it manageable, unique and, often, annoying.

The way movement works is you use your main tool to start your ship. The process of starting your ship isn’t exactly logical and, if you’re struggling to figure out what you’re supposed to do, aim the light blue Ryobi at the red ignition switch and pull the trigger.

Once started, the trigger controls acceleration -- point the controller in the direction you want to go and the ship gets to moving. While driving, you can navigate with a domed virtual Google Maps floating above your hand so you can see the terrain and other vehicles around you. This is how the iWatch should work.

Strangely, your ship moves like a crane claw game -- forward and back, side to side. You can’t spin or turn your ship around. Meaning, when your ship spawns facing north, it’s always facing north.

You, however, can move around your ship with your legs IRL.

All thumbs

When you first start playing, two guns seems like too many choices. If you press the button above the trackpad, you’ll open your controller menu. Up for shotgun, down for pistol, left for grabber tool and right for your hand. What do you use your hand for?

Playing the game requires you to use your grabber tool to drive your junker with one hand while holding a gun in the other. You can, of course, switch out the tool for a second gun. Tap the selection button above the trackpad to quick switch to your last weapon. This lets you rapidly jump between shotgun and pistol or tool and pistol.

I found the best strategy was to always have one hand controlling the ship and the other hand firing. The added muscle of a second gun wasn’t as useful as moving closer for a headshot or dodging when getting pinned on either side by hostiles.

Reloading like a pedestrian

Stress Level Zero created a unique way of reloading for each weapon. For the revolver, you’re required to click the big trackpad on the controller to release the cylinder, slide your finger around the circle to load the bullets and then physically whip your wrist to lock the cylinder in place, just like a six shooter.

For the shotgun, you simply click the big trackpad to open the triple barrels, click the trackpad three times again to load all the shells and then snap your wrist back to lock the barrels in place.

Overall, these motions are pretty fun and accurate. But in a competitive shooter that owes more to rocket-jumping than accurate reloading, the tedious nature of the reloading process separates the men from the boys. When you’re deep in a bloodbath, firing and ducking behind old stop signs, quick reloading is the difference between life and death.

What about the junk?

The idea of “junking” -- where you raid the post apocalyptic thrift store for parts and attach them to your ship like a hobo’s shopping cart -- is a secondary part of the game. In fact, I think Hover Junkers does itself a disservice by putting its marketing focus on collecting items over the core shooting fun. Much of the press has been about the ships -- ship size, ship construction, ship style, etc. But the game could lose all the junk and just call itself “Hover Tournament.”

When you start, you think you need to collect junk for points. Really, it’s more of a mobile strategic cover setup, which is really damn cool. So instead of always looking for cover when under fire, you can move your junk pieces to different areas of your ship for better cover.

When you start a new game, you get a half dozen pieces of junk in your junk box. Using the tool, you can put the junk all along one side of your ship or spread it out evenly. Without junk, you’re basically asking to be murdered in the face. Junk is your only cover, aside from having a large ship that can give you some additional cover. Moreover, if you’re strategic with the ship’s movement, you can effectively wall yourself off from your enemies to shoot them from behind your virtual pillow fort.

While the guns are the most fun, the junk does give the game a level of depth and creativity that’s not typically found with other shooters.

The downside of the junk system is that your scrap heap is fleeting. You build it once a game, no keeping your trash constructions with you from level to level. And the junk can and will be destroyed by incoming fire. Sure, you can collect more junk across the map, but the gameplay is typically so fast and furious it’s hard to get the time to find more scraps and glue them to your jallopy.

Really, the gameplay owes more to adrenaline-fueled shooters like Halo, not long-term strategic development you’d expect with a world-building junk feature. But the cover-junk mechanic is awesome gameplay that really takes this shooter to a new level.

The new workout

Oh, so I’ve probably lost five pounds playing Hover Junkers. If anything, Hover Junkers will make you realize how out of shape you are. Or maybe it's just me, a definite possibility. Really, you’re always moving in the game. Even if you think you won’t be, you’ll instinctively crouch and duck when the bullets start flying.

In fact, if you’re not on your knees aiming through a crack in a rusty piece of aluminum siding by the end of the first round, then you're doing it wrong. HJ is physical gaming at its finest, tapping into primal instincts. Eat your heart out Dance Dance Revolution.

In fact, I recommend knee pads. No joke. If you’ve gone paintballing before, you can expect an almost identical experience, albeit without the paintballs hitting your dome. If you don’t want to die on the regular, you’ll be diving on the ground, crawling, kneeling and sweating non stop. I hate to say it, but don't be surprised if you see Razer VR knee pads in the near future. With Chroma. The future is terrifying.

Future gameplay requests

So the game is new, it’s funky, it’s awesome and it has all kinds of room to grow. The good news is the developers are upgrading the game constantly. So what would I like to see improved?

First, I think it’s far too easy to creep up behind a two-person duel and get a cheap kill. Because the hovercrafts are silent, it’s near impossible to know if someone is behind you until you’re dead. Sure, getting sniped from the back is standard for any shooter, but because Junkers has a unique movement setup that requires two ships to basically dock like a pirate battle means you’re planted in one spot for the majority of the shooting action. Waging a two front war ends immediately since defending your rear is near impossible.

Speaking of pirate ships, when you reach ramming speed with your beater, I’d love to see some actual crash damage. As it is now, when two ships smash into each other they do nothing but stop. It seems like adding some damage or other mechanic would make sense.

Also, regarding damage, collecting the pieces of junk takes forever. At least, “forever” in a caffeinated killzone. I’d love to see more junk that could easily be grabbed off the ground and attached without having to go through the hassle of the boxes. Or slowing down, for that matter. I think building your fortress while in the thick of it would make for more interesting gameplay.

As for bothersome bits, I felt like the ships I chose didn’t come with a good mix of junk pieces. Or there were spaces entirely open on the ship that couldn’t be protected. Some ships handle the junk layout better than others. But some of the smaller or mid ships always had an opening right in the front for enemy blasting. I'm sure there will be a handful of ships that offer better natural defense while the remaining ships are for noobs (who am I kidding, we're all VR noobs). Have a favorite ship? Let me know. I wanna drive it.

Associated VR-Ready Vive PCs

I played Hover Junkers on two computers: the monster MSI GT72S Dominator Pro laptop with the VR-ready 980 graphics card (check out our review here) as well as the iBUYPOWER Revolt 2 with a 980 Ti (review here). Both systems handled Hover Junkers without a problem. Interestingly, Junkers is one of the first games with optional graphics settings. In my brief tests, there seemed to be marginal or invisible differences between the options. Ideally, we'd see more defined levels matching the graphics cards options out there.

Should you buy it?

Yes, absolutely, buy it now. Hover Junkers is easily the best Vive shooter thus far. I absolutely cannot wait to see where this game -- and the entire competitive VR FPS genre -- goes from here. Hover Junkers is not just a great virtual reality game, it's a great game, period.

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