Since it seems as though our wild dreams of the Nintendo NX being that company's leap into virtual reality are not going to come to pass, the question of when classic Nintendo franchises will be playable in VR remains unresolved.

Fortunately, however, if you want to play Zelda in VR today, right now, you basically can. Sure Vanishing Realms isn't officially a Zelda game, but all the essential elements are there: swordplay, puzzles, and (most importantly) smashing pots.

Room-scale sword-and-shield combat

In Vanishing Realms players take the role of a vaguely defined heroic figure tasked with defeating a skeleton king, finding treasure, and progressing through the game's two current chapters (with more planned) by slashing with a sword, blocking with a shield, firing arrows, and blasting fireballs.

Vanishing Realms is currently nearing the end of its Early Access period, and its basic mechanics have vastly improved since the game's early days. Combat in the latest version of the game feels surprisingly tight and responsive. With many VR games there's a disconnect between the motions you make in real life and what happens on screen, but Vanishing Realms has managed to refine its combat controls so that things feel natural.



You raise your arm to block with your shield, and it works just like you would expect it to. You swing or stab with your sword, and if your virtual weapon tries to move through your opponent's shield, well, then that attack is blocked. You have to choose your moments and angles of attack, picking your spots around the defenses of your enemies.

The room-scale VR and touch controllers offered by the HTC Vive are essential to the Vanishing Realms experience, and the game manages to incorporate the teleport-movement mechanic that's becoming ubiquitous in VR in a way that doesn't detract from the game's combat. Going toe-to-toe with your skeletal foes is the best and most satisfying way to kill them, and teleporting forward and back to dodge and strike quickly becomes second nature. By the time you acquire ranged weapons you're facing tougher opponents, many of them with ranged attacks of their own, so constantly teleporting away and attacking enemies from range isn't an overpowered strategy.

Puzzles and secrets

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Part of what makes Vanishing Realms feel more like a complete game than many of the other VR experiences out there (even those not in "Early Access") is the way in which it does multiple different things well. So many VR games available right now feel more like impressive tech demos than actual games because they just task you with doing the same basic thing over and over. Shoot a bow and arrow. Mix potions. Make food. Look at a whale. Repeat until bored.

Vanishing Realms, on the other hand, has all sorts of stuff in it, just like a real game! You have a few different weapons to choose from for your combat against a modest variety of enemies, but between fights you need to manipulate objects to solve puzzles, light torches to see the areas around you, literally duck in real life to avoid swinging blades, track down treasure, and, best of all, hunt for secrets.

Finding all of the game's riches involves things like tossing a skull at a vase perched on top of a column (again, keep in mind that this involves a real-life throwing motion, which makes everything feel natural and remarkably cool) and using a torch to burn a tapestry hanging on a wall.

Over too soon

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The biggest knock on Vanishing Realms is that it doesn't last longer. You're likely to get through the game's two chapters in somewhere around 5 to 10 hours if you take your time and hunt down all the secrets you can. And while there is a certain about of replay value to be found in trying out different fighting techniques and repeating the second chapter's timed combat challenges, you're likely to be left wanting more.

Fortunately, it sounds like more content is on the way according to the latest update from the devs on Steam. The first two chapters will soon launch out of Early Access, with additional chapters planned as DLC (or potentially as a separate release depending on how advanced they become). Fans of the game are sounding off in the comments, debating whether or not $20 for the current two-chapter experience is acceptable or whether planned DLC should be included as part of what players have already paid, but given the state and cost of VR development it's likely more content will cost more money.

From my perspective, Vanishing Realms stands as one of the clear success stories of early VR game development, and is without question one of the very best experiences to be had on the Vive. If the game offered somewhere around 20 or 30 hours of gameplay and cost the usual $60 you pay for a AAA release that wouldn't seem excessive, so from that perspective $20 for the game's current state feels about right.

For more VR news and hardware, visit Newegg VR Central.