Finally, a Spider-Man game in VR!….kinda.

Developer: Computer Lunch

Platform: Oculus Store (Rift and Gear VR)

Controller: Not required

Price: $2.99

I’ve always envisioned a Spider-Man game being great in VR (along with Transformers and Iron-Man with hand tracking). It seems my dream has come to fruition with Swing Star VR, which debuted May 5. The premise is simple: you’re a kid, you’ve got a helmet with a sticky hand that can jut out of it, reminiscent of those cheap sticky rubber hands in supermarkets.

There’s an official story about some technology company inventing something that goes horribly wrong, throwing the world’s physics out of wack but no one cares about the story in a game like this (it is non existent in the actual game). The focus here is swinging. Tapping the touchpad or A on your controller releases the giant hand of stickiness, and unlike Spider-Man games in which he clings to the sky, you’re gonna have to time your swings carefully because you actually need to latch on to objects. The end game is getting to a bell, upon which you will be congratulated with some confetti if you do well and are able to see your stats and go to the menu or move on.

The low-poly landscapes and the playful soundtrack give a nice backdrop to the swinging. Apart from rectangular objects, across the 16 levels you will see rocks which you can’t grapple on to, and various power-ups: Purple Jell-O that you can just sit in, cannons that shoot you out, and yo-yos that do exactly what you would expect them to. I do not get VR motion sickness easy, but these yo-yos did it for me. I tried to avoid them, in fact, for this reason.

The 16 levels go pretty quick, I was able to finish the game in about 3o minutes. This is one of my major gripes with the game, but the devs promise an update with more content is on the way. When that comes, I’ll update this review to reflect it (if I remember to). The gameplay is pretty simple but solid, and the difficulty predictably increases with each level, so even though the core mechanic is simple, precise timing and planning start to play a big role. Performance was pretty smooth except for the last level with a huge amount of boxes. This made it hard to play when looking up, but is not noticeable in the video due to it only being from one eye.

The great gameplay stays fun with variations however the motion sickness (which is highly subjective, YMMV) and lag at the end detracted from my enjoyment. Swing Star is a fun albeit short experience; I think it is definitely worth a look especially at the low price of entry.

+Lighthearted tone

+Fun gameplay

-Short

-Yo-yo motion sickness

-Lag on the final level

7/10