EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone review

Imagine yourself in a single-seat fighter-ship. You’re floating in the vast emptiness of space with three other pilots like yourself escorting a cargo ship. You think it’s just another quiet mission, easy credits in your pocket, but that’s not the case. Bogies appear on your radar – one blip, two blips, three, four. You and your fellow wingmen spring into action as you fire your cannons at the closest fighter and see it smash into the cargo ship’s shields. They’re swarming all around you and you’re taking shots from every which way. You’re breathing hard and sweat is dripping down your neck. There doesn’t seem to be an escape from this deadly rain of hellfire and blanketing you.

This is Eve: Valkyrie – Warzone

It’s been about a year since the original release of Eve: Valkyrie for the PSVR. As one of PS4’s launch titles for their VR, it was taken with both open arms and criticism at the same time. However, with the release of Eve: Valkyrie – Warzone, they took the original game along with all the current DLCs and made it readily available to all players who are just getting into the PSVR craziness. Not only do you experience the original hectic space battles coupled with tremendous visuals, all the added content makes for a complete game now. Not that I’m taking anything away from the initial launch.

The Base Game

Eve: Valkyrie -Warzone is an awesome experience if you’ve never played a space shooter before. Sitting there with your VR headset on makes it all the more engaging since you have a 360-degree visual of everything around the cockpit up to whatever or whoever is chasing you on your six. Another step in the immersion is that it takes place within the EVE Online PC universe where you will definitely get blasted into kingdom come if you’re not paying attention. Your main goal in Eve: Valkyrie – Warzone is to take in as much cash as you can so you can upgrade and customize both your ships and your pilot. It’s a repeatable process, but an enjoyable one.

I wouldn’t say that there are classes in this game, but the selection of ships and their abilities lets you decipher what kind of space pilot you want to be within combat. With the added customization that I stated earlier, you can add to what your ship has to offer in flight. Do you want to be a defensive support ship? A high DPS damage dealer? Or do you want to play a healer type that flies around recharging your fellow wingmen’s shields? This all depends on your personal taste as a player/pilot along with the bevy of customizations for your ship.

Solo Play

The story mode in this game is quite lacking. Playing solo feels limited in this aspect as there doesn’t seem to be anything else other than the training scenarios, the survival modes, and the weird “recall” style missions. In fact, the story mode felt extremely disjointed and didn’t feel like anything was at stake. There were other modes such as training scenarios, scout missions, and survival, but that gets old pretty quickly. Once you’re done with the story mode and the other options, there’s nothing left for you to keep playing as a solo player.

Multiplayer

This is where the core gameplay comes into action. If you flag the cross-platform option you will be able to play with and against PC players. This will allow you to test your skill as a console gamer versus PC Gamers and it can get very intense. There are five different modes in multiplayer which makes for an exciting experience every time since the battles will never be the same. At one point you can feel like an ace pilot in Team Deathmatch, but then completely be a noob during Carrier Assualt. Also, the skill level of the players will also vary since you’re playing online. In solo play, the computer can become predictable at times, but in multiplayer, it’s a whole other ball game since the ship customizations come into play.

Final Reaction

While the overall gameplay and visuals of Eve: Valkyrie – Warzone is spectacular, it does leave a little bit to be desired when you’re playing solo. The immersion factor is top-notch along with the suspense of trying not to get blown to kingdom come in the middle of the empty blackness of space. Dodging, weaving, shooting, and barrel-rolling through asteroids and starship cruisers made me tingle in my seat with delight. I feel this is currently the only space shooter that’s captured what it feels like to sit in a cockpit of an actual spaceship and fight for your life. If you’ve ever watched Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, or any other space opera movie/show and love that genre, then this is the game for you. It’s a blast to play!

Rating: 4/5 Atoms