Jupiter & Mars | PSVR Review | A Tale Of Two Dolphins And The Ocean
15Jupiter and Mars is a game that will tell you the story of two dolphins whos lives are intertwined, while also delivering a a message about ourselves and our planet, while being backed by a beautiful soundtrack. Most of my play through was spent playing through PSVR but is also playable without VR if you choose, now lets begin by taking an in depth look beginning with objective and game play.
Jupiter and Mars takes place in the future where the earth is now covered by the ocean and humanity is nowhere to be seen. You play as the dolphin Jupiter from a first person perspective while being accompanied by mars on this journey of discovery. The game play itself will have you searching through various locations with each being open and explore-able. You will be helping out other sea life that are in need of assistance and also shutting down man made technology that was left over that is now disturbing the ocean. You control Jupiter a bit like driving a car with the triggers on your controller being used to move you forward and backward and the buttons will be used to send out mars to break objects, scan the area, or use your sonar to reach out to other marine life. The best way to describe the game would be a mix of exploration, a collectathon, and a hint of stealth elements with metroidvania thrown in. As you progress youll gain new abilities that will allow you to backtrack to areas you couldnt before while the stealth like gameplay of avoiding the human radar waves leads to using cover and timing your crossing closely. Its important to note that i felt no sense of motion sickness at all while playing. The biggest issue i ran into was getting lost on where to go next which had me spending some time wandering about locations trying to find my way. Next up lets talk features and content
Jupiter and Mars is a single player narrative driven game that took me just about 5 hours to complete start to finish. It has support for a VR and a non VR mode as you can see here to showcase the visual difference between the two, but more on that later. The narrative experience is delivered through mostly text but does feature some voice acting in between during cut scenes. My favorite addition to the game by far though has to be its sound track. The track selection is beautiful and really suits the world they built and what you see in game. There are a total of 5 locations to explore each being fairly open with its own theme and each having many things to collect spread out through each area. In terms of VR related options you have three ways to turn smooth, snap, and a head tilt option. You are also given the choice of reducing the FOV if needed. now lets move on to visuals and immersion.
Jupiter and Mars is a beautiful game when played in non-vr mode but sadly suffers from a lot of bluriness when you have that headset on and when you add in the wide open areas you cant help but get yourself lost at times. What this leads to is a constant reliance on using your scan over and over to know where your heading. This was played on the PS4 Pro as well, I hope to see a pro patch in the future improving this problem because it really does hurt my desire to hop into the game, its really hard to get immersed when your constantly pressing a button and wondering where to go. Outside of vr is a different story, theres a beautiful neon design underwater with the sea life and i really wish this would be better represented inside the headset.
In conclusion the game isnt really for me, I can appreciate the message behind the game and its story but it really does begin to feel like a bit of a collectathon over and over and while im sure this is something some would enjoy its not really an immersive experience in vr which is what i went in hoping for. The issue is only amplified by its resolution inside the headset, it becomes a collectathon where its hard to tell where you've been or where your going. I really hope to see this get a pro patch in the future because as of right now its hard for me to recommend playing it in VR.
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