Adr1ft

When a little less than a year ago the first images of Adr1ft were shown to the public, we all thought it was the ideal game for a Virtual Reality environment. All the ingredients of a spectacular experience were there: the Earth orbit, a space catastrophe, a survivor What more could we ask for? Well, a little game would not have been bad. The problem of Adr1ft is its own

 

destiny as a launch game in Oculus Rift. For people who have never touched virtual reality, those who put on a Rift for the first time will be amazed by the

 

jumps in space, or the space suit we are wearing, but there are many people who have been trading in outer space for many months. RV with gems like Elite Dangerous, and Adr1ft only surprises graphically.

ADR1FT (PC) screenshot

That is his Achilles heel: try to show us how fascinating is virtual reality, completely forgetting its goal is to put us in that virtual environment so magical that they have created to do something interesting. Once we have completed the tutorial the entry is already a

 

bit chaotic. We woke up in space with our base completely destroyed in Earth orbit but we can not help feeling that we have missed a part, something that explains how we have arrived at that situation and what is worse, ask ourselves what we paint there.

When we open our eyes it is one of those moments that you feel that the RV is a world apart. The isolation, the ground down there and especially the detail of the suit adds an extra realism to any space game. You can move your head inside your helmet,

 

observing the hud in the glass of your helmet, as well as the interior seams or small rivets. Virtual reality has that, every time you change gender it surprises you, and when you have not used it for a few days it surprises you just the same. The problem is as we

mentioned at the beginning, the space is fascinating, but after a while, walking around the ship in quite generic scenarios, you are wanting to go outside to see the land and here you have done an excellent job. But in general, it’s quite the same if there are more survivors, their messages,

 

We are in the shoes of Commander Alex Oshima whose only mission is to repair the Northstar IV systems. The problem is that the Northstar is no more than bits distributed throughout the space, but conveniently at a reasonable distance from one

 

module to another. And here comes the main plot of the game: walk from module to module to go fixing systems but never achieve that you feel involved in the desperation that should mean hanging on a completely destroyed orbital base.

The final goal is to activate a rescue capsule to return to Earth. There are recordings and emails with information about the crew and an explanation of what has happened. But they seem too disconnected for us to feel attached, they also involve the

 

protagonist too much, creating a bit of narrative chaos. Do I have to find out how I acted when I’m supposed to know? That unless we do not avoid the hackneyed story that the explosion coincidentally caused amnesia.