![]() ![]() Switching weapons is a case of physically dragging the item from a magical pocket and dropping it into Quill’s tiny hands. Dodging requires a simultaneous press of the attack and jump buttons, a bizarre choice given that half of the face buttons aren’t in use. The game instead requires the analogue stick of a standard DualShock 4, which you would expect to be put to full use. The game doesn’t use the (prohibitively expensive) PlayStation Move controllers which have become the standard for most of PSVR’s big titles. It’s a mostly welcome escalation, but it’s also where some of the limitations of the control scheme become more apparent. The fights also get more involved as every variety of beastie starts showing up at once, requiring you to work harder and faster than in the breezier opening worlds. It’s only tragically close to the finale that the puzzle rooms really start making the most of the toolset, requiring complex combinations of weapon and Reader abilities. The combat is similarly slight – Quill spends most of the run-time with just her sword and most fights can be breezed through with the game’s singular combo, but the crunch of metal and the scattering of debris always makes it a satisfying break from the platforming. The puzzles are rarely particularly taxing, but are immensely satisfying just to watch unfold and fall into place. The sense of physicality is easily among the best in the medium, it’s like having a pop-up book dangled in front of your gawping face.Įach vignette is typically either an environmental puzzle or an arena, and they’re paced out in such a perfectly measured way that you never tire of either. It’s like having a procession of increasingly elaborate sets for a stop-motion movie lowered onto your head, each one filled with details and nooks and crannies that you can’t help but lean and crouch and turn to examine as closely as you can manage. The world itself is a gorgeous series of perfectly realised fairytale vignettes. It’s a friction that’s rarely present in even the most experimental VR games, so it’s exhilarating to see it explored in a fantasy platformer. Which, inarguably as a player, you absolutely are. ![]() They consider you a manipulator, something just toying with the lives of lesser beings for their own amusement. Try to scratch this one’s ear and they’ll recoil in disgust, try to accept a sarcastically offered high five and they’ll pull it back at the last moment. ![]() Only Quill, through your mystical connection, can perceive you – rendering her as an almost Jeanne d’Arc-like figure, a revolutionary acting under divine guidance.Īn all-too-brief change of perspective in the game’s middle sees you haunting a far more sceptical rodent, one who views Readers with suspicion. Some characters know of them only through legend, through whispered myths that paint Readers as malevolent interlopers. The player assumes the role of a Reader, an ever-looming spectre from another world – an unseen hand orchestrating events from behind the scenes. By establishing the player as an outside influence, it lampshades that disconnect and uses it to astonishing narrative effect. The relationship between the player and Quill is a fascinating use of the unavoidable disconnect that still exists in virtual reality. Help her through a battle with mechanical beasties ten times her size and she might extend her minuscule paw out for a high five. She knows you’re there, occasionally glancing up at your towering spectral form and offering little affirmations in ASL. Much of the immediate joy of Moss is down to how truly alive and independent from the player Quill is. You don’t become Quill, you accompany and guide her through a myriad of puzzles and battles – directing her with the analogue stick while you exert your own will on the environment by moving platforms and possessing enemies. The act of reading gives this realm life, creating a metaphysical bond with Quill – a teeny tiny mouse with a big sword and an even bigger quest to collect magic stones and save the world. Moss is a fairytale, a hardbound tome about a realm populated by brave rodents and evil owls that you stumble on in a library.
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