Last week we reported that HTC itself was working on its own videogame for the HTC Vive. Now we have our first glimpse of gameplay.
The game, named Front Defense, is on display at this week’s Computex event in Taipei, Taiwan. Going off of last week’s press release we knew that this would be a war-set first-person shooter (FPS) of some sort, but two videos posted online yesterday confirm that it is in fact based in the second World War. HTC has set up a huge booth with sandbags to showcase the title, with a backdrop resembling the in-game environment. What you see the player do in real life is what they’re really doing in VR.
Both videos, the first from mobile01 and the second from Tom’s Guide, have recorded some off-screen footage. Players take cover behind the sandbags and hold off approaching enemies with different weapons – one of which seems to be an MP 40 – using the Vive’s position-tracked controllers to aim. A crate to one side seemingly lets them throw grenades down the street too. At one point a tank turns up and the player uses a mounted turret to take it down. As the level progresses the street is torn to pieces. At the end of the above clip you can see a brief flash of a logo for Fantahorn Studio which, according to The Verge, is the name of the internal developer.
We still don’t know if Front Defense is destined for a full release or is simply intended to be a showcase for the Vive, though we wouldn’t be surprised to see it launch on Steam at some point. It’s also unclear if the experience goes beyond this one level; could players have a full FPS campaign to look forward to here?
Hopefully we’ll see much more of Front Defense in the near future. E3 is of course right around the corner and this looks like the ideal title to showcase how the tech can really put you into the types of experiences that we’re used to just seeing on a screen. If the game is in LA later this month then you can be sure that we’ll extract every detail we can on it.
Either way, it’s interesting to see HTC getting into the software side of VR, an area that it’s left to other developers and Vive co-creator Valve until now.
