During Sony’s E3 2017 press conference a whole slew of new PSVR games were announced from the perplexing sidescroller Star Child, to the unnerving and creepy The Inpatient. Hot on the heels of Farpoint though, Sony’s flagship VR device needed a new shooter for fans to sink their teeth into so when Bravo Team from Supermassive Games was revealed it looked just like the type of thing gamers would want. Utilizing the fantastic PSVR Aim Controller just made it seem even better too.
As it turns out though, Bravo Team isn’t exactly the next great sprawling shooter we thought it might be. Instead, it employs a very traditional modern military setting and rather than asking players to traverse large levels or move around the environment freely using the control sticks on the Aim Controller itself or DualShock 4, you just sit there and move from cover point to cover point like you would in arcade games such as Time Crisis.
During my demo I was on a freeway that was full of abandoned vehicles. My mission was to go from cover point to cover point slowly progressing up the highway. As I made my moves enemy soldiers would appear in waves, ducking behind car doors and trunks, firing at me from a distance. Using the PSVR Aim Controller I could reach up and blind fire from behind cars and aim down the sights to pick them off. Ammo packs and health boxes were spread around as well in true arcade game fashion.
The trailer above makes it look a lot more interesting than it actually is. We’ve played games like this before, such as Mortal Blitz, that aren’t necessarily bad, but it feels more like an early VR prototype than a second phase project designed to take the PSVR and Aim Controller to the next level. I’d have expected to see a game like Bravo Team at launch, not slated to come out a year or more after the headset’s been available.
My limited demo may only have shown a very short and abbreviated impression of the game, but it didn’t do much to make me think Bravo Team is going to be something special at all. When I saw the trailer I had visions of something like Onward or Pavlov on PSVR, but instead it’s just another wave shooter that doesn’t even have movement.
Bravo Team certainly has potential to be something worth your time, but the demo we saw at E3 2017 was less than impressive — even while using the PSVR Aim Controller. We’ll keep you posted on developments and how it shapes up before release, which is still TBD as far as we’ve heard.
What do you think of what you’ve seen of Bravo Team so far? Let us know down in the comments below!
