Pistol Whip is coming to PC VR and Oculus Quest on November 7 with a PSVR version “coming soon” as well.
The new John Wick-inspired Cloudhead Games title is described as an “action-rhythm FPS” which appears inspired by the art style of Superhot and the global rhythm phenomenon of Beat Saber. While Beat Saber gives you swords, Pistol Whip gives you a gun and its design makes you feel like you’re in an action sequence from a movie.
“There’s all these great action movies. How do we pull a user in a relentless, unstoppable way through an action sequence in a movie,” said Cloudhead CEO Denny Unger. “What people want is the power fantasy of having a gun and feeling like they are a badass action movie hero, but they don’t necessarily have the skills to be a John Wick or somebody like that. People don’t inherently have that accuracy, and the coordination necessarily to do all these crazy things with their weapon, so we just kept pulling back on what the user needed to come out of an experience feeling satisfied and feeling like it fulfilled that fantasy for them.”
The Oculus version of the game includes cross-buy so a single purchase from Facebook’s Oculus should work for both Rift and Quest. You can wishlist the game now on Steam, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest and Viveport. It launches with 10 songs from Kannibalen Records with plans for regular music and level updates.
Cloudhead is known for its early hand-controlled room-scale VR game The Gallery and its sequel as well as the introductory experience it released earlier this year for Valve’s Index Controllers — Aperture Hand Lab.
Here’s the latest trailer for the game along with a brief exclusive interview with the creators:
Cloudhead describes it as “inspired by God-mode action movies like John Wick and Equilibrium, Pistol Whip throws you gun-first into an explosive batch of hand-crafted action sequences each set to their own breakneck soundtrack.” In Pistol Whip you’re pulled down a long corridor with enemies spawning all around you. You’ll need to dodge the incoming bullets and you can either shoot the targets or punch them with your gun if they get in your way.
I’ve put dozens of hours into early versions of Pistol Whip but I’ve agreed not to share gameplay impressions until we’ve played a more complete version of the game. We’ll have those impressions and gameplay footage for you in the coming weeks so check back soon for details.
“There’s a subset of people who we still need to get into VR,” said Designer Antony Stevens. “We still need to get people coming back into VR and Beat Saber is a great example of doing that. It’s great for first time players, its great for return players. It’s a solid product. But I mean — it’s not everyone — and maybe we hit the other side of the coin with Pistol Whip.”
