Richie's Plank Experience is ugly as sin, has almost nothing to do in it, and it's my
favorite recent Vive release. The game starts you out at the base of a skyscraper in a busy city filled with horrendous looking cars traveling in ways no car ever could. Looking around, it feels like somebody found the free asset section of Unity and thought, "Nah. We can go uglier." But it doesn't matter. The sense you experience when you step into the skyscraper's elevator, select a mode, feel the dread as you watch the ground disappear through the crack of the elevator doors, and step out when you arrive is very real.
There are three modes. The main mode takes you up the skyscraper and opens the doors to nothing more than a plank jutting out from the doorway. You can walk out onto it and look around. If you stray too far from the plank, you plummet down to your doom. No matter how hard I tried to remind myself that I was standing in the middle of my living room, my pulse pounded as I looked down at my digital plank high above the concrete. The game might hurt to look at, but the effect is very real. This mode is also meant to be used with mixed reality, so you can set up your own physical plank to walk on and you can calibrate the game to your real world plank's size. This sounds terrifying.
This is a great mode to try a couple of times, but after the magic is over, it's hard to go back to.
The second mode is by far the best thing in the game and is easily one of my favorite VR experiences to date. Instead of a plank, you have a platform waiting for you. On it, you can select firefighting missions, but the fires are scattered throughout the city. How do you get to them? With an MFing jetpack! You control it in a way that is hard to explain but works perfectly when you try it. Your controller is basically the jetpack engine. You tilt it in a direction, you thrust in that direction. It's insane and wonderful. Your other controller is a water cannon for putting out fires. It's a bit wonky but it works. BUT GET THIS: If you reach behind your back, your water cannon switches to another jetpack engine. TWICE. THE. SPEED. Let the city burn as you scream around skyscrapers, buzz over cars, swoop under bridges. This is one of those things where words cannot do it justice. The third mode is a variation of this mode, except that you swap out the water cannon for a paint brush and can skywrite. It's not really precise enough to do anything too articulate with, even a giant skyscraper-sized dong.
Overall, I think it's well-deserving of the $8 for both the initial plank experience and the joy of tearing around in a jetpack. Definitely a lot of fun and great for demo'ing to friends.
Richie's Plank Experience is ugly as sin, has almost nothing to do in it, and it's my favorite recent Vive release. The game starts you out at the base of a skyscraper in a busy city filled with horrendous looking cars traveling in ways no car ever could. Looking around, it feels like somebody found the free asset section of Unity and thought, "Nah. We can go uglier." But it doesn't matter. The sense you experience when you step into the skyscraper's elevator, select a mode, feel the dread as you watch the ground disappear through the crack of the elevator doors, and step out when you arrive is very real.
