Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset

The Star Wars franchise has shown a lot of support for VR over the past few years, and though the library of Star Wars VR games varies somewhat in quality, there is no question that, no matter the context, it can be absolutely awesome to see your favorite Star Wars characters standing in front of you, or to wander among and even fly life-sized Star Wars ships. From lightsaber battles with Darth Vader in Vader Immortal to trying to get a handle on flying a TIE fighter in Star Wars: Squadrons, the Star Wars franchise has offered a lot of ways for fans to step into the fabled galaxy far, far away and be enveloped by that universe. Heck, even Star Wars Pinball VR is impressive.

Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset is offering another take on Star Wars in VR. But unfortunately, much of the sense of awe and wonder cultivated in other Star Wars VR titles is missing from this new experience. There are three separate, somewhat disparate modes in this game, and the lack of overall focus ends up making each mode feel as though the Star Wars chefs were baking with a few missing ingredients. Though some effort is made to tie these modes together, the overall package comes off feeling half-baked.

This is very cool

The marquee mode in Beyond Victory is the Adventure mode, which is a brief campaign that most players should be able to complete in two or three hours. Beyond Victory is a Podracing game (kind of), and the campaign tells the story of Volo Bolus, a young Podracer. After a turn of bad luck, Volo has to throw in with a gang of baddies led by none other than Sebulba, the aggressive Dug racer from The Phantom Menace. The story is well told with some great voice performances, and—while a bit lightweight—is mostly enjoyable.

The visuals in this portion of the game are a mixed bag. Much of the game is played out in a diorama format. There is a large frame that sits in front of the player, and the characters and structures move about on it in miniature. The player can move and adjust the frame to change the size and position of the play space. In a neat touch, the frame often has depth to it; you can see down into the world through the frame, as though it is a portal to the Star Wars universe. I absolutely love this sort of VR visual, as I enjoy looking at the tiny details that become apparent when you jam your face down super close to the miniature world.

This is less cool

But some frustration occurs because the game has established this cool diorama framework, and it then proceeds to break it in a bunch of different ways. Camera zooms frequently interrupt the flow of cinematic conversations, causing the characters to appear larger for dramatic effect, which can be jarring. Entering structures shifts players to first-person mode to explore the space and solve small puzzles and challenges. While the first-person segments are well done, it’s not as cool as the diorama mode, and it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. And then, Lord help us, there’s the racing.

The story calls upon the player to win Podraces four or five times to complete the game. The racing happens in diorama mode, which at first seems like a cool idea, but in reality is pretty much a nonstarter. The player gets control of a tiny Podracer on a tiny track and is asked to win each race in order to proceed with the story. There are multiple problems with this, not the least of which is the fact that you can only see a small portion of the track at a time, so you have no idea what is coming up. If racers are in front of you, you can’t see how far ahead they are. Likewise, dudes just come zooming up behind you with no warning whatsoever. I suppose the idea is that Podracing is a seat-of-your-pants challenge, but not allowing the player to actually see the track ahead is a piss-poor way to demonstrate this concept.

This is not cool at all

The Podracers themselves—perhaps correctly—are super floaty and difficult to control. They are prone to flying off the track and exploding, particularly when entering sharp turns, which the player absolutely cannot see coming. Podracers are also equipped with boosts and weapons, which the player absolutely must use in order to win, but if you use them at the wrong moment (and there is no reliable way to know if it is the right moment), you win yourself a one-way trip to the inside of a fireball. Various pick-up icons line the track as well, but the game doesn’t bother to tell the player what any of them do, so good luck with that. In the end, there are two ways to win these races. You can either play them enough times to memorize the courses, or you can get lucky.

These critiques carry over to the Racing (or “Arcade”) portion of the game package, which is as barebones as you can get. You can play on the exact same tracks that you just raced through in Story Mode. If you have patience enough to do so, you can complete challenges during the races to unlock more characters and Podracers. There are some leaderboards as well, but I can’t see anyone but the most devoted fans playing Arcade Mode enough to care. Arcade mode is pretty much a bust, and the only reason to engage with it is to complete challenges to unlock goodies in what I consider to be the game’s primary reason for existing: Playset Mode.

In Playset Mode, the player is given a bunch of action figures, accessories, structures, and effects (think clouds of smoke), which they can arrange as they see fit in AR passthrough mode. This is almost as cool as it sounds. You can select a Tie Fighter, for example, then expand it to life size and have it hover in front of your house. All of the action figures have a ton of points of articulation, which allows you create all sorts of fun poses.

To me, this mode is really the star attraction here. The campaign is okay. The racing is awful. But playing with your action figures is absolutely amazing. After a few minutes of dorking around, however, the novelty wears off and problems become apparent. The immediate frustration I experienced was just the simple lack of fun stuff to play with. You unlock items for Playset Mode by completing Challenges in the other two modes. A simple playthrough of the campaign will get you some stuff, but you actually have to participate in the Arcade mode if you want everything.

And once you have everything, you start to realize that this game’s version of “everything” isn’t nearly enough. No, I want everything. The figures available are mostly things from the game, with R2-D2, C3P0, and Vader thrown in on the side. But I want the Millennium Falcon, and stuff to create Ewok villages, and BB-8. Or, if deep cuts are off the table, I would be happy with more of the basics. How about lightsabers? Or Boba Fett? Or X-Wings? Instead, I have five different protocol droid skins. What in the world am I supposed to do with that? Stage a protocol droid camping trip?

I also became a bit frustrated with the game's ship offerings. Vehicles that are unique to Beyond Victory can actually be driven around like remote control cars, which is pretty darn cool. But the few ship that I really want to fly—pretty much the TIE fighters—are stuck in static mode. You can position them, but forget flying them around. How amazing would it be to stand on your front porch and fly a mixed reality TIE fighter around the neighborhood, popping off shots at the neighbor's annoying dog? Come on, guys. You know that would be awesome.

But even with these restrictions, I thought that I could go outside and stage something halfway decent for this review so I could lightly demonstrate how cool this Playset Mode could really be. But as soon as I dropped this relatively modest army of Stormtroopers in the leaves in my backyard, the game threw a warning. I had used too many items and I was running into memory issues, which would negatively impact performance. Sure enough, as soon as I tried to give my stormtroopers blaster rifles, the game started chugging. I ended up giving two of the guys in the front guns and leaving everyone else unarmed.

I was unable to create the scene I really wanted. I wanted lasers coming from the TIE fighter, and a small army of…I guess protocol droids(?) to defend the tent with R2 And C-3PO, with clouds of smoke and all that. But due to the restrictions the game has while running on Quest 3, I had to be satisfied with dropping in a kaiju-sized Hutt and calling it a day. The game could not perform up to the standards created by my somewhat modest ambitions.

"I have come for my crates of Pumpkin Spice!"

But still, the potential is here for something amazing. If Lucasfilm and ILM focused on improving the performance of Playset Mode and then dropped DLC character and goodie packs, I would buy every single one of them. A full-featured Mixed Reality Star Wars Playset mode? Forget about it. Take all my money. I’m totally in.

But for now, we have Beyond Victory, a game consisting of three kneecapped modes that aren’t likely to fully please anyone. The Adventure and Playset modes do have some fun to offer, and fans will likely enjoy them to some extent. But for a product that is carrying the name “Star Wars,” I want something more than “okay.” I want something awesome.