Deadpool VR demo delivers the bloody goods
I had a chance to play a half-hour demo for Deadpool VR, the new superhero action game coming to Meta Quest 3 and 3S on November 18th. I played on Quest 3, and found the game to be ludicrously intuitive and smooth to play. It's clear that developers at Twisted Pixel and Oculus Studios have been polishing this thing up to a brilliant sheen; Deadpool feels poised to join Iron Man and Batman in the top tier of VR superheroes.
In the section of the game I played, Deadpool is storming a SHIELD helecarrier. The demo did not make clear what his intentions were, beyond killing a bunch of dudes and wrecking a bunch of stuff (the demo kinda drops the player into the action without a ton of context, though it does feel as though it takes place towards the beginning of the game). What the half hour makes clear is that Deadpool VR is absolutely nailing the feel of the character, both through the voice work by Neil Patrick Harris and the liberal and bloody use of Deadpool's twin pistols and katanas.
Sorry, homies, you gotta click through to see the trailer. Age gating...what can you do?
This is one of those smart VR games that returns your gear to its holster whenever you drop it or throw it away, so you can easily reach behind your back to grab your katanas whenever a baddie gets too close (or you get bored and wanna chop some dude down the middle). Enemies also drop their weapons when you take them down, and they hover in the air for a few moments, allowing you to grab them for a quick combo.
Toward the end of the demo, Deadpool gets access to a grapple gun, which allowed me to grapple all over a room while spraying guys below me with an endless hail of lead. The mechanic reminded me of the VR hijinks you can pull off in Sairento VR, combining double jumps, wall runs, and grappling to completely stymie your foes and take them down before they know what happened. It's a total hoot.
I can't say enough about Neil Patrick Harris' voice work. The developers absolutely picked the right guy to step into the red and black jumpsuit for this game, as Harris has the comedic chops to carry the endless prattling of Deadpool in a way that will soon have you forgetting other actors you've seen (and heard) in the role. Harris can deliver the sarcasm, references, and dirty non-sequiturs with the best of them.
My time with the demo has be very jazzed to play the full game. From the trailer, it seems that there will be a lot more to Deadpool VR than just storming a SHEILD installation and chopping up a bunch of faceless bad guys (not that it wasn't fun). The game seems to be delivering the perfect combo of chaos, hilarity, and violence, and I'm absolutely excited to see what surprises the final game has in store when it hits late this fall.
