Immediately after finishing a session, I checked my watch’s heart rate data switch back to VR. 126. This is not the exercise zone, but it is the highest value of the day, well above the resting rate. When your heart rate goes up like this, it feels nothing like physical activity. You know it’s not normal. In the enclosed VR environment, coupled with the stomach churning you get in a theme park, I really had to take a break because I was worried I might collapse. Switchback VR is too scary for me to take in anything other than brief bursts.
Switchback VR, the follow-up to Supermassive Games’ Rush of Blood, is a light gun-style rail shooter, this time set in the Dark Pictures universe. More importantly, it’s a game that takes pleasure in making players poop (hyperbole, but maybe reality in some cases — I can’t speak for everyone’s experience). This is a game that grabs your attention in such a way that if you buy a spot remover at the nearest store, you’ll probably get your neck back with a jump scare that can lead to whiplash and panic.
In each of the four games in the Dark Pictures series so far, you’ll ride a theme park trolley on real tracks through several levels. While some events may affect what happens in front of you, the causal nature of the core gameplay in the series has been ditched in favor of terror-inducing panic-shooting of terrifying enemies. A horde of ungodly terrorists will come at you from every angle, jump out of doorways, spew blood from pools of blood, and generally do what they can to screw you over. Some even respond to blinking, moving to a new location when you open your eyes again—an experience I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to have.
How this roller coaster ride through various themed areas fits into an overarching story centered around a train/subway accident isn’t entirely clear, but it’s fair to say that story isn’t the reason to play Switchback VR. In fact, even the link to Dark Pictures isn’t very good. The curator is the only constant in all games and is here, but it’s more like you’d occasionally see G-Man in Half-Life – mostly on the sidelines, in the background, and not doing much matter. Fans will definitely get more out of it than others, but I wouldn’t call it a must-have game because the core gameplay is so different from what those games have to offer.
As a thrilling game, Switchback VR succeeds. The tension is great, the pacing is excellent, and the filming is as you’d expect. The roller coaster ride is top-notch, too, to the point that certain steep track sequences left my stomach feeling rather weak, and some of the scares made me even more uneasy. I don’t really want to spoil things, but a scene where the gun is removed from the player and the haptics are played in the headset is really grotesque. After that, I had to take a pleasant five-minute walk in my garden.
It’s not all rosy in this thorny bush of a rail shooter. Despite the immersion provided in Switchback VR, I feel the overall presentation is sub-platform and Supermassive. The studio has had some issues with quality over the years, but at its best, the games look fantastic. Reentry is rough by comparison, even by VR standards. The environments seem to be low-res with popping textures and details, the enemy animations are generally poor, the load times are atrocious by PS5 standards, and the general level of polish makes me feel like this is coming It came out so quickly – the screen after the level showing your route on the roller coaster was so ugly I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Those criticisms aside, I still highly recommend Switchback VR if you think you can live with it. I’ve played a lot of horror games over the years and I can say without a doubt that this is the scariest game I’ve ever experienced. Of course, the “immersive” nature of VR helps with this, but Supermassive deserves credit for their tireless efforts. In other words: this isn’t a game for your grandma to show her what VR is all about. Unless you want to inherit the legacy early.
