About 4 years after the friendly Prison Boss VR, Qubcois studio Trebuchet returns to the forefront of virtual reality with an exclusive title for PlayStation VR. Goodbye the prison cell dividers, now place nature, its winds and leaves, welcome to Winds & Leaves.
Announced last February on the PlayStation Blog, Winds & leaves It didn’t take long for them to appear on PlayStation Store. The promise to immerse the players in a fascinating steppe, to green again by planting different types of trees, was exceeded thanks to the immersive power of virtual reality. Successful bet?
A touch of flowers
Winds & leaves begins without explanation in a partially deserted area. It must be said that the game is designed so that no narrator or text guides our steps, except of course the tutorial. In fact, the only elements that will enrich the lore of this universe even a little are cave paintings, which are to be discovered on site and which, in general, give some clues to the way forward. But as free as air, we quickly find that it is impossible for us to move away from the neighboring trees. The being we embody is actually linked to the flora and cannot survive in arid lands. Fortunately, we are invited to take a bundle of sticks, strangely like a beer mug, that can be filled with gasoline at any time. Our well-loaded buck then acts as a stamina bar that enables us to move a little away from the green in order to plant fruit and thus grow new trees.
These are the main mechanics of the adventure. We travel the world growing trees and follow a path that will lead us to safety until we find the next magic tree that will fill our pumpkin. Another accessory useful to our progress is a paper windmill that hangs near our right shoulder. By tilting it, it speeds up time in a very successful effect that in particular allows the game to have a day-night cycle with the movement of the sun, the moon, but also the presence of the northern lights. However, due to a small and very dark color palette, it is not very easy or pleasant to go through the adventure at night. It is a pity that the moon does not shine more than a. We will therefore use the windmill regularly so that we can only play in broad daylight and enjoy the landscape as far as the eye can see.
A cactus in the eyes
It hurts here, we actually enjoy landscapes as far as the eye can see, without blurring, but with omnipresent aliasing and clipping, even at a very short distance. All the edges of all the elements displayed on the screen are cruel and seriously disrupt the experience. It is all the more regrettable Winds & leaves has an interesting artistic aura! Some PSVR games had these issues during their respective releases. We particularly remember Raw Data, Out of Ammo, Kona VR, and Espire 1 VR Operative, most of which have been post-improved. Let’s hope that Trebuchet can optimize quickly at least on PS4 Pro and PS5, because on this tested version the game is unfortunately far from doing all the credit to the PlayStation VR, which is visually used to much cleaner games.
Ok, the look of a virtual reality game is important, but the sound aspect is almost as important. Nothing to throw from this side. The soundtrack is very successful, pleasant and sometimes even fits in with our actions as arborists. Also, to get back to the gameplay, you should know that planting fruit in any soil is not enough to move forward. No, every type of land requires a specific type of fruit, and some trees can only survive in the presence of others nearby (which we are constantly reminded of in the tutorial). Some tornadoes or cumulonimbus (with heavy rainfall) can also disrupt tree growth. This is where our satchel comes into play, in which we can store up to six different types of fruit. Sometimes it makes sense to combine two different fruits to create a new species of tree from which you can then pluck a new fruit with the combined properties of the other two.
Two PlayStation Moves in hand
Picking a fruit can even be done on the ground, but you can also climb trees like a (VR) monkey. With a simple press of the Move button and a vertical movement of your arm, you can gradually lift yourself above the treetops to admire the view (psssst, a is being played on PlayStation Move, you get it). However, climbing is not realistic because you don’t have to grab the trunk or branches. The simple fact of being near a tree allows it to climb without having to grab it. In addition, the virtual movement that results from our physical gestures is very strongly accentuated; By this you mean that with a small pull of 10 centimeters you can create a distance of 2 meters with your arm in the virtual world. It must be said that it is quite unsettling, but we can assume that it makes it possible not to spend too much time reaching the peaks.
The controls on PlayStation Move are also very strange. Unlike most PlayStation VR games, this one requires you to hold down the 2 Move buttons at the same time and use your arms to move around. A concept that we find particularly in the boxing game Creed but also in Sprint Vector, the difference almost here we are only moving at a fixed speed. So you move at maximum speed with very small movements of the arms, which makes the controls extremely imprecise, for example if you want to align yourself with a fruit on the ground in order to pick it up. Rotation is also atypical in the PSVR catalog, especially one of the options offered that allows us to rotate our character in the direction we are looking after pressing X or O. But we have to admit that it worked pretty well and it’s pretty intuitive. . You can also turn in the direction indicated by a PS-Move, a principle that is much less intuitive for those used to more or less standardized controls of the PSVR or traditional angular rotation.
Ecology for noobs
The adventure ends in 45 hours. We move freely from biome to biome, which can be counted on the fingers of one hand by planting different types of trees, awakening wind turbines in all corners of the world to make the central mill green again. On the way, a new force enables us to fly. It is then possible to float between two trees or in the direction of the rays that are scattered everywhere, thus opening up new areas. In addition, in some more or less hidden places, you can discover paintings on canvas that show up after planting the right trees nearby, encouraging the player to explore this universe as much as possible.
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