Review | MOTHERGUNSHIP: FORGE - We Are VR!
If you've not played the original Mothergunship, then you should. It's wonderfully over-the-top and preposterous, and it functions incredibly well as a roguelike take on classic FPS games like Doom. Mothergunship Forge is reminiscent of the standard version of the game, but with some of the pace stripped out of it. Given that you're expected to dodge bullets by moving your body now though, that's probably for the best.
Thread the needle.
I was a little worried about how a fast-paced shooter like this would fare in virtual reality, because, on paper, that movement would be absolutely stomach-destroying. Thankfully, things have been tweaked masterfully to maintain a lot of the mania that makes the original game so much fun. Rather than running around levels, you're trapped in a small space, and expected to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge your way around bullets, lasers, mechanical dragons, and kind of cute robo-dogs. It ends up being an impressively intense ab workout, which is a nice bonus.
You play as a new recruit who has to try and take down the titular Mothergunship using your fists, and whatever guns you can craft as you move from room to room. The fists thing is especially interesting, because it helps create a more immersive experience. Unlike some VR shooters when a monster gets too close you cab let your reflexes take over and punch them. Later you will even find upgrades to allow you to punch bullets away, and a few other tricks too. It's hardly the main attraction though.
You got enough barrels on that there gun buddy?
Mothergunship Forge is about shooting, but in a way that you've probably not tried before. You build your own weapons from guns you find, connectors, and passive buffs, and then attach them to your arms as you please. Building weapons in this game is an absolute joy. You get to put each piece together in midair and rotate them as you like with your real-world hands to get the perfect setup.
I don’t why y’all don’t just shoot the bullets out of the sky. Seems like that is easier then moving out of the way.
You can attach multiple guns as long as you have the right pieces though, which means you can have two rapid-fire blasters and two laser cannons on one arm, and a rail gun taped to a rocket launcher on the other. It's meant to be obscene and gratuitous, and it is.
Combat starts fairly easy to manage, but by the time you've beaten your first boss, you'll see that things ramp up. More enemies appear at a faster rate, new enemies like healers or shield towers start to make things more complicated, and you're more likely to be blind-sided by an enemy on a rotating platform. Dodging through 40 bullets as you snipe a turret and punch a robot made out of buzzsaws is an unparalleled joy, although I do wish there was slightly more feedback.
*BONK*
That's true of when you're getting hit as well, as it can be tricky to know when you've been shot unless you're really keeping an eye on your health. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's probably the most prominent complaint I have about Mothergunship Forge.
When you eventually die, and you most certainly will, you go back to HQ and get to choose from any modifiers you’ve unlocked, change the difficulty settings if you’ve died enough to be granted a mercy or done well enough to become worthy of harder challenges and even choose to play solo or in multiplayer. I’ve not tried out the multiplayer yet, but when the game releases, I will absolutely be convincing a friend to buy it to give it a bash.
Mothergunship Forge is almost everything I wanted from it. It’s a fun arcade roguelike shooter where you can very tactilely (is that a word, it is now) put together weapons from the pieces you scavenge as you move through a world that desperately wants to kill you. It’s easy to understand, runs don’t last long enough to be annoying, and the physical fitness it subtly imbues upon you is a nice bonus as well.
