Ancient Amuletor Review – PlayStation VR

I’m not the biggest fan of tower defense games, but Ancient Amuletor isn’t your typical tower defense game. It’s more of a tactical shooter where you have the ability to teleport around to various shooting locations and, depending on your chosen character, fire bullets, arrows, or magical attacks at wave after wave of enemies all advancing toward giant gems that you are sworn to protect.

I dove right into the game, choosing the female archer and hoping for the same level of competent archery simulation I’ve had in other VR games, and for the most part Ancient Amuletor delivered until about halfway through the first mission. Somewhere in level 1-4 the PS Camera started having severe tracking issues to the point where for a full 40 seconds I was unable to even notch an arrow let alone fire one. Naturally, many gems were attacked and a couple lost during this time, solely due to a broken game mechanic. I still can’t explain what caused this because up to that point in both the tutorial and the first few levels of the first mission the archery had been flawlessly responsive and accurate. Replaying the first mission with dual wielded pistols offered a much more polished experience as far as reliable targeting, but using guns in some of these ancient settings just felt wrong.

Overall, Ancient Amuletor is great fun with challenging levels and some interesting strategy that lends itself to a sharp increase in difficulty over the course of a single mission. Each level gets noticeably more difficult, with more varied enemy types, tactics, speed, and new paths they will take toward their target. In the final stages of any level you will need to master both location swapping as well as fast, accurate targeting and enemy prioritization. Those big guys with explosives can take out a gem with a single hit if you allow them to get close enough.

Level designs are gorgeous with a unique with cel-shaded styling, rich colors and detailed environments that play greatly into the strategy of the game, especially with day and night variations. Enemies are equally as creative and delightfully animated along with unique power-ups you can shoot to trigger active and passive influences on the world like slowing down or freezing enemies, or targeting red barrels for explosive splash damage. Teleporting around the levels not only provides for new targeting angles, but also puts a fresh perspective on the world, sometimes taking a few seconds to get your bearings.

The single player game is short and sweet but still offers hours of challenging action, and you can always head online for 2-3 player defensive cooperative gameplay, although even after several weeks since launch it was very hard to find anyone playing this game. Hopefully things pick up, as I can see multiplayer adding hours to the longevity of this game.

The presentation is great with crisp clean visuals, and since you are playing from static locations there is virtually no way you’ll get motion sickness. The sound effects and music are excellent and the entire game is a blast to play with the only caveat being the quirky motion tracking for the bow and arrow, which seemed to be an easily repeatable and frequently annoying glitch, which is a shame because the archer is my preferred character. I have high hopes for better motion tracking when this game launches on PC in August.

Ancient Amuletor offers hours of great arcade shooting action and progressively more difficult gameplay set in creative locations that is only made better thanks to the immersive use of VR. While you may find yourself at the mercy of unreliable controls, when the game works it’s a blast and worth checking out.

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Author: Mark Smith
I've been an avid gamer since I stumbled upon ZORK running in my local Radio Shack in 1980. Ten years later I was working for Sierra Online. Since then I've owned nearly every game system and most of the games to go with them. Not sure if 40+ years of gaming qualifies me to write reviews, but I do it anyway.

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