Hopalong: The Badlands is simultaneously the most adorable and the most painful game I’ve played this year. Making the most of Rift and Vive motion controls along with some impressively immersive stylized Western themes, a few hours spent in this world will certainly test the limits of your arm muscles, as well as your quick draw and aiming skills. Just make sure nobody is watching while you play.
From the opening tutorial, Hopalong: The Badlands oozes with charm and style starting with a narrator guiding you on your way with an authentic twang in his voice. Game design is brilliant, or so it seems until an hour into the game when you need to put your arm in a sling, as you begin your fifth attempt to clear a level.
In your dominant hand you hold your gun and in the other you grasp your stick pony…no seriously; it’s a stuffed horse head on a stick that looks like a piñata. To navigate the world, you will move your hand up and down in a vertical motion to bob the horse head and move him forward; the faster your hand moves the faster your horse moves, and you can turn in incremental angles using the stick while freely aiming with your other hand to shoot bad guys with your eight-shooter.
That’s pretty much the extent of the gameplay. One hand moves you while the other shoots. Your health is linked to your horses and indicated by a series of red hearts on his harness that deplete when you take damage and refill when you dip your horse head into a water trough to drink. A gold star meter indicates your remaining quick-draw power. If you squeeze the grip button while pulling the controller from your hip, time will slow down, allowing you to shoot objects out of the air; especially useful in the early levels when everyone is tossing sticks of dynamite at you. If you are quick enough, you can shoot it right out of their hand. BOOM!
Comprised of three chapters, each with multiple levels, the first has you facing off against the Dynamite Gang as you navigate some mountainous canyon terrain to find and infiltrate a gold mine. Levels are fairly linear but do feature shortcuts and alternate routes to keep gameplay fresh because you will die and have to replay levels that have no checkpoints. Seriously, I died at the entrance to the mine that starts level two and had to replay the entirety of level one to get back to that point. Thankfully, I just rode past all the enemies to get there. You’ll certainly want to thoroughly explore the levels if you want to find all the gold sheriff stars hidden about. Thankfully, these are permanently recorded, so you don’t need to find them again if you die and have to repeat.
Available on Steam, Hopalong: The Badlands works with both Vive and Rift and as seems to be the case, plays and feels better with the Oculus Touch. It’s purely a comfort issue since aiming and horse riding are equally as accurate and precise in motion tracking. Room-scale and standing are supported, but the game is completely playable seated and believe me; your arm will get tired enough playing this game. I’ve heard of people actually standing and full-body jumping to ride the horse as a workout. Go for it!
There is no aiming reticle, so you ultimately line-up your shots using the tracer from the first one or two bullets, which usually means emptying a clip per outlaw unless you get a lucky headshot. It’s hard to keep from laughing when everyone you see is also riding a stick pony; even guys inside houses where doors will fly open when you ride by or even the workers inside the gold mine that come at you on stick-horseback down a dark tunnel. Also amusing is that everyone you kill has a custom tombstone that rises from the ground where they died – nice touch.
You won’t need to rob the stagecoach to afford the $25 sticker price for Hopalong: The Badlands; admittedly a nice price for a substantial VR game that comes with three lengthy chapters offering 8-10 hours of play time with lots of new weapons and tactics to try and even some new stick horses to add to your stable. This game is great fun for the entire family. The charming cartoon environments, authentic sounds and music, and the adorable cast of fabric-designed horses and villains will charm the chaps off any sheriff looking to save the Wild West.
