Robinson: The Journey Review – Oculus Rift

What I had believed to be a PSVR exclusive, Robinson: The Journey has made its way to the Oculus Rift. At least it was a six-month exclusive. Robinson: The Journey is a fantastic adventure loaded with exciting action, drama, some clever puzzles, and even a bit of edutainment fit for the entire family, so I certainly don’t begrudge Crytek for expanding their audience, and I certainly don’t mind the enhanced PC performance that includes faster load times and ridiculously improved graphics. My GTX 1080ti card was able to render this at ultra-high resolution then super-sample to my Oculus for a presentation that would never be possible on the PS4 Pro.

I do have a few nits to picks; the largest being no support for the Oculus Touch. I was able to overlook the lack of motion controls when this game was on the PSVR, but considering Robinson has huge rock-climbing sections with controls just like Crytek’s, The Climb, I was sure they would include Touch support for this new version. We’re four months post-release and they are still “looking into it…” Sadly, I’m docking a point for this oversight; especially now that Touch is pretty much a fundamental addition for anyone who owns a Rift. If Touch support is ever added, I’ll add that point back on to the score.

I’m not sure if the developers were going for some sort of homage to Robinson Crusoe on Mars or maybe a Swiss Family Robinson callback, but you’ll be playing as a young boy named Robin, stranded on Tyson III after his colonization ship crashes into the planet. Thankfully, Robin has the companionship of HIGS, an AI drone from the mother ship, as well as his pet dinosaur, Laika. You start the adventure as any other day, waking up inside your escape pod. After a brief tutorial you can exit the ship and revel in the scenic vista before you. The crashed mothership dominates the horizon, but even more impressive is the functional camp you have built for yourself.

Robinson: The Journey is more life-sim than an adventure game. You are tasked with a variety of objectives that will trigger new objectives, often in other exciting locations. When the game starts off you need to conduct a few repairs to restore power to some critical systems. This leads to your reunion with Laika whereupon you can play games like hide and seek or teach a young T-Rex some old tricks. Your main quest will be revealed when you discover that other HIGS units might be scattered about the surrounding areas, upon which you set out to find them and uncover their secrets.

While the game could easily have been non-VR, the VR headset and 3D really immerses you in this fantastic alien planet that ends up being more BBC/Discovery Channel dino-documentary than a video game. I was instantly taken back to a game called Beyond Good and Evil where you had to photograph all the critters in the game. In Robinson, you have this DNA analyzer and there are dozens of lifeforms categorized by land, water and air that you must locate and scan their DNA in this fun little mini-game where you collect green DNA dots and avoid the red ones. Creatures can range in size from ginormous longnecks to a tiny firefly. What’s really cool and quite easy to overlook is that once you register a creature you can call it up in the database to see an amazing 3D model/diorama of that creature that you can rotate and examine.

The game is played with a gamepad even though the multipurpose tool you hold in your hand in the game looks suspiciously like a Move controller or a Vive wand. You can switch your tool from DNA analyzer to an anti-grav beam that allows you to manipulate small and medium objects, or if you are in the blue bubble of a power-boost device you can move large heavier objects. Those are pretty much the only two gameplay devices of the game aside from rock and tree climbing.

Crytek also made a game for the Oculus Rift called The Climb, and while that game is exclusive to that VR system, they took the same mechanics and put them into Robinson: The Journey.   By getting close to any climbable surface or even something like a pole, vine, or cable, hand icons will appear, and you can alternately use the left and right triggers to grip and release various handholds to scale cliffs and other climbable surfaces. It’s a mechanic that is repeated throughout the game, and even though it’s not terribly challenging it turns out to actually be quite fun. But for anyone who has played The Climb before and after the Touch upgrade, you already know how much more immersive this rock climbing is with the Touch, and the fact that Robinson doesn’t have it is nearly unforgivable.

Another fun puzzle repeated throughout the game are these power distribution segments where you have a power source that must be redirected to multiple devices by toggling various power lines to get the proper amount of power to each device. The part I enjoyed most about these wasn’t the actual puzzle but rather how the camera pulled out to create this amazingly detailed 3D diorama of your surroundings. It was the ultimate 3D model that you could look in and explore your surroundings.

The game is laid out in a somewhat open fashion. At first you are supposed to go repair some stuff at your potato farm, but you can just as easily choose to visit the jungle or the tar pits first. When that half of the map is completed the second half opens up and you can explore the zones leading to the end of the game. Finishing Robinson takes 5+ hours but finding all the collectibles and unlocking all the achievements will take a few more. There are ID bracelets to find, dozens of creatures to photograph, and all sorts of clever challenges and secret objectives like teaching Laika tricks, going fishing, shooting hoops, and even cleaning the toilet. Robinson: The Journey is not only a great adventure, but a fun filled activity set that will delight young and old alike.

While it is possible to die in the game nothing is terribly violent, and nothing is shown. The screen fades to black and the population counter rolls to zero whether you fall off a cliff or get eaten by a raptor. Most of the puzzles are also age appropriate (solvable) by those 12 and up, which is the recommended age for VR gamers.

Robinson: The Journey is a magical adventure that mixes in all the best parts of games like Myst with all the child-like wonder and admiration of dinosaurs. Being able to wander around this lush tropical planet filled with all sorts of prehistoric creatures and wonderful scenery is like taking some futuristic tour at a museum exhibit, and Crytek has put just the right amount of questing and collectibles into the mix to keep you playing just a few more hours than you would otherwise.

This game still holds a place as one of my favorite PSVR games of all time, and even though the PC version can push out some enhanced visuals, the lack of Touch support makes this seem more like a cash-grab port than a truly thought-out port to the Oculus Rift. And why no Vive support? Admittedly, you are going to get the exact same game as PSVR gamers have already experience and probably at better resolution and performance, but it still grinds my gears that some Oculus-specific effort didn’t go into this.

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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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