Sniper Rust VR Review – Oculus Rift

As a relatively new owner of the Oculus Rift I’ve been eagerly consuming as many VR titles as I can get my Oculus Touch hands on, and while they aren’t all gems, most offer some sort of casual fun or interesting virtual angle on gameplay. I was pretty excited going into my review for Sniper Rust VR, partly because I’ve been a career military sniper for over 30 years, and I was eager to see how (or if) VR could capture even a part of the reality of that profession. Spoiler Alert – It didn’t.

At best, Sniper Rust VR can be described as an arcade shooter; a clumsy one at that, which in no way replicates the tactics of being a sniper or even the proper use of a sniper rifle.  The old game, Time Crisis kept coming to mind as I struggled through the first 9 chapters of this 18 chapter game, but at least in Time Crisis you could take cover and not stand there like an idiot eating bullets, especially during the awkward reloading sequence of having to push a button to magically produce a magazine then insert it into the gun then press another button while reaching over the weapon to slide the bolt handle back. Anyone who has seen any war movie knows that you always duck and cover when reloading and not just stand there performing this 5-8 second ritual in the open.

You begin at a shooting range where you can test-fire the various sniper rifles you’ll be using in the game and learn how to zoom and reload your weapon. Sniper Rust VR gets the scope mechanics totally wrong in this game, which ultimately ruined the entire experience before I even accepted my first mission. In real-life, when you close one eye and look through a scope with the other your entire field of view is the magnified view of the scope. At no time in this game can you get the scope that close to your eye. You are always looking at a variable zoomed view in this small circle on your screen, which is only slightly larger than what you’re seeing with the naked eye.

Even worse, the hitbox for enemies is ridiculously large. There was a sniper on a water tower hidden behind boxes and just before I fired my crosshairs moved from his head to the center of the tower six feet to the left and I still got the headshot. Basically, you just have to be aiming close to score a kill, which certainly belittles any skill you might have, but given the totally unfair rules of each mission I can see why they did it.

When you start each mission you are basically standing out in the open on some elevated perch, unable to crouch, go prone, or even hide behind the barrels or crates the designers have put into the scene as pure set decoration. You’re safe until the first shot is fired and then all enemy eyes (and guns) turn on you and you are left scrambling to shoot all enemies on the field as fast as you can while your vision slowly blurs into blood red as each enemy bullet strikes you. This is not how snipers do battle. This is how snipers die, and you will die often, which seems to be the intended design of the game, as you replay each mission numerous times learning the location and paths of all the enemies and hopefully get faster at taking them down with each new attempt.

The game is loaded with content; 18 chapters with numerous sub-missions that take you across the globe in several themed environments that range from colorful to drab with variable mission objectives. Often, you’ll have a VIP target that must be taken out, and once the shooting starts they will try to run away, thus ending the mission if they escape. It seems most locations have numerous explosive barrels lying around that are useful for AoE damage. All of your missions are dispatched from your central HQ in an old warehouse where your dog is always happy to see you and a fresh file folder with a CDROM briefing for your next mission is always waiting.

So basically, Sniper Rust VR ends up being a virtual shooting gallery where you trade bullets with the enemy until you kill them or they kill you. There are no tactics or strategy other than locating all the targets. There is no cover, you can’t go prone, and you can’t use any stabilization methods aside from using both hands to grip the gun. The scope is a joke, as are the one-hit kills when the enemy isn’t even in your view. I immediately gave up on this game being any type of simulation within the first half-hour and hoped for at least an entertaining arcade experience, but there is simply nothing fun about this game, making it impossible to recommend, even for $10.