After a month’s head start on the Oculus Rift Eagle Flight finally makes its way to the PlayStation VR and the results are surprisingly impressive. If you’re lucky enough to be playing on a new PS4 Pro then your end results won’t be far off from the PC experience.
When I first saw Eagle Flight back at E3 I was admittedly excited. Ubisoft’s first foray into VR looked promising with a game that would transform me into an eagle and give me the vast city of Paris as my playground. But nothing could possibly prepare me for the experience I would have when I slipped on my PSVR headset and sat down to play Eagle Flight.
The game greets you with a stunning vista of Paris, but a Paris unlike anything you have seen before. Imagine a city long devoid of humans where wildlife has reclaimed the landscape creating a literal urban jungle where trees and vines now creep along and into buildings in various states of ruin. The city is now populated by the wildlife that has escaped from the zoos and flourished to the point of creating their own Parisian Serengeti, and you survey all of this majestic scenery from your steeple-top nest.
Eagle Flight offers a free flight exploration mode that allows you to casually soar above the city and zip through buildings and under bridges in a totally Zen-like meditative exercise. There is also a surprisingly substantial story mode full of objective-based story missions as well as challenges ranging from beginner to expert. Each mission and challenge is scored on a 3-star scale, and the more stars you collect the more of the city unlocks expanding your playground.
Between missions you are free to soar around Paris, even exploring areas that haven’t been unlocked yet, although no missions will appear until you do. I did enjoy this ungated approach to the game that allowed me almost total access to the entire map (except the Eiffel Tower). The city is divided into five districts, each having their own set of missions as well as a fixed number of collectibles like feathers and fish. Finding all of these will easily take dozens of hours well beyond the time it takes to finish the story mode. Many feathers are obvious while others are lurking inside broken buildings, sewer pipes, or even hidden in some back alley on the fringe of the map. Fish are even harder to find once you have cleared the obvious rivers, and then you have to watch for their ripples and swoop down to catch them in mid-leap.
Flying as an eagle couldn’t be easier. Just look and you slowly turn, or you can tilt your head to sharply turn. Look up to climb and look down to dive. The left trigger on the gamepad will slow your speed and the right trigger will accelerate, but if you aren’t holding down either trigger you always return to a default cruise speed which is mostly comfortable.
There are dozens of missions and a great mix of challenges and objectives with almost everything being a race against the clock. You have races where a series of rings guide you around the city. There are escort missions where you must protect an injured bird using your sonic shriek to knock enemies out of the sky. There are fast and furious tunnel races through sewers and subways with alternate paths and turbo boost air gusts. You might need to collect 20 fish or 30 feathers as fast as possible or showcase your flying skills to attract a mate. There is so much to do, but the game expertly trickles out the content one mission at a time, so you don’t even realize how much content there is until around Chapter 4/Mission 15 when you hit the Y button to reveal all waypoints and scan the horizon in awe at what you’ve accomplished.
Eagle Flight is easily the most comfortable game I’ve ever played on the PSVR – at least when played on a PS4 Pro. This is all thanks to some fluid framerate and gorgeous stylized graphics that create a perfect VR version of Paris. The designers wisely chose to keep things simple when it comes to textures, making it possible to have a city larger and more complex than any Assassin’s Creed game, but have it all moving beneath and around you at 120fps. My only minor quibble is that the draw distance seems to be a bit shorter when trying to spot those floating feathers out on the horizon.
Whether you are soaring at maximum allowed altitude or diving down to skim the river where bears are fishing, or zipping through the streets dodging zebras, or weaving through the trees avoiding elephants, or finding that hidden feather in a tree providing shade for a relaxing giraffe, the graphics perfectly fit the experience and the capabilities (and limitations) of VR. There is even a day and night cycle with weather, so expect some rain, fog, moonlit nights with wolf packs on the prowl, and gorgeous sunrises and sunsets.
Accompanying the graphics is a soundtrack that is as majestic as the scenery; a soundtrack that subtly adds great emotional weight to the experience yet never dominates the game or gets repetitive. There is this great Discovery Channel-style narrator who voices the tutorial and chapter intros including your own birth. Audio is also key to finding those hidden feathers, as you will often hear their “hum” before you ever see them.
Eagle Flight even offers up some 3-v-3 online multiplayer where you can do battle in the skies as you race to capture prey. At the time of this review, I didn’t find a lot of people playing the game. The few matches I did play were quite fun and I hope things pick up soon. The online game isn’t much fun with only two players.
I loved every minute I’ve spent with Eagle Flight, and I can’t wait to get back to flying high above Paris knocking out those last few missing stars I need to perfect score this game. Whether you want to simply relax in free flight mode or dive into 10-12 hours of challenging story content there is something for everyone with Eagle Flight. Racing, collectibles, combat…this game has it all and it’s packaged into one of the smartest and most delightful VR games I’ve ever played.
Vol de l’aigle est magnifique
