Orion 13

Review

You are living in a futuristic robotic dystopian society created by an unknown AI. As a robot soldier, you move up the ranks by successfully carrying out difficult missions throughout millenniums, and you have become one of the three highest-ranked officers in the army. Commander Ryder has ordered you to check-in for a general diagnostic at the medical bay, which you have managed to avoid for yonks. This visit was because you had a recollection of being a human in your youth on the beautiful planet named Orion 13, just like your name. That can’t be a coincidence, and you need to find a way to escape this dystopian society. But it won’t be easy; Commander Ryder has his troops onto you, and you’ll have to fight to reach the planet Orion 13!

Orion 13 is a swordplay/action-adventure VR game developed and self-published by Metro VR Studios on the 14^th of February 2020 on the Steam platform. I played this game with the HTC VIVE Cosmos Elite.

The game consists of a Story mode, which you can play on either on the easy or hard difficulty, and an Arena mode where you have to successfully eliminate wave after wave of enemies until you fall to your death and hopefully register the highest score on the leader board.

After selecting the Story mode and the level of difficulty of your liking, you’ll be entering the diagnostic room, which is basically a tutorial. Not only will you be learning how to play the game, but also to recalibrate your VR headset if needs be.

So far, I’ve played the first three levels of the story and had a couple of goes in the Arena mode. I have mixed feeling about Orion 13. I really like the futuristic artwork and how the storytelling is laid out. The levels I’ve seen so far are of medium size and provide several types of enemy to defeat, including melee soldiers (with or without shields), drones of several variants (flying, on wheels and even spiders of different sizes), minefields to navigate through, a few puzzles and bosses fights!  As you go through the levels, you’ll find several consoles where you can save your progress along the way; you can’t miss them as they look like an arcade machine with button imprinted with the shape of a hand. There are a lot more of these consoles on the easy than that the hard level of difficulty.

Orion 13 will fight enemies with a sword and two types of laser; one laser will stun an enemy for a short period of time, while the other one will steal health from the targeted enemy. The other laser is for scanning enemies which will tell you who they are and how much health they have. Mind you, you need to keep an eye on the energy levels as each time you fire a laser, the energy circle will draw down, and it will take a while to recharge. You can restore the energy, health, and sword circles quicker by picking up the health icons throughout the levels. You can inflict double damage to an enemy by activating the sword powerup. It will last for several seconds, and you’ll also activate the slow-motion mode, which is fun.

I must say that I experienced more frustrations than fun while playing Orion 13. It started with the tutorial, for which I had difficulty resetting my headset and using the controls, especially the touchpads, which were far too sensitive. I find it difficult because you use the touchpads to move forwards or backward as well as utilising the stun laser and inventory with the left controller. While with the right controller, you move your character 45 degrees left or right by hovering your thumb on it, but you can also use the jetpack by clicking on it. Plus, you’ll use both trigger buttons during combat, and you’ll put pressure on both touchpads and therefore activate the inventory, stun laser, turning 45 degrees or more, which is not what you want in combat. It’s a shame because I think it is probably the big issue as to why the combat phases are not the greatest.

As I mentioned above, the artwork is really good, as is the soundtrack. In terms of replayability, you have the Arena mode and two levels of difficulty in the Story mode.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!