Imagine being able to fling yourself over any obstacle or ledge with your own two hands instead of a pair of thumbsticks. Stormland, developed by Insomniac Games for the Oculus Rift, gave me a first glimpse into how the open-world shooter format can be morphed and reshaped for the better when brought into virtual reality. It’s brief, only presenting a grand total of four different regions across a roughly five hour campaign, and the combat isn’t nearly as strong as its exploration, but it was exciting when Stormland finally took the reins off and let me loose to propel myself through its eerie alien landscape.
Stormland’s plot isn’t its main draw, placing me into the generic robot shoes of Vesper, a lost android searching for his missing friends amid a violent robot uprising. While the story is decently told for a virtual reality game, what’s really exciting here is some of the most fluid movement mechanics and the coolest vertical world design in a made-for-VR game to date. You can climb trees, rocks, cliffs, and even up the sides of buildings. When you leap off of a surface, your rocket shoes kick in and you can control your flight path by sticking your arms out. And it’s great that you can do all of this with an online buddy at any time, which is definitely the better way to experience Stormland – though it’s a drag you have to complete the first hour before two-player co-op becomes available.
Source: IGN.com Stormland Review