Taskmaster VR doesn’t quite deliver on the promise of the TV show

engadget.com:

I’m a huge Taskmaster fan. The UK TV show pits five comedians (or funny-adjacent celebrities) against ridiculous tasks that are then arbitrarily scored by the titular taskmaster.

Given that the tasks involve lateral thinking and physical movement, on paper, the TV show was ripe for a VR spin-off. Think Job Simulator with added jeopardy, in-jokes and British whimsy. Unfortunately, Taskmaster VR doesn’t deliver on the fun and charm of the show. Two points.

After being teased (and available to wishlist) earlier this year, the game launched last week across Steam, Meta Quest 2 and 3, and Pro. I played the game briefly on Quest 2, the lowest-powered option, before shifting to the sharper screens of Quest 3.

You’ll want to play it on a headset like the Quest 3 or better. The basic Quest 2 makes the whole thing very grainy. But that’s not the biggest issue. The problem is it’s not a great VR game. Collision detection is rough, and while it’s not the first VR title guilty of this, the fine motor control demanded of the game’s tasks makes things a pain.

For example, the first game involves you trying to make a sandwich, matching Alex’s arcane sandwich request, plating it up, and putting it on the plinth, ready for judgment. However, you have to do all of that with a pair of spatulas. Opening a fridge with a spatula in real life is challenging enough; in a virtual world, it sometimes felt more like luck than dexterity whether I got that slice of bacon into my sandwich.

In another game, I was to launch an egg as far as I could but land it in a frying pan. I struggled to keep a frying pan in the same place while constructing a poorly-considered ramp of pipes, boxes and wheelie bins. The in-game physics are so simplistic that most object surfaces behave the same. And my pan slid to the floor. Again and again and again. You can crouch in Taskmaster VR – when you drop the pan again – but the physics engine conveys a degree of momentum when you press the button to stand upright