The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR Is Massively Underwhelming So Far | Push Square

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At what point do we consider Until Dawn a curse? UK developer Supermassive has been trying to better the PS4 narrative horror for the best part of a decade, with both its ongoing The Dark Pictures anthology and standalone The Quarry coming up short. Now, based on the first half of our playthrough, we’re sad to report that the spiritual successor to PSVR’s Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, rails shooter The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, is also shaping up to be a bit of a PSVR2 dud.

It’s important to remember that when it first released, Rush of Blood was widely considered one of the best virtual reality games you could buy. A literal rollercoaster ride, the interactive house of horrors took you on a tour of several creepy locales, and armed you with a weapon in each hand. The premise remains very much the same here, although this time the environments repurpose assets from the likes of Man of Medan and Little Hope.

First up, the good stuff: the guns handle great, owing to pin-point tracking of the PSVR2 Sense Controllers and outstanding implementation of haptic feedback and the adaptive triggers. The team has incorporated just enough tension into the triggers to make it feel like you’re wielding a real weapon, without dialling up the resistance to a ridiculous degree like so many other third-party developers do. You can hit pretty much any target with immense precision, which is important, as shooting down marked objects will maximise your score.

The game also puts the PSVR2’s HDR panel to good use, resulting in some extremely dark environments that will leave you squinting into the distance. This obviously helps add to the atmosphere, although you’ll see the jump scares coming a mile away – perhaps we’re just too familiar with