Wanderer: The Fragments Of Destiny Overview – An Formidable Puzzle Journey In Want Of Extra Time

Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is an formidable VR puzzle journey sport developed by New Zealand-based studio Mighty Eyes. After many delays the extremely anticipated sport has lastly made its technique to Quest and PS VR2 platforms, however the huge query stays: Was it well worth the wait?

A Be aware To The Reader

It’s price noting a couple of factors on the context by which this assessment is delivered earlier than we proceed any additional.

Following up on the unique Wanderer (launched on PCVR in 2022), Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny exists within the grey house between a remaster and a pseudo-sequel, insofar because it makes use of parts of the unique sport however expands the scope of the journey.

Having by no means performed the unique, I used to be in a position to expertise the world of Wanderer independently throughout my playthrough of The Fragments of Destiny. As such, this assessment doesn’t remark as to how a lot of the content material on supply is recycled from the earlier iteration.

Additionally, my playthrough was accomplished solely on Quest 3 and as such doesn’t immediately touch upon the comparative deserves of the PS VR2 iteration of the sport. If you happen to’re serious about seeing PlayStation VR2 model, try Don Hopper’s no commentary livestream exhibiting the primary hour of gameplay on that system.

With that out of the way in which, let’s take a bit journey by time, we could?

Time Journey Is By no means Straightforward

Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is a narrative-driven, single-player puzzle journey that takes place throughout quite a few factors all through historical past. The story sees the participant start among the many ruins of Boston in a not-too-distant future, the place you might be prompted to make a deadly journey to seek out your grandfather’s condominium. From right here, a time-bending story of thriller and intrigue begins to unfold that sees you traversing all through historical past throughout a number of convergent timelines.

The narrative is each intelligent and fascinating, staying attention-grabbing all through the prolonged 12 – 15 hour marketing campaign (it’s a puzzle sport, so your mileage might fluctuate). From an early level you might be joined by a information of types (no spoilers) who helps you navigate by what would in any other case be a reasonably troublesome path to observe.

Regardless of occasional factors the place you possibly can select from a spread of aims to pursue, the journey is broadly linear. Nevertheless, that linear pathway just isn’t at all times apparent. As such, your companion turns into important to creating positive that you just’re in the precise time and place to proceed your journey.

Time Flies When You’re Having Enjoyable

So far as the puzzle element of this journey goes, Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is high tier.

The sport provides a formidable number of puzzle sorts, all of that are well-integrated into the time-bending mechanics. There’s little or no sense of repetition or iteration among the many puzzles themselves, with most using contemporary methods to get you scratching your head.

The inevitable backtracking by historical past (and your grandfather’s condominium) can get tiresome after some time. Regardless of this, the puzzles stay difficult and every new space may have you taking a second to mentally reset, shifting your considering as you determine the best way to method the following sequence.

The puzzles make nice use of the physicality of VR and supply gamers with an actual sense of accomplishment upon completion. It’s troublesome to painting the sophistication of lots of the puzzles with out spoiling the narrative, as these mechanics are so neatly interwoven with the story. Broadly talking although, they’re diversified, ingenious, truthful and constant. Nicely, for essentially the most half.

Later within the sport there have been a couple of puzzles that diverted from beforehand established sport logic, making them harder to resolve than they need to have been. There have been additionally a couple of puzzles that required using seemingly unconnected gadgets gained hours earlier within the marketing campaign, and these felt like a totally inconceivable remedy on reflection.

For these situations (and some others the place a puzzle simply legitimately stumped me), there’s an in-game trace system that helps gamers push on. Whereas I usually detest to make use of hints for puzzle video games, being supplied with an answer that I’d by no means have labored out, permitting me to progress, was a godsend. Used sparingly, this technique is nice for retaining gamers of all aptitudes shifting by the story, avoiding game-abandoning frustration alongside the way in which.

Time To Kill

Along with the puzzle parts, Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny additionally contains quite a few motion sequences, starting from hand-to-hand fight to pitched gun battles. Whereas the idea of an epic, time-spanning action-packed puzzle journey sounds nice in precept, the implementation of those sections falls far wanting their potential. Each factor of the fight is woefully under-baked and consequently, these sequences find yourself detracting from all the pieces else that the sport does so effectively.

From the primary fight encounter the issues are painfully apparent. The sport instructs you to punch somebody, however the controls received’t allow you to type a fist, so that you’re left to aggressively poke your attacker with a single prolonged finger. Makes an attempt at parrying are clumsy and inconsistent, and opponents’ actions are restricted and jerky. Quickly sufficient, any sequences that require close-quarters fight elicit a groan of resentment relatively than any sense of rigidity.

Sadly, ranged fight doesn’t fare a lot better. Gun dealing with is needlessly exhausting as a result of physics system. Reloading is finicky and the auto goal is so overactive that it nearly negates your participation in any respect, though this may be turned off. Headshots don’t appear to do something and regardless of the massive array of historic weaponry on supply, each encounter seems like a rinse and repeat. Merely goal within the normal path of your assailant, shoot as soon as, wait for his or her recoil animation to play out (hits don’t register whereas this animation is enjoying) then make a second shot.

If the fight had been higher executed, with even half the depth of Blade and Sorcery or Zero Caliber 2 for his or her respective fight genres, Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny would have been on observe to being one of many all-time greats. In its present state, nevertheless, fight feels so cumbersome and pointless that the sport is lessened by its inclusion.

There’s At all times A Paradox

Sadly, Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is completely plagued by technical points which critically impression the general enjoyment of the sport. The Quest model struggles with fixed body drops, glitches, and damaged physics interactions that undermine the entire expertise. The body charges chug so laboriously that they ultimately triggered me complications and gentle nausea.

A number of instances physics interactions would go haywire and my hand or an merchandise would embed inside an object, which might pressure me to restart the sport in an effort to progress. Along with this, I skilled at the very least a half dozen exhausting crashes all through my play by.

These technical difficulties are extreme sufficient to frame on sport breaking. There have been quite a lot of occurrences the place I spent 30 – 40 minutes looking for the following step solely to find later {that a} key merchandise had not loaded in and progress was inconceivable with out reverting to a earlier save.

The largest impression this has on a puzzler, is that it makes you lose religion within the integrity of the puzzle. After the third occasion the place a glitch held me up for a major period of time, every time I struggled with one thing I discovered myself defaulting to “it should be one other glitch” versus “perhaps I ought to do this one other means”. For a sport stuffed with brilliantly difficult puzzles, this psychological swap was a demise blow and marked the tip of my enjoyment.

Judging The E-book By Its Cowl

Graphically, the Quest model of Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is a blended bag. Whereas the environments are massive and superbly designed, they endure from grainy textures, fixed pop-in, and extreme artifacting throughout object interactions. The physics system, which is spectacular in idea, appears to overburden the {hardware} and creates efficiency trade-offs that hinder the expertise.

The truth is, on the finish of my time I used to be in the end upset that my first (and doubtless solely) run by of this intricately designed world had taken place on a model so riddled with compromise. Have been I gaming strictly for enjoyable, after the primary hour I’d have given up and waited for the Steam model. Or at very least, a raft of patches to roll out earlier than heading again into the longer term.

Is That You, Matthew?

The sound design is the very best factor of the sport’s presentation. The voice performing is superb, notably from the timepiece companion, who channels Matthew McConaughey so effectively that I’m nonetheless not a hundred percent satisfied that it’s not truly him. The wealthy, characterful voice performing from the whole solid goes a good distance towards bringing the narrative to life.

The soundtrack is well-composed, figuring out when to swell and when to fade into the background. In a sport the place silence is usually crucial for puzzle-solving, the rating does an amazing job of disappearing in an unobtrusive means that enhances the gameplay completely.  The number of in-world music, accessed by cassette tapes hidden all through the sport, can also be wonderful and actually builds the authenticity of this alternate timeline.  

Wanderer: The Fragments Of Destiny Overview – Closing Verdict

Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny exhibits immense potential, providing a uniquely participating narrative and an impressive array of inventive and satisfying puzzles. The truth is, the puzzles are actually great that with out the fixed technical points this might simply have been the very best sport of its style that I’ve performed.

Nevertheless, the technical points and poor fight implementation make it troublesome to suggest the sport in its present state. It’s clear that beneath these issues is a very distinctive sport that, with correct patches and enhancements, may simply develop into among the finest VR experiences out there to this point. For now, nevertheless, it is likely to be finest to attend.

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