Hey folks!
I received an Oculus Rift CV1 about a month ago, and while it’s pretty ‘cool’, I can’t say it’s worth the price of entry, mostly because of the lack of touch controls / hand-tracking. All of the most enjoyable games out there greatly benefit from, or require, that means of input.
Well, almost all. Enter: House of the Dying Sun (previously known as Enemy Starfighter)
This is easily the most fun I’ve had in Space Combat since Tie Fighter. The game beautifully mixes elements of tactical strategy with space-fighter combat (it’s primary focus). Combat is tight and fluid. One can quickly fall into a state of “flow”, linking from one target to the next, engaging drift mode and slipping past the defenses of a large capital ship, while unloading a punishing volley of torpedoes from within the target’s shield radius.
Missions are short, 5-10 minutes each tops. There is a constant time-pressure, as your missions are all incursion style strikes - hit and runs. Inevitably, the enemy’s flagship will catch up with your small incursion fleet, warping in to stop you. You are outgunned, and should quickly extract to the rendesvous point.
Despite the relatively short single-player campaign (6 hours), introduction of a ‘Daily Challenge Mode’ with competitive leaderboards has kept me coming back every 24 hours to scratch the itch. Overall, I highly recommend this game. Note, it doesn’t actually require VR - in fact, it was designed for both use cases from the get-go. I have only played in VR, however, so can’t give my opinion on that.
I’ve posted this here mostly in case other fans of this genre hadn’t heard of the game they can check it out. But, also, I:B can borrow a lot from HOTDS. The combat “feels” so right. The audio cues are perfect: you know, without having to reference your cockpit gauges, that your secondary weapon just finished reloading, that your target just lost shields, that an enemy was just destroyed, that one of your cap ships is taking hull damage, etc.
So, have you played? If so, what are your impressions?