Protonwar Demo

First-person shooters are as common as apple pie nowadays, which is why new ideas are pretty rare in the genre. Virtual reality has evolved quite a bit in the last few years, on the other hand, so we now have the chance to see classic concepts in a new light. Granted, VR shooters are far from polished at the moment, mainly because there’s a lot of movement involved, and the controls are not ideal for the genre.

Protonwar is a multiplayer FPS that aims to integrate VR into the formula as smoothly as possible, while also keeping as many classic elements in there. Thus, it includes modes like deathmatch, capture the flag and domination, plus a few gameplay mutators like low gravity and bullet time, although these are obviously optional. The game supports motion controllers, so it should feel pretty exciting.

To begin with, it’s worth noting that Protonwar is still in early access at the moment, so it’s not as polished as it could be, not to mention the fact that it features a few bugs as well. However, the biggest drawback is the fact that it feels very rough and unimpressive if you play it without a VR headset, even if the game is not a virtual reality exclusive.

In case you are a newcomer to the whole VR scene, first-person shooters are fairly difficult to integrate with this technology due to the fact that there’s a lot of movement involved. This causes a lot of nausea if your framerate is not smooth enough, but the developers have integrated a few workarounds, such as a teleportation mode that has you jumping from one spot to the other instead of walking everywhere.

As mentioned before, the game supports motion controllers as well, so you can mimic holding the weapons in your hand and truly feel like you are part of the action. The graphics are not too bad either, especially in terms of texture quality and special effects. However, the level design is a bit disappointing sometimes, mainly because the maps are small and unimpressive.

Protonwar has its fair share of flaws at the moment, but it’s a lot more VR-friendly than most shooters out there. Hence, you can have a lot with even in this early access version, and one can only hope that the full game is going to be a lot more polished.