Farpoint

Farpoint isn't an exceptional FPS but far from the traditional experiences, it's one of the very first rea'vl VR games that offers everything a real game should. A must have if you got a PSVR headset.

Farpoint is one of the most complete single-player VR games available today with a high level of polish, compelling combat sandbox with interesting and varied weapons & enemies, and a serviceable story. It's also exciting proof that a more 'traditional' FPS can work in VR. [Tested with PlayStation VR + Aim on PS4 Pro]

Quibbles aside, Farpoint is a delight. It doesn't hold the player's hand as so many of this first generation of VR games do, guiding them through scripted encounters. Instead, it offers authentic, often challenging gameplay that is enhanced by VR rather than using it as a gimmick. It isn't afraid to let you fail either, forcing you to improve – and with four co-op missions to battle through with a friend, there's somewhere to put the skills you'll learn in the single player campaign to use, too.

Greatness was so close, and yet so far. [August 2017, p75]

An amazingly fun experience. And when you're occasionally let off the rails and allowed to run wild in some of the larger open areas, it culminates in one of the most freeing experiences that PSVR has so far offered. [Issue#189, p.74]

The Aim Controller is the star of the show. In its grip Farpoint comes close to matching the expectations we have for a VR 'game,' even though that game is just a by-the-numbers alien duck hunt. [July 2016, p.86]

The most complete PlayStation VR title yet. If you play Farpoint, make sure to play with the Aim; don’t just play with the Move controller, because it’s not nearly as engaging.

Farpoint is pretty standard, but it does show how awesome VR can be. The game might not be very innovative, the VR feeling makes it a great experience.

Farpoint is the best realised and executed VR experience I have played – one that gives me hope that we have just begun to scratch the surface of what can be achieved in the medium. It’s unfortunate that the ending of the game and the resolution of the PSVR hold it back, but regardless, it's an enjoyable shooter with a great story.

While it has some shortcomings when it comes to its design, Farpoint is a superb example of what can be achieved in VR games when developers think outside the box and don’t just try to port traditional gaming ideas over to VR.

If you’re going to play Farpoint, then be absolutely sure that you get the lightgun. It adds everything to the experience, making the game one of the most immersive and fundamentally enjoyable shooters that I’ve ever played.

It’s not easy to access Farpoint due to all the accessories it demands, but if you do, you will discover a solid game, focused purely on the art of shooting, which dominates through VR and motion control what a lot of games promised and few have achieved.

Farpoint is the most ambitious protect that PlayStation VR has right now. This game goes beyond the experience with the new Aim Controller and the possibilities in Farpoint are huge.

Judged as a shooter, Farpoint is as generic as they get; thankfully, Impulse Gear’s effort has other things going for it. The side-story is rewarding, even if some of it goes without resolution, and its immersive visuals alone make it a treat to play.

Farpoint makes you truly feel like a bad-ass space marine, like no other game before. It's a pretty short experience, the gameplay is pretty basic and the bundle with the Aim Controller is not cheap. But it's one hell of a ride.

Farpoint is weak as a shooter but strong as one of the most complete PS VR experiences. Playing it with DualShock 4 is acceptable but definitively the best way to shoot aliens is with the terrific PS VR Aim Controller. If you put aside the boring level design you’ll have pretty good shooting action with the additional challenges.

Thanks to the Aim Controller, Farpoint is a short but extremly intense experience that lacks gameplay depth.

Farpoint is a must-have for anyone who decided to buy Sony's virtual reality glasses for their PS4. It is a title that is enjoyed because it offers an experience that until now was unthinkable. It is not perfect, of course, and it has its faults and strikes, but it can be the way to go in the action genre of virtual reality.

This is one of the most interesting PSVR games, really immersive and it plays great with its new controller. If you like this technology, make sure you try it.

If you have PlayStation VR, Farpoint is a must-have game for you. One of the best VR experiences yet. Also, the Aim Controller its pretty damn great.

Farpoint makes great use of the PSVR Aim controller as a virtual gun, but the game is too short, levels feel empty and gameplay is simple. It is fun, but not the game that would make you buy the headset.

Farpoint is a great VR shooter, in which you discover a new planet while fighting creepy aliens. The new Aim Controller is a nice addition to the family, and gameplay wise the game plays nicely. The only big issue could be its steep pricing.

If Farpoint was a standard shooter it wouldn't be all that interesting. The weapon selection is pretty light, it's fairly brief compared to other shooter campaigns and there's nothing unique about the sci-fi setting. But the thoughtful VR design paired with the awesome gunplay provided by the PSVR Aim controller makes it well worth experiencing.

Farpoint is exactly what PlayStation VR needed: a shooter with beautiful environments that works well and keeps you entertained for multiple hours.

Without the PS VR Aim Controller, Farpoint wouldn't exactly raise many eyebrows. However, with the VR's newest gadget in mind, Farpoint almost becomes a must-buy. Unfortunately, this doesn't make the ending any less anti-climactic.

Despite its predictable and unsatisfying story and hard-to-ignore bugs, it’s a full-fledged sci-fi shooter that feels fantastic to play with Sony’s high-quality PSVR Aim Controller (and slightly awkward without it). Several smart control options and design choices cater to a variety of different types of players, and the gunplay is second to none in VR. If I were to recommend one shooter to a PSVR owner, this would be it.

Does as many things right as it does wrong. It’s as revolutionary as it is dated, being a necessary forward step in the evolution of virtual reality, but ultimately a game that will be as forgotten as any console’s launch titles. The gunplay and story are both good experiences, but decidedly separate from one another.

Farpoint not only looks great, especially with the aim controller, but it plays great too. But the sum of all parts unfortunately isn’t great, since the action itself, with its lack of variation and endless waves, is as generic as anything.

Farpoint’s best moments are some of the best slices of entertainment I’ve seen in VR to date. When the action is pumping and the tracking is cooperating, I forget I’m even holding a plastic peripheral at all and truly feel immersed in the world itself. Shooting feels great and the atmosphere is convincing. But then the levels start to feel repetitive, the campaign is a bit brief, and the design limitations rear their ugly head. For better and for worse, based on current capabilities, Farpoint is the game that PSVR deserves -- an exhilarating, but flawed, AAA-quality VR shooter.

The game nails the basics of aiming and firing a gun in a way that’s incredibly satisfying — even if the Aim controller feels more mandatory than optional. Farpoint may seem basic in a few years, once VR design has progressed past the point of simple shooters. But right now, as developers are still wrestling with the language of virtual reality, it’s tough to get the basics right in any VR game, much less a big budget shooter. Farpoint isn’t perfect, but it nails those basics.

The single player campaign is a decent five to six hour haul, and considering most PSVR players will struggle to play solidly for more than a couple of hours, it feels longer than that overall. It’s well balanced too with moments of intense, nail-biting shooting, broken up with quiet sections where you can just survey your alien environment. Farpoint does an admirable job of delivering a sense of scale, and character models and animations are some of the better I’ve seen in the PSVR space to date. The game also includes some co-op levels where you can team up with another player online to wipe out waves of aliens together (thankfully there is friendly fire). For those who aren’t sure about which version of Farpoint to buy, I would strongly suggest you get the Aim Controller bundle. There’s around a $50 price difference, but I can’t help but feel that Farpoint is saved by the use of a proper gun controller.

Farpoint, played with the new Aim Controller, is one of the most immersive and impressive virtual reality experiences. It is expensive. This game is a step forward in feelings of translation. It's fascinating and caring in audiovisual terms. But if you're going to play with DualShock 4, what you have is a bad and generic shooter. The cooperative multiplayer is finally not special.

Farpoint has peaks and valleys. It’s a well-built, functional, and thoroughly competent first person shooter but it’s antiquated. The story is incredibly compelling until it stumbles like a drunk elephant until it collapses into a stupor via an unfair and undeserved cliffhanger. Speaking more positively, the VR is integrated really well and I appreciated that Impulse Gear refrained from making the player the center of the universe. With the exception of the habitat recordings, the camera never interrupts the game to grab you by the face and force you to look at something. It also doesn’t force mission critical assets to stay within your field of view. This creatures a more natural existence for the player, making them feel like they are part of the production. I came away from the game with a mixture of emotions but the one thing I feel confident about is Impulse Gear’s grasp on building a high quality game in a VR space. Farpoint is a pretty good start.

What's here stands out simply for being the first convincing example of a VR FPS that doesn't make you feel sick. [Aug 2017, p.120]

Shooting is interesting and VR experience is good, but game lacks exploration and more depth, and ultimately is only an arcade corridor shooter, which is a shame, because Aim Controller provides lots of immersion into the gameplay.

Farpoint is an interesting game when taken on its own. It’s an OK shooter with some interesting VR mechanics that lift it out of mediocrity. When thought about in the entire VR gaming space it becomes more important, but doesn’t change the feeling that players will get from the game overall. It is not a tech demo, offering a full campaign of relatively short length. And the Aim Controller is really a fantastic new control scheme for VR shooters. It’s worth checking out for VR and shooter enthusiasts, but others might want to wait for a sale.

In the end, Farpoint is an engaging game that although doesn’t push the boundaries of what VR is capable of, it still delivers a fun yet ultimately short VR experience on the PlayStation 4. Overall, it’s a fun premise with some really intense battles as you use the Aim Controller to take on an almost never ending hoard of aliens with an interesting yet cliched story as its backdrop.

Farpoint is a basic shooter that we suggest only to the owners of PlayStation VR that are desperately looking for something to play.

Despite shifting gears in surprising ways and extending the life of its gunplay by remixing levels, Farpoint is more like a proof of concept than a game designed to push the envelope on its own terms. It'll give you a taste of something new for PSVR, and give you hints of what to look forward to if the Aim controller attracts wider support. It's going to be hard to go back to two Move controllers now that Sony's new toy has made a case for itself.

If it wasn't playable in VR, Farpoint would be an average and quite basic first person shooter... but it is in VR, and once you put the PSVR on your head and the Aim Controller in your hands, it really makes a difference. We can feel that there is so much better things to come for VR shooters in the future, but for now, even with its flaws, Farpoint is unmissable if you already own a PSVR.

Farpoint is not the system-selling game the PSVR desperately needs. This competent shooter sews together a few VR thrills and benefits from the excellent PlayStation Aim controller, but the linear design feels dated by comparison to contemporary shooters. Therein lies the rub for virtual reality right now – you can’t innovate with dated concepts, even if they have a sheen of novelty overlaying them.

It’s one thing to move the camera skyward on a television screen to avoid incoming fire and quite another to knock your head back and experience the visceral relief of standing beneath a structure which keeps you from harm.

With Farpoint, Impulse Gear set out to achieve a goal: to create a traditional first person shooter that works in virtual reality. In that respect, the game is a major success. Although not as fully-featured as its non-VR contemporaries, it captures those essential elements and makes them work in a space that doesn’t require overt tracks of handrails. The joy of cranking headshots and feeling like a real-life space marine is a novelty, but one that will eventually wear off. When it does, Farpoint becomes less remarkable, though its immersive Aim controller gunplay definitely gives it the edge over every other shooter currently available for PlayStation VR.

Beyond its central conceit of virtual-reality shooting, Farpoint is the very definition of mediocre. But that shooting--especially in Cooperative Mode--is compelling, well-executed, and undeniably fun.

Farpoint leans on novelty to make up for its shortcomings elsewhere, but wielding the PlayStation VR Aim Controller is such a unique experience that it papers over some dated game design. The story is cheesy but has some nice moments, and the action really ramps up towards the tail of the campaign. With an arcade mode and co-op included, Impulse Gear’s inaugural outing is a fulfilling offering, and while there are obvious improvements that could be made, there’s enough here to prove that blockbuster first-person shooters could find a home on PlayStation VR yet.

My enjoyment of Farpoint is inherently tethered to my experience with it in VR. As a shooter it's only slightly above average. But the team was able to incorporate various elements of sight, sound, and touch (by way of the Aim Controller) to elevate it.

Somebody will see in this game the evolution of the old light guns we were using ages ago in the arcades. Others will see a humble shooter that will leave you with not much to do after 6 hours. Nonetheless, thanks to virtual reality, Farpoint is the first glimpse of what the FPS genre could be in the future. And for this reason, we recommend you to give this game a try.

Presented as the first blockbuster for PlayStation VR, Farpoint is an interesting title. The game starts brilliantly, astonishes the player thanks to an unexpectedly pleasing tale, and shows an impressive use of the PlayStation Aim. Being a peculiar combination of an FPS and on-rail shooters, the gameplay works very well, but Farpoint loses its grip in the last part of its adventure. It runs too fast, fails to present original and interesting situations, but also to narrate a strong and convincing ending.

Farpoint makes the act of shooting feel exhilarating and accurate with the new Aim Controller, but just about everything else in this first-person shooter fails to live up to the billing PlayStation VR desperately need. A trite, boring shooter wrapped up with some poor decision designs and frequent bugs that’s just incredibly disappointing.

Farpoint did not come out exactly as expected. The new Aim controller may show some potential for the future, but it was not successful in fixing errors of a weaker content. Moreover, the campaign is too short. [Issue#277]

Short, simple, derivative and somewhat undercooked, but VR does make a difference. Shortage of serious VR games lowers the bar significantly, so you can pick up Farpoint, but do not expect the messiah VR needs. [09/2017, p.53]

A novel but insubstantial shooting gallery bolted awkwardly onto a fun sci-fi story. [July 2017, p.69]

If you already own a PlayStation VR set you should consider playing Farpoint, but it is by no means a system seller.

It makes me wish for the return of the good old days of game rentals. Because yes, Farpoint is worth a try if for no other reason than that it shows that a traditional first-person shooter can work in virtual reality – especially if you’re lucky enough to play with a purpose-built gun peripheral. But I doubt many people will get more than a night or two of fun out of it. And they’ll likely become pretty bored by the repetitive level design and unimaginative selection of enemies faced along the way. And frustrated by the wonky cover system. It’s hard to convince myself that might be worth $100.

Farpoint is another perfect example of a VR game with solid ideas and spotty execution. There is a core of good gunplay and decent story, but the game quickly becomes one-dimensional in its approach, and finds a way to feel like a grind despite its short campaign.

Sony’s big budget VR game has a lot of novelty value but only manages to combine the worst elements of first person shooters and lightgun games.

Farpoint proves that first-person shooters very much can work on PlayStation VR, but it never feels like this even believes itself that it's the definitive one. While Farpoint is certainly a fun adventure that you'll have a lot of laughs, and frights, with, there's little of narrative or strategic originality here and the idea that this will have a long life of competitive multiplayer seems to be hopeful at best.

Farpoint isn't bad, and to PSVR players who've never experienced anything like it, it may resonate harder. But know that there's far better out there in the same space.

Farpoint is a game that does it's job well, showing off PlayStation VR and the PlayStation VR Aim Controller. The act of shooting feels great and intuitive in the game thanks to the controller. Unfortunately, while VR adds to the experience, it doesn't hide what's a fairly rote and basic shooter from an earlier era of gaming.

PSVR is screaming out for another big-hitter to give early adopters something to dive into, but its short and uneventful campaign, weak design and dull visuals mean it won't live long in the memory. We can only hope that future VR shooters take full advantage of the excellent Aim Controller.