Starblood Arena

Starblood Arena easily stands alongside the best competitive games, fostering a competitiveness and desire to improve as much as Rocket League or Overwatch do.

Traditional FPS gameplay is given a new spin with PS VR as the frighteningly fast, wide-eyed fun of flying in 360 degrees is matched by tight controls and a welcome lack of motion sickness. [June 2017, p.88]

Starblood Arena is surprisingly good. It manages to solve motion sickness problems with some clever game design and it offers at the same time a nice and engaging overall experience. The game has plenty of content and we found it very polished and well designed. It is likely among the best VR games out there at the moment.

If your are looking for a quick shooter fix in VR, this might be it – if you are willing to invest the time needed to wait for online connections as well as unlocking of new equipment.

Starblood Arena is a very enjoyable game, and works better than expected in VR. It does need more content though, and we hope it arrives, because the foundations are quite good.

Starblood Arena is a fun shooter that works better than expected in VR. Unfortunately, the chronic lack of content prevents the game to aspiring to better results.

An enjoyable and good arena shooter that's maybe a bit too expensive. The lack of online players doesn't exactly do the game any favors either.

Starblood Arena isn’t a profound expression of the power of VR, but it’s hard not to appreciate a rock solid shooter that will provide hours of multiplayer battles for those willing to put the time in. Ultimately it’s a little too niche to become the definitive multiplayer PSVR game, and the struggles to get into matches aren’t going to please people that threw down $39.99 to play it. But if you’ve got the patience the game will regularly ask of you, you won’t come away disappointed.

As we saw with RIGS and how Sony abruptly axed its life support, the same could very well happen to StarBlood Arena and that’s a bloody shame. I want this game to do well, I really do, but as a multiplayer VR title with a non-existent server population and an exorbitant price tag, it’s fighting an impossible fight.

Quotation forthcoming.

It’s a pity the pricing isn’t as accessible as the action, but this is a fun and unusual online shooter that suits PlayStation VR surprisingly well.

StarBlood Arena is a funny VR shooter, but it has its flaws. While the characters feel diverse and have depth to them, the rest of the game lacks on those points. The core of the game is fun, but due to its weak points, the game fails to truly deliver.

Starblood Arena's gameplay is pretty good, but there are no special reasons to remember it in the long run.

The game does come in at a mid-price point of $69.99 though, which could be a factor when considering another PSVR shooter, Farpoint, comes out in May. If you remember Descent fondly, or enjoyed RIGS, then Starblood Arena could be worth checking out, but it’s hardly a PSVR seller. It’s a shame Sony don’t encourage playable PSVR demos to allow owners to at least try out a game before investing, because this is a game that’s difficult to recommend to everyone.

Forsaken goes VR in this fun but lackluster shooter experience that only shines during the first hours of gameplay. Too shy in game modes, arenas and quantity of characters.

Starblood Arena is not original at all. The fact that this is a PS VR game and not many people have that tech yet, does not help either: you can't find any people to play with.

Starblood Arena is another way-too-expensive VR game when you take into consideration the content in offer, and that doesn't have fully functional matchmaking. A big update and free content could turn it into an exciting, competitive experience, more interesting than Rigs but with a great difference among its characters too. Wait for it to be on sale.

StarBlood Arena is a likeable PlayStation VR shooter that's well-presented and pretty fun to play. The problem is that there simply aren't enough people playing it, and with the online experience being far-and-away the biggest selling point here, that's a problem. If you can convince your friends to pick it up then there's fun to be had here, but with very little single player content it's a risk entering this minefield alone.

Though the premise is intriguing, and the game does have its moments from time to time, StarBlood Arena isn’t quite in the same league as PSVR’s launch effort, RIGS.

Starblood Arena is an immersive PSVR shooter, that lacks of game modes and different arenas. Game progression is limited to visual elements, and sometimes can make you dizzy.

Starblood Arena gets a lot of things right, but it failed to pull me into its world and feels dated on arrival.