Snappy Game Reviews - A wizard’s first steps
Recently released on PlayStation VR, Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition is the updatedSnappy Game Reviews - A wizard’s first steps
Recently released on PlayStation VR, Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition is the updated version of the original Waltz of the Wizard that released on PC in 2016. A virtual reality experience that puts the player in a room of a tall tower full of magic and wonder where players are invited to experiment with all sorts of fantastical things.
Within seconds of starting up the game, you’re put in front of a table with a cauldron, a bunch of weird-looking ingredients and a talking skull, among a whole lot of other things that surround you. With little to no guidance, you’re allowed to go crazy and do pretty much whatever you want within that room, from coming up with new magic spells to picking up a club and bashing everything around you or even shoot a giant eye that shows up from time to time outside your windows with a crossbow. There’s a lot of detail in the objects that you can interact with which makes them easy to stand out from one another and easy to understand what they are from afar. The sound, on the other hand, is certainly lacking with no music whatsoever and distorted voices that I found to be hard to understand without the use of headphones.
Besides messing around with the items inside the tower room there are also these orbs that resemble snow globes that emit certain sounds for you to replicate on a xylophone, by doing so you’re transported to somewhere outside the tower where some sort of event is playing out. Only one of these manages to stand out in my opinion and that’s the dungeon. In the dungeon, your goal is to navigate a sort of labyrinth full of traps and dark knights to activate three orbs, by doing so, and kneeling in front of a pedestal, you’re rewarded a cylinder that slows time to a crawl and that can be used in one of the towers activities. This was easily my favourite part of Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition and I wish that it could serve as the base work for a virtual reality RPG.
The game makes use of two move controllers to interact with the objects, the hand tracking isn’t perfect as one would expect from a PlayStation VR game that uses Move controllers but given the more relaxed nature of Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition it didn’t cause a lot of frustration. I attempted to play both seated and standing up and both methods produced similar results, for the most part, they worked fine but picking up objects from the floor or slightly off to the side was always a challenge. Despite this, there was such a feeling of wonder and discovery that I still pushed forward through these issues to try and interact with everything. I even ended up discovering certain secrets by accident, such as playing catch with the knight after levitating the vast majority of the items in the room. As previously mentioned, Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition is the updated version of the original game with more activities and objects for you to interact with, such as new spells, new magic potions and a few minigames. I’m not going to list every new little bonus added to this version but it took me roughly two hours to get all trophies and decide to end my journey as a wizard.
Ultimately Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition is a fun and engaging experience that makes for a great VR showcases for all ages. While none of its ideas is truly fleshed out there’s always something within sight for you to wonder about what will happen next in this magical world.… Expand
