As I attempt to write this review for Kill It With Fire VR on PlayStation VR2, I do so under the pain of multiple, self-inflicted injuries. You see, the gaming room which sits in the attic of my house isn’t exactly ideal for reviewing VR games that demand a lot of wild movements, thanks in no small part to the array of low beams and slanted ceilings that can present a hidden danger when I’m flailing my limbs about like a possessed fool during play.
And that’s clearly what’s happened here with Kill It With Fire VR on PlayStation VR2 because the second I saw a spider for the first time in the game, I flung my arm up and down in a uncoordinated fashion, striking my forearm on the edge of one of those beams, while in another situation, I stood up abruptly and hit my head on another of those beams. I am clearly an idiot. However, it’s also clear that for better or worse, the developers responsible for Kill It With Fire VR have absolutely nailed that sensation of not just seeing one of those eight-legged creepy crawlies, but have built an entire game around destroying them in the most entertaining manner possible.
Kill It With Fire VR Review (PSVR 2)
Tackling Your Eight-Legged Fears Has Never Been So Much Fun Or This Terrifying
A spin-off of the Kill It With Fire games that have previously existed in the realms of ‘flat gaming’, Kill It With Fire VR has you being thrust into a range of increasingly intense situations where, you guessed it, the order of the day is ridding yourself of the various groups of spiders as quickly as possible, before moving onto the next spider-stuffed scenario.
Where Kill It With Fire VR really excels however, is in how it leverages the immersive possibilities of Virtual Reality (and by extension, PlayStation VR2) to make the whole endeavour far more immersive than perhaps many would like. Each area is typically split up into a number of rooms and chambers, with access only granted to each of these additional spaces if you have splatted the requisite number of arachnids. And naturally, those arachnids are found everywhere you wouldn’t want to find them in real-life; under toilet seats, between books, in sock drawers, under plates and in so many other places that just don’t bear thinking about during your waking hours.
Because of their true to life placement, the response to these critters is appropriately visceral, resulting in a panicked swinging of limbs to squash these little eight-legged interlopers as quickly as possible. Brilliantly, the audio-visual design of Kill It With Fire VR also underscores the sudden appearance of these spiders wonderfully, with positional three-dimensional audio tipping you off to their skittering in your vicinity, while the sudden employ of creepy strings as they appear further cements the sense of dread that usually accompanies these sneaky arachnids.
Clearly then, Kill It With Fire VR preys on your fears of spiders and naturally it goes without saying that if you have anything remotely approaching Arachnophobia, you should probably avoid this like the plague, not least because the movements of the various spiders you’ll come across in Kill It With Fire VR are disturbingly lifelike. On the flipside, when it comes to eradicating the spiders, your only limitation is your imagination and this is in major part due to the excellently responsive physics engine which sits at the core of the whole experience.
Because of the tactile nature of the physics in Kill It With Fire VR, you’re able to just pick up just about anything in the environment and throw it around the place, causing a veritable cascade in physics reactions elsewhere in the environment with reckless abandon. As a direct result, anybody can get stuck in and because of that fact, Kill It With Fire VR makes a great case for itself as an effective icebreaker for Virtual Reality technology on the whole.
Indeed, the sheer scale of destruction that you can inflict on the various types of spiders rapidly escalates. What begins as a simple swatting with a nearby plant pot or hairbrush, soon evolves to blasting the little gits with handguns, shotguns, sub-machine guns and then, before you know it, you’re using flamethrowers, rocket launchers and explosives to destroy them, resulting in the entire area going up in smoke in the process. Make no mistake, it’s fantastically fun stuff that anybody can enjoy.
There’s much more to Kill It With Fire VR than just offing the various types of eight-legged creepy crawlies that you’ll come across too. You also have the option of completing additional special objectives such as smashing up picture frames, unlocking secret rooms, using weapons in certain ways and so forth which in turn unlock new areas and additional gear for killing those pesky spiders. Not to mention the fact that pursuing these often comical, yet always fun objectives, helps you along the journey of getting that elusive platinum trophy as well.
Really, the only major flaw that Kill It With Fire VR has is that it’s much shorter than I would like it to be, with all of the main campaign missions able to be completed (though perhaps not perfected) in just three to four hours or so. Nonetheless, despite or rather, in spite, of its overly brief duration, Kill It With Fire VR impresses duly with its madcap arachnid slaughter, supremely clean presentation and range of extra-curricular activities to get stuck into.
Representing some of the most fun I have had with my PlayStation VR2 headset since launch, though Kill It With Fire VR is a touch too short, what we have here is nonetheless a hugely entertaining morsel of VR gaming that deftly blends a real-life fear of arachnids with a corresponding range of increasingly deranged methods to deal with them. Easy to play and resoundingly suitable for VR newcomers, Kill It With Fire VR is a whole heap of welcome chaotic fun.
Kill It With Fire VR is out now on PS VR2.
Review code kindly provided by PR.