Competitive roller coaster rides aren’t really something you see every day. Arriving from Force Field game studio we have Coaster Combat, an arcade game for Oculus Go and Gear VR.
Introducing Coaster Combat
The first impression we got was that it reminded us of Temple Run¸ once a very popular game on mobile devices. The biggest difference is that in Coaster Combat you need to shoot the coins (flowers, diamonds or magic spheres, depending on the backdrop) and enemies that cross your path occasionally, while in Temple Run you need to jump or move left and right.
What makes this one different than other roller coaster VR games is the ‘collecting’ and competitive element: once you finish a race, you are given a grade depending on how many coins you managed to collect during your ride. You can later compare that score to your friends’ scores and post it on the official global leaderboard, and the tracks are procedurally generated, which means you can’t possibly get the same track twice, so the game definitely has ways to keep you coming.
Coaster Combat offers four different settings, with three of them coming with the purchase of the full game version: Volcanic Valley, Pirate Paradise and Cursed Castle, and Himalaya Heights as a separate DLC. As mentioned before, the ‘coins’ are different depending on the map you choose, but they’re not the only different aspect: your weapon (in Pirate Paradise it’s a flintlock pistol, whereas in Himalaya Heights it’s a lightning-shooting rod, the enemies, the ‘boxes’ that you shoot to get more ‘coins’, for example, in Cursed Castle, are coffins, and so on.
A roller coaster of emotions
Despite this being an Oculus Go game, it still has amazing visuals and the atmosphere is really immersive (jump scares in Cursed Castle, for example). It can give motion sickness due to high speed and jumps/drops, especially on Himalaya Heights, and moving around while aiming in your cart sometimes feels like you’re going to fall out, which is rather scary, but is also impossible, so you need not worry about that. We recommend you definitely try this game, 9/10.
