The original République came out for mobile 5 years ago as an episodic stealth game with a focus on character narrative. That by itself made it mildly successful in a market where bulk is good and more in depth games are shunned for cheaper knock offs. Why wasn’t the game a huge hit 5 years ago? The bare minimum of control and the illusion of gameplay left players wondering what they were playing; was it a spy thriller with Metal Gear elements, or a narrative interaction like The Council?
Porting it to the new Oculus Go hasn’t changed the fact that the game still has bare-bones gameplay. Yes, It’s very pretty. Yes, it released as a full game rather than it’s episodic grandfather. But is that enough when the main mechanics of the game are so weak?
A noticeable flaw in the game on all it’s platforms is the ease with which the player can breeze through chapters. Chapter 1 through 3 have your character navigate through various stages while avoiding detection. You can upgrade Hope, the main character, with extra skills to make the experience even more trivial. Chapter 4 and 5 try to mix things up slightly by introducing a nemesis and a few new mechanics, bit overall they do nothing to add any challenge to the game.
Not fit for VR?
Instead of overhauling the game and doing a proper port to VR, you get the feeling that this was simply shoehorned in. Some of the character models are more dimly lit than others which isn’t a big problem if it wasn’t for the missing textures. Yeah…that is a thing. We experienced some character stuttering and missing models in our early testing.
Besides that when viewing the game through VR we didn’t notice any immersive elements that would justify the use of the Oculus Go. It was fun to sneak around with the visor and pretend we were spies but we had just as much fun doing so on a regular device.
Should you buy it?
For the price of $9.99 you should definitely get République. It’s a nice game even when taking all its flaws into account. Just don’t expect to play it more than 2-3 hours – it’s that easy to beat.
