When comparing Hover Junkers vs Vanishing Realms, the Slant community recommends Vanishing Realms for most people. In the question“What are the best HTC Vive games?” Vanishing Realms is ranked 4th while Hover Junkers is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Vanishing Realms is:
The whole game has been designed from the ground up to be played with motion controls that allow for immersive movements, making it one of the best Vive games currently available. You can swing your hand to swing a sword, raise your arm to block with a shield, move to hide behind a column when having arrows fired at you. Everything feels natural and intuitive. Benefit being, it allows for the player to instinctively react through movement while playing, which makes for an experience not many have had with a video game to date.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Innovative and immersive experience
This isn't the type of game where you just press a button to reload or crouch. If you want to duck behind cover you have to actually do it. To reload you have to pop open the barrel, press the touch pad in a pattern and swing the controller to pop it back in. This makes the game feel more real.
Pro Huge variety of weapons
There is now a huge variety of weapons, well designed and also well balanced.
Pro Strategic loot based gameplay
The loot earned in the game can be found out in the wasteland inside of shipping containers. The player needs to use their welding gun to shoot them open to then gather the loot. Strategy comes into to play as it takes time to haul the loot in, which leaves the player vulnerable to enemies, so it is bet to wait to do this in until an opportune moment arrives. Once the loot is obtained, some can be used for cover on ones ship, making their ships stronger, the rest can be used to earn a higher score in the game.
Pro Fun multiplayer
Hover Junkers was one of the first multiplayer games on the Vive, and remains to be one of the few multiplayer games available. Being multiplayer based it is fun to mess around with friends or to play seriously with them. Up to 8 players can play at the same time and in game voice chat is built in.
Pro Strategic weapons
This game has 3 weapons so far and has more planned to come. They each have advantages and disadvantages and learning to use them at the right time can make a difference.
Pro Highly immersive and polished VR gameplay
The whole game has been designed from the ground up to be played with motion controls that allow for immersive movements, making it one of the best Vive games currently available. You can swing your hand to swing a sword, raise your arm to block with a shield, move to hide behind a column when having arrows fired at you. Everything feels natural and intuitive.
Benefit being, it allows for the player to instinctively react through movement while playing, which makes for an experience not many have had with a video game to date.
Pro Works great with room scale
While no one will have enough room in order to completely traverse the game in full, once the player is in an area they want to explore, the immediate surroundings are easily navigated by walking or running around. It works quite well and feels natural, which adds to the immersive experience of the game.
Pro Challenging but not hard
I really love this play.
Pro Intuitive inventory system that is fun to use
Storing and using ones inventory is pretty simple to grasp as there is a virtual tool belt like area when you look down. From this items can be placed to be stored for later use, or equipped at that moment for use. This works through the use of the triggers on the controllers and placement of ones hands, while it may be tricky at first, once the player gets accustomed to the 3D spacing of where their actual hands should be, it all comes very naturally and is a great solution on how to handle items and inventory in a VR game.
Pro Graphically a AAA experience
A good way to describe the looks would be, kid friendly with a cartoonish oriented design that has a clear and professional look. It offers a good amount of detail with good lighting effects, shadows as well as clean textures making it one of the best looking VR games. While not based in any sense of realism, they allow for a comforting and inviting experience that can appeal to anyone while still having enough detail and polish in order to present a game that easily fits in with any AAA title to date.
Cons
Con Poor netcode
There can be lag during multiplayer, which can easily ruin ones aim and competency to shoot accurately.
Con Longer shots can be difficult
While not an issue in the shooting range, when in the meat the gameplay, enemies tend to be the same color as their ships making them difficult to see. This means that most shots need to be made in close quarters in order to visibly see who you are shooting at, which limits the gameplay a bit.
Con Limited and unpolished experience
The game while presented as a finished title (it is not in early access but is a full release) often feels unfinished. The guns in the game are limited to only three, the menus have frame drops giving an unpolished feel. The shooting mechanics often feel a bit too loose making them not very precise, which leads to more luck based gameplay over skill. The maps do not really feel all that different, giving a "same" vibe. Overall it feels like an early access game, but is being sold as a finished title.
Con Small amount of players online
Being this is a game only playable on an 800 dollar piece of hardware that only really runs well on an expensive gaming computer, as well as the fact that this is a fairly new game, there are not all that many players online to play with. Being that right now this a multiplayer only game, having few players is a bit of a problem (but that's not the game's fault).
Con Not finished yet
The game is in early access with only two levels available for play so far. While this does give a good sense of what will be available when finished, there is always the risk that the game will get abandoned or release with many bugs. There is never a guarantee with early access, which means the buyer should beware.
Con The less room in ones house, the more restricting the game can feel
This game requires a certain amount of free space when playing, and has been set up in that there is a way to maneuver in game, even when having little space in ones house. This of course comes with the caveat that the game itself will feel restricted in that movement will not feel natural. There is a work around for this of course called the blink system, where players point to where they want to move in a level, to the teleport there, but this does not feel as natural as actually moving there by walking.