When comparing Vanishing Realms vs Vector 36, 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 Vector 36 is ranked 37th. 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 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.
Pro Very satisfying feeling of control and speed
The driving behavior is completely physics-based, each change in components placement or input leads to the expected behavior. Skimming close to the surface gives you more lift, so you can afford to lean the ship forward for bigger acceleration. Angling your thrust vector smoothly while high speed drifting around corners is challenging and rewarding at the same time.
Pro Immersive VR cockpit
All important information is integrated into the physical cockpit, which closes around you at the start of each race. You can even get out of the cockpit and walk around your ship on the surface of Mars while waiting for repairs in VR roomscale just to get back in when it is ready to continue the race.
Pro Great Drum 'n' Bass soundtrack
Cons
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.
Con Clunky garage interface in VR
To finetune parts, like the flight controller, you have to move your head up/down or to the side, because otherwise the menu elements overlap.
Con No multiplayer yet
There is an online leader board, and ghost ships will come soon. But Multiplayer will only be added by the developer, when enough people are playing the game.