When comparing Vanishing Realms vs Catlateral Damage, 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 Catlateral Damage is ranked 26th. 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 Fun to pretend to be a cat
The gameplay is centered around being in a cats shoes, knocking objects off of shelves and other areas. This can be quite fun to basically role play as a cat at its worst.
Pro Good for letting out your anger
You knocking everything you want to the ground by making the motions in real life. It's a great way to let out your anger.
Pro Longevity through procedural generation
Each level is procedurally generated, while each level will maintain its overall theme there will be minor changes to the setup that allows for an experience that will be slightly different upon each playthrough. This allows for the games levels to stay fresh due to never being exactly the same.
Pro Choice of gameplay modes
There is a free play mode called Litterbox Mode, where there is no time limit, you just choose which level to play, to then free roam and do as you like, much like a sandbox experience. Then there is the objective mode, where you are given a time limit in order to knock off a certain amount of objects within. There will also be optional objectives given, which can make for a more intense experience when trying to complete them all at once.
Having these two modes allows for a good balance of hectic gameplay as well as free form having fun by messing around gameplay.
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 VR controls are not precise
When using the same amount of force to swing your arm holding the controller in order to knock off objects in the game, there can be a variety of outcomes. This is due to incorrect balancing of controls, as the same amount of force in a swing should result in the same amount of force being used in game, problem being that it does not, sometimes objects will go flying, other times they will barely move.
Con No difference in cats other than looks
It would have been interesting to see each cat have their own special ability, sadly there is no difference between them other than looks.
Con Gameplay gets stale fast
While from the outset it can be fun knocking objects over, after a while this does get stale as there is little lasting appeal to the mechanics themselves.