When comparing Cosmic Trip vs Vector 36, the Slant community recommends Cosmic Trip for most people. In the question“What are the best HTC Vive games?” Cosmic Trip is ranked 33rd while Vector 36 is ranked 37th. The most important reason people chose Cosmic Trip is:
The look of the game as well as the gameplay has a great level of polish reminiscent of a AAA release. While this is in early access and not finished as well as made by a small indie team, the level of detail to the game and its gameplay far exceeds most release offerings for the Vive.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro High level of polish
The look of the game as well as the gameplay has a great level of polish reminiscent of a AAA release. While this is in early access and not finished as well as made by a small indie team, the level of detail to the game and its gameplay far exceeds most release offerings for the Vive.
Pro Immersive base defense gameplay
The implementation of virtual reality in a base defense game is done quite well. It is all in first person, where you mine different nodes on an alien planet in order to build machines and structures, which will then allow you to automate the process (much like an RTS). From there you can attack enemies on your own with an equipped frisbee, all while you send out troops to attack incoming forces as well. What makes this work so well is the design of the game, being that you actually take part in all of these tasks, it makes the user feel more connected to what is happening.
Pro Great use of haptic feedback
The haptics used in the game allow for pretty accurate sensations when manipulating objects in VR. Being a new technology, many games are having issue with the accuracy and "feel" of their haptics, luckily the team developing Cosmic Trip have nailed down how to create a game that feels right, out of the box.
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 No completion point (lack of content)
You either die at the hands of AI attackers on your base, or you succeed long enough that the hardware being used cannot keep up with the amount of bots created in the game, causing too much lag. There is no end to the gameplay, it will continue to the point you lose or the game just lags out. Mainly this is all due to the fact that this is an early access game that is unfinished. There are not many options to change up the gameplay, making for something lacking in content, which may get tiring after repeated plays.
Con Currently too easy
The gameplay itself does not offer as much challenge as it should, while this may change in the future, since it is still in development, currently it may be too easy for many players.
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.