When comparing Cosmic Trip 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 Cosmic Trip is ranked 33rd. 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 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 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 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 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.