Fresh Tracks VR

Interesting mashup of Pistol Whip, Until You Fall, Oh Shape, and Beat Saber. Between slashing obstacles and enemies, switching tracks to collect "whyspers," and jumping and ducking, there's plenty of action to keep you engaged. This can also be bad, though. The start of a run is pretty chill, but the boss sections get so frenetic it's impossible to keep track of what you're supposed to be doing (it's like Beat Saber expert++ on steroids). I can only play with No Fail on plus buffs to keep my health up, which seems lame but better than having to restart constantly. This honestly isn't very enjoyable to me. I wish there was better balancing of difficulty. However, the best music doesn't kick in until the boss fights either, which is motivation to make it through one. If you play long enough, the movements do become a little repetitive. I thought there was potential here for a fitness game. I was disappointed at first that switching tracks can only be done with the joystick, but it turns out it has to be done so quickly that real body movement would probably be very demanding and too difficult (you can squat physically or use the joystick though). This also means you don't need a lot of space to play, probably as much as Beat Saber. My watch didn't detect a workout, but after playing for nearly two hours my body begs to differ. The voice acting is fantastic (starring Peter Stormare as the first mythic, as epic as it sounds). The roguelite element lends some replayability, letting you attack runs with a variety of buffs. The graphics really aren't much to get excited about, but with all the speedy action this falls by the wayside. I had some frame drops in faster sections, but I only have an RTX 3060 processor. No crashes, fortunately. If you like rhythm games, this is definitely a fresh (see what I did there?) new twist that I'm glad to have in my playlist.