Update 11/20/17:
The latest verison has fixed my complaints- shooters much more intelligently aim for corners and the orientation of your legs is greatly improved- well done! HIghly recommended!
Original review:
Always great to have more co-op style VR games! However, this particular review will strictly focused on the game in terms of it being a goalie simulator in comparison with its natural competitor in this space: Goalie Challenge VR.
GCVR: Goalie Challenge VR (competition)
GVR: Goalie VR (this game)
Features:
GVR has significantly more depth to it that GCVR- the passing of the puck between players and the ability to create custom plays is great and both unavailable in the stripped-down GCVR. Most notably to me, the replay system in GVR is really great- being able to see exactly how a puck found its way into the net and learning from it is amazing and really makes it feel like a training tool. Finally, it's worth calling out that GVR actually give you virtual arms instead of the floating glove and blocker of GCVR: using your arm to block the puck heading for an upper corner is a very natural movement that is lost in GCVR. (they both give you a virtual torso, of course)
Mechanics:
I grew up in Minnesota and played competitive hockey for ~15 years so I have a good feel for how a hockey game should act mechanics-wise. In short, GVC currently falls short of GCVR in this space. When the players in GCVR wind up and take a shot, it just looks and feels 'right'- as in you can get a good read of the puck right off of their stick in terms of where they are aiming. In GVR, the angle of the stick hitting the puck vs where the puck actually goes seems to be more random- it's much more difficult to get a read right off the stick and just doesn't feel quite right.
On the goalie-side, GVR also struggles to naturally rotate/position the player's legs compared to GCVR. (Of course, GVR supports/will support Vive's strap-on tracker accessories to *perfectly* track legs, but those aren't available commercially yet and they may never be widely owned). The best example of this is when you drop to your knees in a butterfly position on a shot destined for a low corner. As you slightly turn your head to follow the puck into the corner, the game twists your legs to align with your head, thereby exposing the corner where you otherwise would have had your pad down on the ice to make the save. This was the most common way that the AI scored on me- verified by the replay system. This definitely has room for some tweaking so that the leg rotation isn't coupled to your head rotation once the shot is in motion and/or when you're dropped to the ice. GCVR feels much more natural in the balance that it's struck.
Finally, it's worth noting that in my rounds in GVR, the AI almost never seemed to go for the top corners- preferring the lower corners almost exclusively. I went down to my knees for a bunch of shots to try to make the top corners more attractive to the AI, but it still seemed content to just shoot into my butterflied pads instead. GCVR gives you much more variety in save opportunities- which the glove and blocker saves tend to ultimately be the more 'fun' saves to make.
Final notes:
GVR seems to have laid the foundations of a great goalie simulator here, but has some work to do in terms of the pure mechanics. Of course, this is the initial release and I'm confident that they'll continue to tweak things. Still a very fun game to play- especially with the replay system- and, therefore, I'm still recommending this game. However, at this point, I find myself being drawn slightly more to the more bare-bones GCVR if I'm looking for a more realistic-feeling goalie experience. Really looking forward to seeing the next release of this and watching it evolve- it won't take much for this to become the clear choice in the VR goalie-sim space!
