Remember the Kinect? Back when it was known as ‘Project Natal’ I had some pretty lofty hopes for the tech. To be fair, those hopes were probably made a little more lofty by some tech demos that were, well, let’s just say… slightly economical with the truth.
When Kinect came out it was a big bag of broken, but, there were some games on there that came close to greatness. I had a whale of a time with Fruit Ninja Kinect and would often whip it out (ooer) at house parties, while Ubisoft’s Child of Eden was a certified banger.
And that leads me on to Thrasher, the spiritual successor to Thumper, which has just released on Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro. As you’ll see in this week’s episode of VR Corner, Thrasher eschews Thumper’s industrially soundtracked uphill toboggan ride of doom and instead opts for a gameplay loop that is one part Fruit Ninja and one part Child of Eden. With a bit of Jeff Minter-y psychedelia thrown in for good measure too.
Just like Thumper, the control scheme for Thrasher is fairly simple. Only one arm is needed to play the game, which you use to swipe a sci-fi stylised electric eel around the screen in order to smash a variety of shapes. Also like Thumper, the gameplay mechanics are drip-fed to you slowly over the course of the game. As you progress, hazardous red shapes that you need to avoid are added into the mix, along with power-ups that do things like slow down time or grant you a charge ability that allowa you to break through those pesky red obstacles.
It’s a nice gameplay loop, and a lovely, easy control scheme that’ll make the game fully accessible to both veteran players and complete VR newcomers but, at the same time, it never felt as compelling to me as Thumper did. The boss fights in Thrasher feel rather underwhelming and, while the music is atmospheric enough, I felt myself missing Thumper’s immense, adrenaline and anxiety inducing audio.
Please do bear in mind however that the thoughts on this page are just first impressions, based on the first hour of the game. It could be that I change my mind after some extra time with it and that some unexpected, ultra crazy twist to the gameplay will emerge part-way through. Even then though, I do feel like Thrasher is going to struggle to break free of Thumper’s shadow – a typical case of difficult second album syndrome perhaps? If you’ve played Thrasher, let me know what you think of it in the comments below!
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