Wanderer: Fragments Of Fate Review – An Ambitious Puzzle Adventure In Need Of More Time

Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny is an bold VR puzzle journey recreation developed by New Zealand-based studio Mighty Eyes. After many delays the extremely anticipated recreation has lastly made its technique to Quest and PS VR2 platforms, however the huge query stays: Was it definitely worth the wait?

A Be aware To The Reader

It’s price noting just a few factors on the context during which this evaluate is delivered earlier than we proceed any additional.

Following up on the unique Wanderer (launched on PCVR in 2022), Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny exists within the grey house between a remaster and a pseudo-sequel, insofar because it makes use of parts of the unique recreation however expands the scope of the journey.

Having by no means performed the unique, I used to be capable of expertise the world of Wanderer independently throughout my playthrough of Fragments of Destiny. As such, this evaluate doesn’t remark as to how a lot of the content material on provide is recycled from the earlier iteration.

Additionally, my playthrough was accomplished completely on Quest 3 and as such doesn’t straight touch upon the comparative deserves of the PS VR2 iteration of the sport.

With that out of the way in which, let’s take slightly journey by way of time, lets?

Time Journey Is By no means Simple

Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny is a narrative-driven, single-player puzzle journey that takes place throughout quite a few factors all through historical past. The story sees the participant start among the many ruins of Boston in a not-too-distant future, the place you might be prompted to make a deadly journey to seek out your grandfather’s house. From right here, a time-bending story of thriller and intrigue begins to unfold that sees you traversing all through historical past throughout a number of convergent timelines.

The narrative is each intelligent and fascinating, staying attention-grabbing all through the prolonged 12 – 15 hour marketing campaign (it’s a puzzle recreation, so your mileage might range). From an early level you might be joined by a information of types (no spoilers) who helps you navigate by way of what would in any other case be a reasonably tough path to comply with.

Regardless of occasional factors the place you’ll be able to select from a spread of aims to pursue, the journey is broadly linear. Nonetheless, that linear pathway is just not at all times apparent. As such, your companion turns into important to creating certain that you simply’re in the appropriate time and place to proceed your journey.

Time Flies When You’re Having Enjoyable

So far as the puzzle element of this journey goes, Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny is high tier.

The sport presents a formidable number of puzzle varieties, all of that are well-integrated into the time-bending mechanics. There may be little or no sense of repetition or iteration among the many puzzles themselves, with most using recent methods to get you scratching your head.

The inevitable backtracking by way of historical past (and your grandfather’s house) can get tiresome after some time. Regardless of this, the puzzles stay difficult and every new space may have you taking a second to mentally reset, shifting your considering as you determine learn how to strategy the following sequence.

The puzzles make nice use of the physicality of VR and supply gamers with an actual sense of accomplishment upon completion. It’s tough to painting the sophistication of lots of the puzzles with out spoiling the narrative, as these mechanics are so neatly interwoven with the story. Broadly talking although, they’re diversified, ingenious, honest and constant. Effectively, for probably the most half.

Later within the recreation there have been just a few puzzles that diverted from beforehand established recreation logic, making them tougher to unravel than they need to have been. There have been additionally just a few puzzles that required the usage of seemingly unconnected gadgets gained hours earlier within the marketing campaign, and these felt like a totally inconceivable resolve looking back.

For these situations (and some others the place a puzzle simply legitimately stumped me), there’s an in-game trace system that helps gamers push on. Whereas I typically detest to make use of hints for puzzle video games, being supplied with an answer that I’d by no means have labored out, permitting me to progress, was a godsend. Used sparingly, this technique is nice for maintaining gamers of all aptitudes transferring by way of the story, avoiding game-abandoning frustration alongside the way in which.

Time To Kill

Along with the puzzle parts, Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny additionally consists of numerous motion sequences, starting from hand-to-hand fight to pitched gun battles. Whereas the idea of an epic, time-spanning action-packed puzzle journey sounds nice in precept, the implementation of those sections falls far in need of their potential. Each ingredient of the fight is woefully under-baked and consequently these sequences find yourself detracting from all the pieces else that the sport does so effectively.

From the primary fight encounter the issues are painfully apparent. The sport instructs you to punch somebody, however the controls gained’t allow you to type a fist, so that you’re left to aggressively poke your attacker with a single prolonged finger. Makes an attempt at parrying are clumsy and inconsistent and opponents’ actions are restricted and jerky. Quickly sufficient, any sequences that require close-quarters fight elicit a groan of resentment fairly than any sense of stress.

Sadly, ranged fight doesn’t fare a lot better. Gun dealing with is needlessly exhausting as a result of physics system. Reloading is finicky and the auto purpose is so overactive that it virtually negates your participation in any respect, though this may be turned off. Head pictures don’t appear to do something and regardless of the massive array of historic weaponry on provide, each encounter seems like a rinse and repeat. Merely purpose within the basic route of your assailant, shoot as soon as, wait for his or her recoil animation to play out (hits don’t register whereas this animation is enjoying) then make a second shot.

If the fight had been higher executed, with even half the depth of Blade and Sorcery or Zero Caliber 2 for his or her respective fight genres, Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny would have been on observe to being one of many all-time greats. In its present state nevertheless, fight feels so cumbersome and pointless that the sport is lessened by its inclusion.

There’s At all times A Paradox

Sadly, Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny is completely plagued by technical points which critically affect the general enjoyment of the sport. The Quest model struggles with fixed body drops, glitches, and damaged physics interactions that undermine the entire expertise. The body charges chug so laboriously that they finally induced me complications and delicate nausea.

A number of occasions physics interactions would go haywire and my hand or an merchandise would embed inside an object, which might power me to restart the sport with a view to progress. Along with this, I skilled no less than a half dozen exhausting crashes all through my play by way of.

These technical difficulties are extreme sufficient to frame on recreation breaking. There have been numerous occurrences the place I spent 30 – 40 minutes trying to find the following step solely to find later {that a} key merchandise had not loaded in and progress was unimaginable with out reverting to a earlier save.

The largest affect this has on a puzzler, is that it makes you lose religion within the integrity of the puzzle. After the third occasion the place a glitch held me up for a major period of time, every time I struggled with one thing I discovered myself defaulting to “it have to be one other glitch” versus “possibly I ought to do this one other method”. For a recreation stuffed with brilliantly difficult puzzles, this psychological change was a demise blow and marked the top of my enjoyment.

Judging The Guide By Its Cowl

Graphically, the Quest model of Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny is a blended bag. Whereas the environments are giant and superbly designed, they undergo from grainy textures, fixed pop-in, and extreme artifacting throughout object interactions. The physics system, which is spectacular in idea, appears to overburden the {hardware} and creates efficiency trade-offs that hinder the expertise.

In actual fact, on the finish of my time with Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny I used to be in the end upset that my first (and possibly solely) run by way of of this intricately designed world had taken place on a model so riddled with compromise. Had been I gaming strictly for enjoyable, after the primary hour I’d have given up and waited for the Steam model. Or at very least, a raft of patches to roll out earlier than heading again into the longer term.

Is That You, Matthew?

The sound design in Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny is the very best ingredient of the sport’s presentation. The voice performing is superb, notably from the timepiece companion, who channels Matthew McConaughey so effectively that I’m nonetheless not 100% satisfied that it’s not really him. The wealthy, characterful voice performing from all the forged goes a great distance towards bringing the narrative to life.

The soundtrack is well-composed, understanding when to swell and when to fade into the background. In a recreation the place silence is commonly crucial for puzzle-solving, the rating does an important job of disappearing in an unobtrusive method that enhances the gameplay completely.  The collection of in-world music, accessed by way of cassette tapes hidden all through the sport, can be glorious and actually builds the authenticity of this alternate timeline.  

Wanderer: Fragments Of Destiny Evaluate – Closing Verdict

Wanderer: Fragments of Destiny exhibits immense potential, providing a uniquely participating narrative and an impressive array of inventive and satisfying puzzles. In actual fact, the puzzles are really fantastic that with out the fixed technical points this might simply have been the very best recreation of its style that I’ve performed.

Nonetheless, the technical points and poor fight implementation make it tough to advocate the sport in its present state. It’s clear that beneath these issues is a really distinctive recreation that, with correct patches and enhancements, may simply turn into among the finest VR experiences obtainable up to now. For now, nevertheless, it could be greatest to attend.

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