izigame.me

I really enjoyed this!
The campaign plus all relics took me about 9.5 hours to complete, and I enjoyed pretty all of my time with in that.
Starting with the visuals, as I think they are the most apparent part of the game. Arken Age has a very Sci-fi nature aesthetic that I just really enjoy it's unique, no only for a VR game but visually striking compared to most games. And while the actual fidelity of the environments are not always the highest as I did notice some lower res textures and geometry, I think it is balanced well and never pulled me out of the experience of anything.
Next the gameplay, Arken Age is primarily an action game that has you moving between these large sort of fight domes clearing out the enemies and looking for keys and what not to progress, the level design is mostly linear but does feature some backtracking and the ability to revisit zones whenever you'd like.
to fight these enemies you are given three weapons, a small and large gun and a sword, these weapons can be customized with upgrades later in the game allowing for some variance to how you take down the enemies. Speaking of enemies there are effectively only two enemy types in the game a normal guy and a heavy guy, they do feature variants with armour and different weapons that changes how they attack and approach the player but, the variance is not huge I think the game would have benefited from maybe another two distinct enemy types.
Gameplay is not entirely combat however there is also some swimming and climbing, now climbing is a little more interesting here than in past VR games which are normally like climbing walls with specific grab points instead Arken Age uses picks that allow the player to freely climb any wooden structure this allows for more freedom of moment but also at relative speed which is handy as it can be mixed with combat.
Beyond the action and platforming, the game has these relics hidden throughout each level typically 10 in each zone for the player to find and collect they do offer a weapon upgrade when a certain amount is collected this does help break up the action and give the player more variety in the gameplay.
I do think the game would have benefited from some more mild puzzling or bigger traversal sections to really break up the zones a little more.
Finally, the story I don't want to go too much into details as to not spoil the story, but the game does feature a campaign with actual NPC's in the world, and memory logs that fill in the backstory of Arken Age, I think this is pretty good many VR games don't feature any NPC's beyond a character speaking in your ear so it was a nice surprise to see Arken Age has an actual village with characters just living live, now these character are not that intractable, but it was nice to see it there at all.
Beyond that, the games' performance was good, I had no issues during my entire play through. Overall I really liked Arken Age it might not be a breakthrough revolutionary title but it is a solid action game that I think more people should check out.