izigame.me

I love this game, I forsee it being in my regular "dip-in for quick track", or "hours long cardio sweat session" rotation of games. I think the VR landscape needs more low friction games like this to encourage folks to overcome the activation energy needed to justify putting the headset on more often. I like to play a quick session of this game to get my blood flowing before or after a longer session of other games, when I am undecided on what to play, or when waiting on a buddy to hop on. It is a thoroughly enjoyable way to kill time, and I always seem to play 3 or 4 more songs than I initially set out to, just because I am enjoying myself so much.
Ragnarock rivals Beat Saber and Guitar Hero in the addictive fun it brings to the table. I would say if you don't like Guitar Hero, and hard core air drumming, this may not be the game for you. Their demo available on steam is really a good indicator of what you can expect out of the game. If you are like me, and have the internal rhythm of Steve Martin in "The Jerk", there's about 15-20 HRS here to get gold on the full game, with all the dlc tracks installed on the medium difficulty. I will likely spend another 100 hours trying to get gold on all the tracks on the top difficulty over the next few years.
The songs are great, with a mix of Egnlish, Irish, German, and Nordic punk rock, heavy metal, classical instrumental, power rock, and rock operas/sagas. A lot of the songs are catchy without being annoying on repeat plays. There is not any story driven, or directed campaign. Just a raw 100% unlocked setlist, with 3 difficulty tiers with their ratings. Allows you to jump right in and play the songs you care about, and the effort level you are feeling for that particular play session. I can see how some folks would find that a little bare bones.
However, I love how the game was designed to allow for dipping in and out of a 15 minute jam session extremely quickly and get my heart pumping. A lot of games mess this up, and add too much friction/wasted time getting into and out of the game (crap ton of unskippable intros/menus). The Game is also excellent for the variety of customizability in positioning of the drum kit, mallets, etc, and allows for favoriting tracks (AND THROWS THEM INTO ONE SPOT.... C'mon Beat Saber). All the customization, scores, favorites, etc. are saved in in-game profiles, so it makes it really easy to swap the headset with another housemate and have them swap to their profile instantly, without leaving the game!! Allows for quick local hand off sessions with the wife, and encourages her to keep playing without having to log into a different user account in windows, as she gets to keep he progress and settings saved, and still compete against my ghosts. This is another thing that still ticks me off about Beat Saber. She still hasn't found a way to deal with my swapped sweat on the headband though, :).
Nice thing about the gameplay on this one, versus Beat Saber / Guitar Hero is the game does not punish you for continuing to freestyle drum in between the beats of the song. This is pretty awesome, because it can be frustrating in these types of games when you are playing on the lower difficulties and you can hear and get distracted by the portions of the drum beats/timing of the backing track that aren't shown on the screen, and oyu are just trying to keep beat/jam with the song. Or if you are like me, tapping your foot on 16th notes, nodding your head at quarter notes, and hilariously hitting everything on the screen with your air drumming completely off note, but still having good time, ignoring all bystanders uproarious laughter as they watch your furious rockstar stylized air drumming. The other nice thing this game's design is it doesn't try to fill the screen with anything but the drum track. Meaning, you are actually playing the drums, not filling in the boring parts of the song or random sections with a completely different beat/sequence from the guitar solos, bass or rhythm guitar, then jarringly switching back to the drum beat. This can be boring on the lower difficulties, but the developers have countered this by selecting a tracklist with a lot of variety, and with some real banger drum tracks that are fun to play on all difficulties.
Has excellent performance, with no hiccups getting in the way of gameplay. Dropped frames are non-existent, and the tracking is spot on (better in some ways than Beat Saber). Getting the Audio-Visual timing calibrated can be a pain with these types of games, especially if you ahve the wrong global settings set on your graphics card or your audio system that introduces variable audio or visual lag. I think this game does a really good job with it's calibration system, and is appropriately forgiving with the beat timing. I have played this for a dozen hours on PSVR2 via PC adapter on a 3090ti, and a 7.1 Ch surround system. Have not had any issues with the game at all after initial setup, including some tweaking of the Nvidia config file for the game to eliminate any spikes in audio passthru delays, specific/particular to my setup.
The game manages a simple cartoony art direction, that works for it. There's a pretty wide variety to the play areas, so the game doesn't get visually stagnant. There are some achievement/unlocks to customize your ship, character, mallets, etc. The scoring/medal system is appropriately punishing, If you want the gold, you have to really be on beat in order to get enough power stored up to go the distance. The game allows for Multiplayer battles, which is a glorified side by side race. Where the game really shines is the ghost ship feature, that let's you race against yourself, your buddies', and the nearest leaderboard folks' ghost ships next to you. It's one of those games that is easy to pick up, hard to master. The difficulty ramps pretty high on a lot of songs, this game can be a real sweat fest, even more so than Beat Saber in my opinion. The nice thing is the game doesn't bother failing you out if you are struggling on a song, it just gives you a score to beat in the future as you get better.
Highly recommend this game for Guitar Hero, Beat Saber lovers, wannabee drummers, expert air drummers, and rockstars of all ages.