Battle To Be The Last Starfighter Left In EVE: Valkyrie

The automated voice of the computer runs through the  standard start-up sequence, noting each of the launch systems in turn as they come online. The long launch tube stretches in front of you, as the lights switch on in turn, before the roar of the engines fill your ears and you’re sent hurtling out into the vast emptiness of space.

It’s an undeniably cool moment, drawing upon the similar look and style of Battlestar Galactica’s own launch sequence, and it loses little of its lustre, even once it’s no longer a fresh and new experience. That’s especially true because of playing in VR; you get to embody your fantasy of being a Starbuck-like character, the absolute best fighter pilot in the fleet.

That comparison continues when you hear Katee Sackhoff’s character Rán Kavik over the intercom. Her role was a major announcement in the middle of last year, and has been featured heavily in posters and artwork ever since then, with the Convoy mission featuring her voice acting the most prominent demo for people to play over the past twelve months. Something that hasn’t been particularly well communicated is that this wasn’t all a prelude to a single player story campaign that dives into the battle between warring factions and the endless churn of cloned pilots being sent into the fray.

That Convoy mission is still in the game, alongside other Recall missions that present brief story-driven scenarios, and there is PvE content in the form of Survival missions against waves of increasingly difficult enemies, but those looking for a deep and involved single player game will likely have to look elsewhere. Instead, the game’s focus is on the multiplayer game and the inherent joys of straight-up dogfighting in VR.

It’s in the multiplayer, much more than with the Convoy mission, that you really get a sense for the ship handling and the blend between different physics models. There’s a constant thrust from the engines at the back of the ship, and so the initial feeling is one of arcade-like simplicity, almost like flying a fighter jet but without a set sense of up and down, but you quickly learn just how sharply you can pivot and turn, hinting at something closer to a Newtonian physics model. It’s a layer of depth that you uncover for yourself, as you dive deeper into the game.

Team Deathmatch is the most obvious mode to start off with, focussing on the pure and often chaotic struggle to keep track of another human pilot. It’s fast and furious, as they dodge and weave in front of you, often trying to hunt down their own prey, with that unpredictability taking them outside the traditional videogame field of view in an instant. It’s a good thing that you can move your head and turn to look and keep track of them as they try to evade you.

That’s something that’s actively encouraged by the numerous ‘look to lock’ weapons in the game. The default Assault class of fighter comes with a high rate of fire minigun pointed straight ahead of you, giving you the traditional dogfighting sim experience of trying to lead the fast moving targets with the nose of your ship, but the secondary weapon lets you point and look with your head at an enemy, keeping them within the reticule to lock up to six homing missiles onto them.

It’s a similar system for the Heavy and Support fighters, but with rather different weaponry. The Heavy is slower and less agile, but makes up for this with a mini-warp drive that can get you in and out of trouble quickly, the entire point being that you need to get close in order to aim and fire the short range, slow fire cannons with your head. The Support, meanwhile, has a beam ability that will recharge friendly ships’ shields, or drain those of the enemy.

In a straight-up dogfight, it felt as though the fighter was the best equipped for the situation, but either way, it takes a fair bit of skill and persistence to hit and kill an enemy fighter, especially when players are making use of the various countermeasures to take out or nullify incoming rockets or lay traps for others to pass through.

That’s what makes the Control mode so much more interesting to me. Unlike capture and hold game modes in other games, Valkyrie doesn’t require you to stay within a given area, but rather to drop a capture drone to do the camping and capturing for you. It means that you’re then free to fly off to defend another point or seek out more trouble elsewhere, but also lets you try and lie in wait for enemies to come and get you – though without the ability to cut thrust, only to boost, you’ll always be on the move. When you’ve got maps like Shipyard, which feature sprawling derelict space structures, tons of little paths and bare metal frames on show, it rewards technical flying and clever thinking.

Any multiplayer game needs a progression system and a litany of unlocks, and that’s true of Valkyrie too. Alongside the three archetypal ship classes, you have a wide array of paint jobs and decals to unlock for a cosmetic twist, alongside cockpit customisations, as this will be what you see most of the time while playing. However, the weapon and ship upgrades that can unlock focus more on letting you merge and fudge the lines between the ship classes, so that the game can remain well balanced but with scope to find something that suits you.

However, after an hour or so of play, I felt myself tiring of the intense battles and embodying a space fighter pilot. Control was a more enjoyable mode for me, with more ability to think and plan, rather than simply trying to react, but even there I felt the need to take the headset off and escape the world for a few moments between matches. Some people will be more attuned to playing and staying in VR for longer periods of time than others, of course, and chances are that there is an acclimatisation period, when using VR for an extended period for the first time.

Alongside this, CCP know that it’s just the beginning, and the relatively modest starting point will expand over time with more modes and content, both in multiplayer and with the snippets of story in Recall. Whether or not it falls into the same trap as Star Wars Battlefront and Rainbow Six Siege, EVE: Valkyrie remains an outstanding example of what VR can do, and it could quite easily be the defining experience of the first few months and years with these systems.