Watching the trailer for Reach, nDreams Elevation’s latest VR game, it wasn’t the visuals or the story that grabbed my attention and made me want to play the game, but that it seemed to be filled with leaps and dives that would make even me, someone who doesn’t suffer from VR motion sickness, reach for the sick bag. It honestly looked almost unplayable at points, but Elevation is a special team within nDreams that has the time to research and prototype new ways of playing in VR, so I was intrigued to see how they were advancing the format.
The game is described as an action-adventure and we’ve had that sort of game in VR before, Horizon: Call of the Mountain springs to mind, but that always felt quite staid and constrained – you were either moving, climbing, or shooting, one at a time. Reach is much more like a non-VR action adventure where you are performing multiple actions at the same time, chaining together movement and actions to really live in that fantasy.
The first mission, which acts as a tutorial, sets our heroine clambering up city walls, shooting bad guys and running for her life. Rather cleverly, she is a stuntwoman and so the whole first mission is an elongated sequence where she is acting in a movie. Of course there’s a big set piece moment that she’s tasked with performing, to escape from a helicopter, make death defying leaps through windows, clamber around the side of buildings and try and stay on your feet as the building collapses around you. It’s quite exhilarating and reminded me of the chase sequence in the James Bond movie, Spectre.
Skipping ahead a few levels my demo moved deep underground to a mysterious ancient city filled with robots that are not keen on a human poking around. There’s a lot more puzzling in the sections, some of which requires you to work mechanisms to open doors, and other times just to sit and wonder how on earth you are going to reach a certain ledge or doorway. The mechanical puzzles felt satisfying as they usually involve using a weapon rather than just pulling a series switches and there’s lots of audio and visual feedback to let you know if you are getting things right.
The main weapon in Reach is a bow which can be upgraded to fire four different types of arrow, but while a full frontal assault on the enemy robots can work you are also encouraged to use stealth. By sneaking up behind the automatons you can go full Predator and rip their spines out, taking them down in one move and saving your precious arrows. You will also need to work tactically when there are multiple robots, taking them out in an order that will not get you caught.
Adding an extra layer to the platforming and puzzling is your shield, which also lets you play out your Captain America fantasies by flinging it ahead and watching it ricochet with improbable accuracy as it takes out multiple enemies. It can also slotted in to sections of walls to create an extra platform. If that wasn’t enough, yet another upgrade lets you zoom up to the ceiling like Batman using a grapple gun.
Adding all these tools and abilities together creates something rather special. You get to play your way, rather than in a prescribed fashion. In fact you will want to experiment as during playtesting the testers were performing moves that the team didn’t realise were possible, so they added a few extra secrets to discover if you manage to pull off some spectacular.
Looking at screenshot of Reach and you may not be that impressed – it’s certainly pushing the Meta Quest 2 or 3 to its limits, but missing the extra detail allowed by the power of the PSVR 2. It really is a game you have to play to be impressed by, or at least read a glowing preview about. It may not look like it’s doing anything particularly new, we’ve all played VR games with bows and clambering ledges, but it really is one of the most immersive games I have played. All the old ways of making VR comfortable that took you out of the game have been peeled away, and once you have got the hang on the controls it just feels natural.
It’s an odd comparison but to me it feels just as ‘real’ as Beat Saber. That’s the only other game where I have felt completely absorbed in the world and not like I”m playing a VR game. The biggest compliment I can give the game is that I was meant to play it for about 45 minutes but they eventually yanked me out of VR after an hour and a half, and it honestly felt like half that time. If you have been wanting to dust off your VR headset then Reach may just be the game to tempt you.
Reach launches on 16th October 2025 on PS VR2, MetaQuest, and PC VR. Players who pre-order from the Meta Horizon Store or PlayStation Store any time from now until launch will receive the Ferran cosmetic set which includes a Traditional Ferran outfit, Ornate Bow, Ferran Guard Shield, Traditional Gauntlets and Ornate Drone.
