Metro: Last Light devs shoot into VR with Arktika.1

Arktika.1 looks like it could be one of the most ambitious games yet for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and its newly announced Oculus Touch controllers.

The title is a VR shooter game from 4A Games, the game studio in Malta that made the Metro Last Light and Metro 2033 shooter games on the PC and consoles.

It is being published by Oculus Studios, and it uses the Oculus Touch controller, which was announced today at the Oculus Connect developer event in San Jose, California, where thousands of developers are attending the three-day event.

The game takes place 100 years in the future, after an apocalypse has led to a new ice age. The habitable regions of the planet are at the equator, and the survivors are in a bad state, hiding in colonies from a lot of menancing enemies, human and not.

Above: Arktika.1 is a VR shooter from 4A Games.

Image Credit: 4A Games/Oculus

You are among the mercenaries protecting the Russian territories. After a brief training session with a female supervisor, you take an elevator down and make your way to a subway. You have to clear out bandits, scavengers, and other kinds of monsters in a colony.

I had to pick up some guns and fire. I could fire independently at different targets using the Touch controllers. Then I dropped them down to my side to reload them. That takes getting used to. Wisely, the team chose not to enable movement. You can bend and take cover, but for the most part you teleport from one spot to another to avoid enemies.

The game has clever weapons like a gun that sees through walls and shoots around corners. I thought it was a lot of fun, and it left me sweaty. The last scene of the demo, where this mech monster charges you, is pretty frightening.

The 4A Games producer said that the game will last for many hours, and it is intended to be a Triple-A production with the same quality as console and PC games. That’s a tough challenge, as many VR titles are just snack-like experiences because of comfort issues with wearing a VR headset.

The title is coming in 2017.

Above: Artika.1 is a shooter game for the Oculus Touch from the makers of Metro 2033.

Image Credit: 4A Games/Oculus