Ever since the rise in popularity of Virtual Reality there have been several zombie apocalypse and zombie survival VR games released on the market. And of course we’ve had our fair share of zombie games on the PSVR, with some of the highlights being Arizona Sunshine and Killing Floor Incursion. So when Contagion VR outbreak was announced me and many others were interested to see how it would turn out, because zombie games in VR can be extremely fun. So after several delays and months and months of waiting, is Contagion VR Outbreak any good?
Contagion VR Outbreak is a PSVR zombie apocalypse game that has you playing as several different characters attempting to survive a zombie apocalypse as soon as it breaks out. There is a story in the game, with voice acting, and several different environments to visit. The story and voice acting are just ok, but the story puts you in some interesting locations and situations.
The gameplay consists of solving puzzles and killing zombies. There are 4 different levels to play, 3 of them have their own unique stories, environments, and puzzles. And the 4th level allows you to freely roam a big world while fighting zombies. Before you kill a bunch of zombies you’ll have to understand the controls. As a player you can open an inventory, grab objects, holster weapons and ammo, and of course turn and move. All of the movement and comfort options you would want are in the game, but one complaint I do have is that you can’t adjust the speed for smooth turning. And the default speed is pretty fast. The controls took me a while to get used to, but once I did it started to feel natural and I could enjoy the game more.
The gunplay works pretty well in this game. You have to manually reload your weapons, which works well and makes it more intense and immersive when fighting against zombies. There are also melee weapons that let you hit the zombies if you prefer to do it that way, or if you ran out of ammo. The melee weapons physics can act weird sometimes, but they work well most of the time and are satisfying to use. I enjoyed the combat mechanics in this game. It’s nothing new or innovative, but it doesn’t have to be.
My favorite part about Contagion is the situations and environments it puts you in. It shows you how the outbreak looks across several different parts of the world, and I enjoyed seeing that. There are also a few jump scares in the game that got me, but I wouldn’t call this a horror game.
The graphics in Contagion were pretty good. I didn’t notice any blurriness while playing, but some of the textures can be a little low in quality. There is also a lot of pop in with most of the objects in the game, but this didn’t bother me too much.
One problem I have with the game is that I ran into a glitch where I would spawn in the wrong spot at the start of level 3, and I wasn’t able to play the level. I tried restarting the game, restarting my playstation, re-installing the game, but nothing worked. So unfortunately I wasn’t able to play through every level for this review. But hopefully the developers can fix that soon!
So overall Contagion was fun. It definitely isn’t the best zombie game on the headset, but I enjoyed what I played. I would recommend that you wait for a few patches though. Mainly because of the big glitch I ran into, and a few other smaller issues I had with the game. Contagion can be a bit clunky at times, but it’s a decent zombie shooter that I enjoyed playing.
