Console Corner: Bravo Team PSVR review

Bravo Team promised much but delivered little
Bravo Team promised much but delivered little

A Supermassive disappointment.

Bravo is a code word for the letter B, used in radio communication but is also used to express approval when a performer or other person has done something well.

It is safe to say there won’t be much of the latter for developer Supermassive games where PSVR’s new shooter Bravo Team is concerned.

It pains me to say that because I was fortunate enough to get 20 minutes or so playing a development version at last year’s EGX and I came away really excited.

Unfortunately, though, the real thing - released last week for PlayStation’s Virtual Reality system - plays like a game still in development six months on.

With Tumble VR and Until Dawn: Rush of Blood already on its CV, Supermassive Games looked to be on to a winner with Bravo Team in an era where first person shooters reign supreme.

Set in a fictional modern day Eastern European city your escort mission goes wrong and you must work as a team - either in single player mode or online in a two-player co-op - to survive.

Communication is essential with choices to be made along the way such as deciding who gets to take a weapon, whether you should split up and generally helping each other as you plan a way out.

Sounds exciting and it should be but it fails to deliver.

Bravo Team is a cover based shooter so movement is key but this is where it suffers the most from such limited range in that regard. You can stand up or crouch behind cover at the touch of a button but other than that you are stationary.

Being brutally honest we were doing that in the arcade 15 years ago on games such as Terminator and Time Crisis so it is not unreasonable to expect more.

The VR does come into its own when you are in cover as you can sneak a peek around corners, hold your gun up to blind fire and duck down but it all falls down when you come out of cover and the disappointment sets in again.

Glitches were not uncommon for me during play with teammates disappearing through walls and the like, which kind of spoils the whole concept of virtual reality.

In truth Bravo Team comes as something of a shock given Supermassive’s previous efforts and will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. But this is still early days in VR and video game history is littered with titles which bombed BUT paved the way for other games and developers to be successful by avoiding the mistakes made and pinching any good elements. I am hoping that at least will be Bravo Team’s legacy.