The Walker is a first-person horror wave based shooter available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for PlayStation VR. The Walker developer Haymaker won the China Hero Project Award and Best VR Game of 2017 at the Golden Plume Awards, while publisher Perp Games has brought some of the best VR games to PlayStation VR at retail including Moss, Apex Construct, Theseus, Time Carnage, VR Karts, Radial-G: Racing Revolved, Fruit Ninja VR, Perfect, The Assembly, Ultimate VR Collection and more besides. Can Haymaker’s award winning pedigree and Perp Games’ VR experience result in The Walker being one of the best first-person horror shooters on PlayStation VR?
The story revolves around the mysterious lead character having no recollection of his abilities in being someone that vanquishes evil, although an equally mysterious guide is on hand to show your character what he is capable of and answer any questions.
Gameplay begins with a tutorial on how to aim, fire and reload the pistol, switching between weaponry, swinging the sword, collecting a charm and how to combine the charm with the pistol or sword; therefore the major gameplay elements are presented within a very well paced tutorial that will fully prepare the player for gameplay inside of five minutes.
Upon completing each of the five levels and the multiple waves of enemies within each level; a rush mode will be unlocked that essentially offers a survival mode were multiple waves of enemies will increase in their health and damage dealt per attack to your character.
Enemy design is varied as there are enemies of all shapes, sizes and mobility. Enemies reminiscent to a cross between mummies and zombies crawl along the floor with keys around their necks and variations of those enemies crawl along the walls before leaping nearby to begin attacking your character. Meanwhile, giant enemies walk towards you with menacing stares, enemies project a ball of fire from a bow when situated anywhere from a few feet away to peering out a window, although there are even larger enemies that are essentially boss battles including a huge raven that has partially taken the form of a previously innocent bystander that furiously chases after your character from different angles on a train carriage; and more enemies are gradually introduced.
Weaponry comprises of a pistol and a sword to vanquish evil, while charms increase the power of such weapons with abilities including freezing an enemy in ice resulting in the enemy shattering into pieces and stunning enemies via electricity. The sword comes into its own as it is the best method of defeating the raven enemy boss due to the ability to deflect the attacks by re-positioning your sword to counter, while the same can be stated for the archers that shoot balls of fire from their bows as they can be dodged or deflected by positioning your character’s sword to defend your character from being hit. Upon completing the five levels; an automatic gun reminiscent to an uzi and a larger, more powerful sword is unlocked to be utilised in both modes and all difficulty levels.
Environment design has some variety to it including your character’s apartment, darkly lit streets at night, train stations, train carriages and more besides based on the architecture of old Shanghai. However, it would have been more preferable if the player had a much greater freedom of movement in order to actually be able to explore every area rather than your character moving at 90 degree increments, although every environment still manages to fully immerse the player as enemies attack from all angles.
The controls are appropriately mapped to two PlayStation Move controllers that represent your left and right hands with a control scheme consisting of pressing the trigger button on the right handed PlayStation Move to fire the pistol; pressing the move button on the right handed Move controller to interact with charms or objects; pressing the move button on the left handed Move controller to use a charm; and pressing X or O on the left handed Move controller to manoeuvre your character 90 degrees at a time. PlayStation Move’s gyroscopic motion sensing functionality allows the player to aim the pistol or sword on the right handed Move controller and combine a charm by picking it up through pressing the move button on the left handed Move controller followed by positioning the charm directly next to the pistol or sword. Head tracking is utilised efficiently enabling the player to look to either side to seek out enemies and look at objects and characters in your character’s apartment before pressing the move button to interact, alongside vibration reflecting the recoil of the pistol when fired. The DualShock 4 controller control scheme re-maps aiming of the pistol and sword to the head tracking of the VR headset, while pressing R1 allows the player to raise the character’s hand to being in line with where the player is aiming the gun or to bring the sword upwards to shield your character from the archer’s fire balls, alongside manoeuvring your character 90 degrees at a time being re-mapped to moving the left analogue stick to the left or right and choosing a charm to equip having been mapped to the left and right of the d-pad. However, the aim is a little off at times when playing with the DualShock 4 controller, especially when aiming at archers located high above your character and the aim cursor also disappears on occasion during gameplay with the DualShock 4 controller.
Graphically, The Walker has some of the best enemy character models and animations on PlayStation VR, especially when enemies crawl down and along the sides of buildings and leap towards your character, while surrounding environments look pretty good too and the particle effects on the sparks that are produced when shielding your character from an archer’s ball of fire looks amazing. There is also a consistency in performance and immersion during gameplay that gradually escalates in horror such as when your character is being pursued by a troublesome raven whilst standing within a train carriage.
The Walker’s presentation is immediately immersive as the developer’s logo and atmospheric surroundings are layered in the sense of what you would anticipate from stereoscopic 3D. The main menu is centred around your character’s apartment as the player can select the level by utilising the head tracking of the VR headset followed by pressing the move button on PlayStation Move or O on DualShock 4. However, following on from the environment the player is about to enter being presented on a loading screen for around 10 seconds; the screen most often than not becomes black, but that can be resolved by leaning forward a little, although it is a little odd that can happen when even sitting fairly close to or further away from the camera tracking the VR headset and controllers.
Your character does not speak, although there are subtitles, while your character’s guide and a spirit contained within armour speak a foreign language that is also subtitled. Sound effects genuinely increase the tension as the player will most probably be able to hear an enemy approaching before it is within view, especially the cross between a zombie and a mummy as the keys around their necks rattle, while larger enemies also make increasing quantities of noise as their approach draws ever closer. Meanwhile, sound effects also include firing and reloading the pistol, swinging the sword, combining a charm with the pistol or sword and lightning strikes in the distance to symbolise the arrival of more enemies, alongside ambient sound effects such as heavy rain. Atmospheric instrumental music is particularly prominent during the level selection menu within the character’s apartment.
The trophy list includes 18 trophies with 16 bronze trophies and 2 silver trophies. Easier trophies include an accumulation of defeating enemies with any method or a particular weapon, while harder trophies include completing every stage on the hardest difficulty level and earning the highest score category on the hardest difficulty level. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 10 to 12 hours to 100% the trophy list.
There are three difficulty levels including easy, normal and hard, although the second and third difficulty levels are not immediately available and must be unlocked by completing every wave on all five levels on the previous difficulty level. However, in an attempt to even it up a little and provide the player with more of a chance against the far more aggressive enemies on normal and hard difficulty levels; an automatic gun and a better sword are also simultaneously unlocked.
For family and friends situated in the same room; the TV presents what the player is experiencing, albeit without the same quality of depth in comparison to virtual reality. There is no social screen multiplayer which is a missed opportunity to introduce local multiplayer through having the VR player taking on the role of the mysterious lead character as he vanquishes evil, while the TV player controls the enemies situated within each area in an attempt to prevent him from defeating every enemy to progress through each area and discovering more about himself by deciding the approach and formation of each enemy wave in a competitive multiplayer battle. However, there are no online leaderboards which could have focused on the top 10 and global rankings for each player’s highest score and fastest times per wave and level.
The Walker’s replayability stems from multiple waves within five story focused levels, scoring points to earn a better grading for your performance per level provides motivation to return to each level, alongside a further two unlockable difficulty levels and a rush mode that really changes up the gameplay and expands the length of the game beyond the original hour of gameplay. However, it would have been nice to have a competitive edge via online leaderboards.
Analysis
Title: The Walker
Developer: Haymaker
Publisher: Perp Games/Winking Entertainment
System: PlayStation VR
Format: PS4 Blu-Ray Disc/PSN Download
Cross-Buy: No
Cross-Play: No
Players: 1
Hard Drive Space Required: 3.31GB
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Jason
Jason plays all genres of games and enjoys all different kinds of experiences that the games industry has to offer. Jason's favourite PlayStation exclusive franchises throughout various eras include: Crash Bandicoot, God of War, Gran Turismo, inFamous, Killzone, Little Big Planet, MotorStorm, Resistance, Spyro the Dragon, Uncharted, Wipeout and various games that never became big name franchises. A special mention goes to Black Rock's superb Split Second: Velocity as it is rather unbelievable that it will never receive a sequel.
Jason now mainly plays modern PlayStation games on home console and portably, but occasionally returns to the old retro classics on the 3DO, PS1 and PS2 such as discovering Cool Spot Goes to Hollywood 20 years after its original release on PS1. Jason is happy to see gaming coming full circle with updates for retro classics such as Alien Breed, Superfrog and Crash Bandicoot.
Wait….”story driven”? I hate to say this but the satory is barely concluded in the game. All the story tell us is that we’re part of a family of exorcist and we have to hunt down the big prisoner demon. After that, the story is rarely mentioned ever, and aside from the 5th stage, the game really doesn’t fully tell us what connection does the stages 2-4 have with the story. Even when I beated the game on every difficulty, there’s barely any conclusion.
What disappointed me the most is the enemy variety. You got the gollum guys, the soldiers (mostly consisting of sword users and bow users), and two bosses (the harpy lady which is basycally a waggle fest if you use the sword) and the prisoner demon, which is probably the only good enemy that’s worth fighting in this game. Other thing that was really disappointing was the sword combat. It feels like an afterthought compared to Raw Data’s, and sometimes it doesn’t even register the attacks (not to mention that the swords feels weak in comparison to the guns). The magic ability feels more like a proof of concept because while it’s neat, there’s only to spells which mostly consists of freezing the enemy or just dealing a lot of damage.
What’s worse is the sound quality. Is hard to get “inmersed” like you said when the sound is very mediocre at times, and sometimes there aren’t even sound in the game. The gunplay is the only saving grace which even then, starts to get repetitive when you keep shooting the same 3 enemies in a slow pace while standing in one place despite being called “The Walker”.
Is not a god awful game, and it’s certainly nowhere near as bad as other terrible wave shooters like Wraith and Lunar Stone, but calling it the “most inmersive PSVR shooter”? I think that’s going a teensy bit too far, especially when the game has already fallen into obscurity. If I’m being generous, probably less than 100 people have bought and enjoyed the game (though in my eyes, it think it would be less than 50). I feel like if they offered the game for $10, it could have been salvaged, but for $20? I wouldn’t even recommend it to the wave shooter lovers. They might as well stick with Brookhaven Experiment, currently sitting as well at $20, which is more varied, is rightfully challenging and is a whole lot scarier. Not to mention that if you look at it as a China Hero Project game, the only praise it deserves is that it’s playable and it looks pretty.
TheOneAndOnly 24
5 years ago
Wasn’t the sound design the weakest aspect of the game? You said that one can hear the ghouls’ keys moving but I barely heard any of that. Most of the sounds you will hear the ghouls’ screams and gunshots. Even the rain sound effect you mentioned is faintly heard. Another problem with the game is that the reason why it’s so hectic at times is because enemies randomly spawn out of thin air. Also, the survival mode is barebones. Unlike what you said about rush mode, it’s just 3 stages in a loop fighting the same three enemies, while the gameplay basically remains the same (can’t recall if you can even use the other weapons), and when you die, there isn’t even a scoreboard. Couldn’t they at least added online leaderboards on that mode? Honestly, it really feels like you praised the game way too much, ignoring some of the flaws, like saying how varied the enemies are, when there are only 3, with two bosses. You didn’t even talked that much about the story. The game barely even has a real ending. And you’re over killing the stages. There’s only like, 5 stages in the campaign (two being exclusive to boss fights), and two additional exclusive to Legend and Rampage mode. No more than that.
Also, I just noticed that a few of the paragraphs are somewhat later used for your Brookhaven review, which is what I have read first. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if people thought this game was good solely because of this review lol. There’s a good reason why they dropped the price to $10 in the US. And funnily enough, about what you said about Perp Games, they’re no longer making physical copies for the game. If you check their website, The Walker is completely absent. Another fun tidbit is that the game is absent from the China Hero Project’s first batch front page. Even if you manage to find its page, it’s yet to be translated for some reason. Plus, I don’t remember China Hero Project ever mentioning Walker ever again after its release. And that award for best VR game? That was back in 2017. Any award or nomination given to a game before its release means nothing. At least Immortal Legacy, another China Hero game that’s way better than The Walker, won a nomination months after its release. It ain’t much but it’s something.
Not trying to hate on you or anything but it really feel like you overdone it with the praise xP. I do agree that the game’s animations and graphics are pretty good (and the final boss was good, at least compared to the Raven woman), although good graphics won’t do much if the game itself average and forgettable. Doesn’t help much when you realise that the developers have already deleted their Facebook account, not to mention they’re selling their website. So I highly doubt this “revolutionary award-winning” VR game did much help for the devs. Heck, even Winking themselves thought the game was a miss after they dropped the price. Oh well, what can you do :/
Wait….”story driven”? I hate to say this but the satory is barely concluded in the game. All the story tell us is that we’re part of a family of exorcist and we have to hunt down the big prisoner demon. After that, the story is rarely mentioned ever, and aside from the 5th stage, the game really doesn’t fully tell us what connection does the stages 2-4 have with the story. Even when I beated the game on every difficulty, there’s barely any conclusion.
What disappointed me the most is the enemy variety. You got the gollum guys, the soldiers (mostly consisting of sword users and bow users), and two bosses (the harpy lady which is basycally a waggle fest if you use the sword) and the prisoner demon, which is probably the only good enemy that’s worth fighting in this game. Other thing that was really disappointing was the sword combat. It feels like an afterthought compared to Raw Data’s, and sometimes it doesn’t even register the attacks (not to mention that the swords feels weak in comparison to the guns). The magic ability feels more like a proof of concept because while it’s neat, there’s only to spells which mostly consists of freezing the enemy or just dealing a lot of damage.
What’s worse is the sound quality. Is hard to get “inmersed” like you said when the sound is very mediocre at times, and sometimes there aren’t even sound in the game. The gunplay is the only saving grace which even then, starts to get repetitive when you keep shooting the same 3 enemies in a slow pace while standing in one place despite being called “The Walker”.
Is not a god awful game, and it’s certainly nowhere near as bad as other terrible wave shooters like Wraith and Lunar Stone, but calling it the “most inmersive PSVR shooter”? I think that’s going a teensy bit too far, especially when the game has already fallen into obscurity. If I’m being generous, probably less than 100 people have bought and enjoyed the game (though in my eyes, it think it would be less than 50). I feel like if they offered the game for $10, it could have been salvaged, but for $20? I wouldn’t even recommend it to the wave shooter lovers. They might as well stick with Brookhaven Experiment, currently sitting as well at $20, which is more varied, is rightfully challenging and is a whole lot scarier. Not to mention that if you look at it as a China Hero Project game, the only praise it deserves is that it’s playable and it looks pretty.
Wasn’t the sound design the weakest aspect of the game? You said that one can hear the ghouls’ keys moving but I barely heard any of that. Most of the sounds you will hear the ghouls’ screams and gunshots. Even the rain sound effect you mentioned is faintly heard. Another problem with the game is that the reason why it’s so hectic at times is because enemies randomly spawn out of thin air. Also, the survival mode is barebones. Unlike what you said about rush mode, it’s just 3 stages in a loop fighting the same three enemies, while the gameplay basically remains the same (can’t recall if you can even use the other weapons), and when you die, there isn’t even a scoreboard. Couldn’t they at least added online leaderboards on that mode? Honestly, it really feels like you praised the game way too much, ignoring some of the flaws, like saying how varied the enemies are, when there are only 3, with two bosses. You didn’t even talked that much about the story. The game barely even has a real ending. And you’re over killing the stages. There’s only like, 5 stages in the campaign (two being exclusive to boss fights), and two additional exclusive to Legend and Rampage mode. No more than that.
Also, I just noticed that a few of the paragraphs are somewhat later used for your Brookhaven review, which is what I have read first. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if people thought this game was good solely because of this review lol. There’s a good reason why they dropped the price to $10 in the US. And funnily enough, about what you said about Perp Games, they’re no longer making physical copies for the game. If you check their website, The Walker is completely absent. Another fun tidbit is that the game is absent from the China Hero Project’s first batch front page. Even if you manage to find its page, it’s yet to be translated for some reason. Plus, I don’t remember China Hero Project ever mentioning Walker ever again after its release. And that award for best VR game? That was back in 2017. Any award or nomination given to a game before its release means nothing. At least Immortal Legacy, another China Hero game that’s way better than The Walker, won a nomination months after its release. It ain’t much but it’s something.
Not trying to hate on you or anything but it really feel like you overdone it with the praise xP. I do agree that the game’s animations and graphics are pretty good (and the final boss was good, at least compared to the Raven woman), although good graphics won’t do much if the game itself average and forgettable. Doesn’t help much when you realise that the developers have already deleted their Facebook account, not to mention they’re selling their website. So I highly doubt this “revolutionary award-winning” VR game did much help for the devs. Heck, even Winking themselves thought the game was a miss after they dropped the price. Oh well, what can you do :/