Into the Radius is a VR game released in 2020 for PC and Oculus Quest. I’ve been playing the PC version on a Rift S.
I’m a big fan of ‘into the breach’ style open world games; where instead of perpetually wandering an open world, you have a singular home base and an open world outside this base where everything is out to kill you. Some examples are Monster Hunter, Metal Gear Solid V, Death Stranding, and… Phantasy Star Online 2 maybe?
Into the Radius is one of these games. The gameplay loop revolves around accepting missions where you retrieve an item from an anomalous zone simply called the Radius. You stock up on supplies in your home base, find stray supplies as you wander the apocalyptic wasteland, and return after completion to replenish stocks and accept newer, harder missions. It’s essentially VR S.T.A.L.K.E.R, and it’s great.
The game is incredibly intuitive for the most part. There’s a lot of mundane fiddling with things which I’m a fan of, especially in VR, and there’s a lot of interactivity that’s both realistic and not entirely annoying. You have a primary weapon over your shoulder, a sidearm on your hip, mags on your front, knives & throwables can be attached to your forearms, flashlights & sensors can attach to your pecs, there’s an armor system including a gas mask & headlamp, and anything else fits in a backpack that you physically take off from your other shoulder. There’s even a DIY repair system where you spray guns with oil and physically scrub them with a toothbrush; or clean their barrels with a ramrod & a piece of toilet paper. I live for this level of interactivity in VR.
The world itself is instanced, which is to be expected from a Quest game. You have your central home base, and the radius outside the base is split into several individual instances. They’re not incredibly tiny though, and exploring them is a lot of fun. Every zone has weapon caches, stray supplies, containers you can physically open, and even climbable objects to give the player the true feeling of being a scavenger in a ruined world. Combined with a variety of enemies, including ones with guns that can shoot at you, there’s lots of immersive & intense experiences to be had.
It is, however, not perfect. For one, your virtual body turns on a dead zone with your head tracking. So if you look left, your body will turn left. But if you center your head, your body will still be facing left. This can be cumbersome when you’re being chased by an enemy, need to reach for your pistol, but can’t because your body is turned too far and you physically can’t reach. Similarly, grabbing the handles of drawers & cabinets can be finicky, and I end up prying them open with my VR fingers rather than trying to grab whatever hitbox they expect me to find.
It’s also not quite the apocalypse that I expected it to be. Rather than any crafting or breaking down useless items into parts, there’s an in-game shop where you just flat-out sell whatever you find and buy new equipment with the currency you gain from it. Having this kind of system feels a lot less apocalyptic, and it’s worsened by the DIY repair system only really working on guns. You can’t even fix knives or magazines without paying for them with currency, making it feel more like I’m working a deployment job rather than being a survivor in a harsh new world.
It can also have some performance issues in places, including points that can get me a bit sick, but it’s never reached a point where I have to stop playing apart from the physical exhaustion I get from any VR game.
Despite its shortcomings, it’s becoming one of my favorite VR games. If you enjoy S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Metro, or DayZ and want those in a VR environment, or if you’ve played & enjoyed realistic VR shooters like Pavlov or Hot Dogs Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, give this game a try.
