Crisis VRigade — Virtual Reality User Experience Breakdown

Crisis VRigade logo

This story is part of a series where I break down the onboarding and overall user experience of Virtual Reality games and experiences. I do this primarily for fun, but also because I want designers and developers to build truly immersive experiences, and I hope these breakdowns help.

I use my fundamental design questions / rubric to break down these experiences, and then give a rating on their overall Immersion. I play everything on my Oculus Quest.

Today is Crisis VRigade! This is a really well done game and it’s one of the first games I show to new people when I’m showing them Virtual Reality.

You can find it on Steam and the Oculus store. To play on Quest, you do need to get SideQuest, because for some reason it’s not on the Quest store, but hopefully that won’t be for too long.

This game is a super straight forward shooter that gets your heart racing, and get’s me to play it over and over again.

My Crisis VRigade video breakdown

(I do realize I mis-pronounced the name of the game entirely… oh whale).

Here is the written breakdown in addition to the video in case you prefer to read than watch. (And because I didn’t remember everything in the video.)

Visuals: 9/10

1. The visuals were deliberately low-fidelity, low-poly objects. This means that I’m not spending a ton of time “taking in the scene”. I’m also getting shot at, so I’m not inclined to do casually observe. The downside is that I am in a new world and I do want to look around. The pressure of the game makes me feel like I can’t do that. Especially in the dock scene. There’s a whole city in the background that I didn’t even notice because I was so focused on not dying.
2. Remember, you’re throwing a player into a brand new world. Like waking up in a room you didn’t fall asleep in. The first thing people do is look around. The designers, either on purpose or accident, found that reducing the fidelity would actually enhance the game play. This helps me take in the space really quickly and then move forward. However… this does backfire at times (see Exploration).
3. The reason for not being a perfect 10 is because, at times, there wasn’t enough contrast between the players and the environment making it overly difficult to spot the enemy at times.

Relativity / Proximity: 7/10

1. Objects felt farther away than they would be in real life. The opening scene has 2 bad guys in the bus on the right, and they’re SO hard to hit. They feel about 1.5–2.0x farther away than they would be in real life.
2. There needs to be some type of distance size correction algorithm that partially enlarges objects that are farther away and shrinks them to normal size as you get closer… “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear” fixes.
3. Objects that I need to use immediately were instantly accessible. My weapon and my ammo where right there with me the entire time.
4. Because I was under duress the entire time, it did feel like desks and chairs were “getting in the way” or too close in certain situations like in the bank teller scenario. This is also caused by the “teleporting” issue (see Exploration)

Interactivity (Environment): 8/10

1. The first game with the bank heist has only a few interaction elements to engage with including the time dilation, extra guns, and some of the objects, but the second one has explosive containers that I can shoot, large caliber weapons, and weapon stashes that I can shoot to get. These elements should have been incorporated into the first game as well.
2. Asides from that, the nature of the game doesn’t quite lend it self to require any other interactivity, so again, their focus on limitation of user interaction helps them focus on other dynamics they did really well.
3. Little things that I liked was shooting between chairs, and busts, and holes in brick walls. That was awesome and made me think critically about how I was aiming.

Sizing / Proportions: 9/10

1. The car in the very beginning feels like a real police car. It’s right at the size a car would actually be. Sadly I’m short, so I couldn’t even see over the car.
2. The enemies heads are abnormally large, but that’s not a detractor for this game. I want to get head shots, so making the heads large was actually helpful. It does detract from the immersion a little, but for this game it was okay.
3. Text was sized really well in relation to my face and the distance I had to read them. No issues reading anything.
4. I spent A LOT of time crouching. I would have liked more moments when I could stand straight up and hide behind taller barriers. It tired me out really quickly.

Signals / Cues: 10/10

1. The cues are subtle, but super helpful. The first one is the sound of the bullets flying passed your head. My first reaction and everyone’s is to duck and hide behind the police car
2. The second cue is the window shattering. This subtly and almost subconsciously tells me that the world I’m in can be broken which means it can be modified by my bullets.
3. The man over the intercom was hilarious and was a fantastic use of the walkie talkie we always see police offers care. Extra points for the uniqueness on that.

Onboarding: 8/10

1. Onboarding was pretty straight forward. The game really only has 5 actions: Shoot, Eject Magazine, Grab New Magazine, Load Magazine, Cock weapon. This makes “figuring out” the controls very straight forward.
2. The gun and magazine being on your body was perfect and providing great contract made “discovering” those tools a small delight.
3. The down side was that the onboarding was happening in the menu screen, so unfortunately I’m looking around in my new world while also trying to figure out how to use the controls. These two aspects should have been isolated to a mini shooting range cut scene, and then dropped into the menu.
4. The other note was the use of the 7 minute clock while loading up. Genius way to induce pressure and stress without doing hardly anything.

Menus: 5/10

1. The menus were unfortunately pancake menus and not objects I could interact with. A simple menu could have literally been a police radio and the channels are the different missions.
2. I completely missed the side wall on the left to see other locations (You know, the other 1/2 of the game) until I had played through the game twice! I liked how it was a “crime map”, but if you’re going to do pancake menus, you have to make them very obvious.

Environment: 10/10

1. Barriers are clearly defined. I can only interact with a few objects and those objects move. I can technically move wherever I want if I’ve got the physical space to do so. Overall the environment is done really well, and should be used as a template for others!

Physics: 10/10

1. Simple physics meant to replicate real-life. While I can walk through walls and shoot through walls, the situation prevents me from doing that.
2. Also, while I can see the bullets that I wouldn’t be able to see in real life, the game requires it, and individuals can’t “dodge” my bullets if it’s about to hit them.

Locomotion : 10/10

1. There really is no locomotion asides from the real world space you can walk in. This is great as it means that I don’t have to figure out how to walk, but also means I need some pretty decent space to enjoy the game. Not a ton, but a decent amount. Some type of notification could be helpful to players getting started, but not necessary.
2. Because the only movement is their physical body, it’s hyper intuitive and make learning the game very fast.
3. Movement of the hands, head and body feel good and looking around corners is exactly how I want to feel in my first person shooter. I feel like I’m backed against a wall and I have to shoot my way through.

Audio / Sounds: 10/10

1. Simple, straight forward sounds.
2. The best part was that before the scene even opens on the first level, shooting is happening, and I immediately duck. Everyone that played the game ducked before the scene even opened. Perfect use of sound.

Controls: 10/10

1. Simple, intuitive, and very easy to figure out. I basically didn’t even question if there were other buttons because they made it feel as though I didn’t even need them.
2. The two handed aspect to hold the handgun was also spectacular as your aim actually improved by holding the weapon with two hands. Fantastic touch.

Exploration: 7/10

1. The general feeling in the game was “cramped”. This is because you were basically teleported between the “levels”. In a high stress environment, I want to be able to see the world I’m walking into.
2. The solution here would have been to take even just 5 seconds to “evaluate” the area you’re walking into. Or instead of teleporting, just show the cut scene of the player running toward the entrance. That way I get the ability to survey the space and I don’t feel like I’m in a “new box” and I’m in a space connected to the area I just left.
3. The game also reduced the amount of “exploration” that was even required for the game. Things like finding the weapons cache at the docks was super straight forward so it made “finding” stuff really easy.
4. When the bonuses were provided after killing an enemy, it would stay on screen for less than about 5 seconds, and if you had to reload, it’d be gone. If you increased that time by even a couple seconds, you could give the player the ability to actually get it. When I watched others play the game, it would disappear so quickly, they wouldn’t even notice it.

Last Notes:

1. Check points. It was SO frustrating needing to start over from the very beginning of the level to keep playing. So frustrating in fact that I quit the game and didn’t come back for at least 3–4 days.
2. There is an extra life glitch that freezes the game if you go over 3 lives.
3. It was frustrating if I ever got shot right when I entered a new level. If I’m standing straight up, sure, but when I’m almost laying on the floor, come on.

Immersion Score

Overall this game earns a 9/10 on the immersion scale.

Friends and family that I had play actually fell over trying to lean against a table. It was hilarious and also magical because it was real for them for in that moment.

It’s not a perfect score unfortunately because of the low fidelity, the teleporting transitions between levels, and the size discrepancies for objects that were far away.

Even though it’s not perfect, this is still a game I recommend to everyone. They figured out that reducing complexity and providing a direct mission helps users get into the game immediately.

This is a game that I will continue to play as long as they keep making new levels!

If you’re looking to build a Virtual Reality experience or have already started on building one, let me know if you’d like me to review your application and help out!

Also, if you’d like to reach out checkout my website: https://bazemore.me