Gunjack

My first time dropping into Gunjack I immediately thought: this is what a VR arcade cabinet feels like. You are bolted to a gun turret on a mining vessel drifting through the EVE universe's Outer Ring, and waves of pirate ships come at you from every direction. You aim by moving your head, fire with your controller trigger, manage a reload between enemy waves, and collect power-ups that range from basic missile volleys to a stasis field that turns the whole patch of space in front of you into slow motion. That is basically the entire game, and for its first dozen levels it is genuinely satisfying. Gunjack started life on Samsung Gear VR in late 2015, where it was the top-selling title on that platform. The PC version, released in April 2016 for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, is a meaningful upgrade: higher-resolution textures, improved models, better audio, Steam achievements, and leaderboards were all added for this port. The Unreal Engine 4 foundation holds up in VR, and the panoramic sci-fi skyboxes with asteroid belts and planet surfaces in the background do a solid job of selling the sense of place. Head tracking is responsive and precise on PC hardware, which matters a lot when your entire aiming system depends on it. The structure is straightforward: twenty-two levels, each a few minutes long, scored on a one-to-three star system based on kills, combos, and lives spent. Stars unlock later missions, so there is a light incentive to replay early stages if you were sloppy. Enemy variety includes standard fighters, bulkier ships that soak more hits, and certain units that go nearly invisible and require you to catch their shimmer against the star field. Boss encounters add some welcome punctuation. Power-ups, including offensive lasers and defensive options, keep moment-to-moment decisions alive. None of this is deep, but the execution is clean enough that it rarely feels dull inside a single session. The real ceiling here is content and longevity. A focused player can see everything the game offers in one or two sittings. Repetition sets in hard after the midpoint because level layouts follow the same template: wait for wave, shoot wave, reload, repeat. The voice acting from your supervisor character is functional at best and grating at worst, recycling the same handful of lines well before the credits roll. On PC, some users have also reported controller mapping confusion, particularly with older Oculus hardware, and achievements have had bugged unlock states, neither of which CCP ever patched. CCP officially discontinued support for Gunjack in 2022, so those issues are staying put. For what it is, Gunjack works best in short bursts, fifteen to thirty minutes at a time, ideally as an introduction-to-VR experience for someone who has never worn a headset. The seated posture, simple controls, and immediate feedback make it one of the more approachable VR onboarding tools from early headset days. Long-time VR owners or anyone who has put serious time into gallery shooters will exhaust it fast. If you have a Vive or Rift gathering dust and want something to show a friend without a setup tutorial, this is a reasonable pick. Just go in knowing exactly what it is: a polished VR arcade game with a short shelf life and no more developer support behind it.

Alex · Scout Team

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