Sprint Vector

The store page bills this as the quickest thing you can do inside a headset and promises you will soak a t-shirt. Both halves are accurate, and the second one is not a marketing gag. Fifteen minutes of Sprint Vector does more to your heart rate than most apps that call themselves fitness software. Where the promise thins out is the word racer. Survios put this out in February 2018 with online PvP and crossplay built in, and the crossplay does work, but the busy competitive grid the pitch implies is not what greets you when you drop in now. Come to it as a solo time-trial game with an outstanding party trick bolted on and you will have a brilliant time. Come for packed lobbies and you will bounce off it inside a night. The locomotion is the whole product and it earns that billing. You pump your arms like a sprinter and the tracked controllers read the swing, so speed is something you generate rather than something you receive by holding a stick forward. Steering comes out of how you angle and load each arm, which turns corners into a technique problem instead of a button problem. The courses are obstacle runs rather than circuits: ramps, gaps, walls you haul yourself up, stretches that only pay off if you commit to a line at full tilt. The scheme clicks in about ten minutes and then keeps opening up for months. That high skill ceiling tag is not decoration. Look at the leaderboard times and the gap between a good run and a great one is enormous, and closing it is a matter of your actual shoulders. Comfort is the pleasant surprise. Moving that fast in a headset should be a nausea machine and for most people it isn't, because your arms are producing the motion your eyes are seeing. The two agree with each other, so the usual sickness triggers mostly stay quiet. That said, take the requirements literally. This is VR only, standing, room-scale, and nothing in the options menu will make it work from a chair. If you cannot stand and swing both arms freely for several minutes at a stretch, it is off the table for you, and I would rather say that flatly than have you find out afterwards. You also want clear space and a clear ceiling, because people flail. A washable face gasket and long sleeves are not accessories here, they are part of the setup. On party duty it is one of the best headset-passing games going, which is an odd thing to say about a racer with no split-screen (VR cannot do split-screen). Four friends in a room, one headset, one time on the board to beat, and whoever is windmilling in the middle is the entertainment for everybody else. Runs are short, the goal explains itself in a single sentence, and someone who has never worn a headset can post a respectable lap on their second attempt. Hot-seat play is where this thing genuinely shines. The disappointments are real, though. The online population is sparse regardless of crossplay, so plan on time trials and mates rather than matchmaking. The content runs dry sooner than you would like once the tracks are in your muscle memory. And the distance between a casual runner and someone who has drilled cornering is wide enough that mixed-skill races get lopsided fast. Steam sits at Very Positive across several hundred reviews and the critic average landed in the mid-eighties, which feels about right for what this is: a small, sharp, physically demanding game that does one mechanic better than anything else in the format. It is not long and it is not a social hub. It is the headset you hand to someone at 11pm to prove the cable is worth it. If your play space is standing room-scale and you like the idea of a racer that leaves you out of breath, this is an easy recommendation.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

Be the first to comment on Sprint Vector.