VRZ: Torment

My first instinct with VRZ: Torment was the same one I have every time someone pitches me a zombie VR shooter: hard pass. The genre is a graveyard of wave-defense clones that feel like glorified tech demos. This one at least tries something different. It puts you on Purgatory Island, a compact open area with a day-night cycle where you loot, explore, and brace for the undead swarm that comes out once the sun drops. That structure - use daylight to prep, survive the darkness - gives the game a rhythm that most wave shooters completely lack. Weapon variety is the other thing that holds your attention. You can run grenades and rifles for the loud, aggressive approach, or switch to a bow and axe for quiet, slower kills. Neither loadout is dramatically better than the other for most of the campaign, which is fine. The campaign itself is on the short side - early reviews flagged it as chapter one of a planned series - and it is unclear how much additional content landed post-launch given the near-zero active player count today. An arcade mode rounds out the package and is where co-op sits, though even at launch co-op was described as rough around the edges and the multiplayer side never really developed. Movement is handled through teleportation, trackpad smooth locomotion, and snap turning, with a left-handed control option. For a 2017 indie VR title the options are reasonable. Motion sickness was reportedly kept in check across all three movement modes, which matters more in a zombie shooter than people admit - nothing kills immersion faster than getting nauseated mid-firefight. The artwork holds up better than the price tag would suggest, though the play space is small and you will feel the walls eventually. The hard problems here are not technical - they are population and ambition. Steam sits at a mixed rating across a few hundred reviews, the concurrent player count is effectively zero, and the PvP and co-op modes are ghost towns. If you are buying this expecting a live multiplayer experience you are going to be disappointed. Solo campaign with a short runtime and arcade mode against bots is realistically what you are getting. For a VR headset owner who wants something more structured than a pure wave shooter and is fine with a few hours of singleplayer content, there is a usable game here. For anyone expecting a populated shooter with ranked ladders or functional co-op in 2025, look elsewhere.

Fred · Scout Team

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