Blood and Truth (PSVR) Review
Have you ever sat in the cinema watching an Adrenalin packed action movie and wondered to yourself, “What must it be like being the action hero in this movie?”. Blood and Truth is the answer to all of that and much much more! Flip me… what a game!
Cocked and Ready Baby!
Based on London Heist from PlayStation VR Worlds, London Studio has literally pulled off the boldest VR title in existence! Blood and Truth puts you in the boots of Ryan Marks, who is a former Special Forces Soldier who returns home to his family in London. Upon returning, a Crime Boss named Antony Sharp (a.k.a Tony) storms into the family business HQ, shoots a body guard and declares that he is taking over the corporation, and there is nothing you can do about it. After a ballsy escape, you and your family return to their safe-house and start planning a revengeful take down of Tony and his goonies.
The story first evolves in the format of “replaying passed events”, because Ryan has been taken “captive” and is being interrogated by a man named Carson who is looking to take down Tony as well, but needs to really settle on which side of the fight you are on. Once you join forces with Carson, things go South very fast and you find yourself in a very emotional spiral of family tragedies. Much like an epic action movie, the story is not predictable in any way and so much happens that you all too often find yourself gasping for air or holding your breath while certain scenes play out. When talking about true immersion and Adrenalin pumping action where the stakes are high, you can see why London Studio described the game as a “love letter to classic cockney gangster movies” and adopted, spliced and mutated their inspiration from Hollywood blockbuster movies to create this thrilling title.
The game is played in first person, with immensely graphic intense environments, where you hide behind objects to use them as cover. You can even duck or lean to gain side-cover while reloading, which adds so much more to the realism. When it comes to weapons, throughout the game you pick up different guns to shoot enemies in your pathway. To move in the game, players simply look at a spot in the area and a white triangle will appear showing you where you can choose to move to, and then you just press the PSVR Move button to change location. You can also interact with pretty much every object around you, like picking up bottles, opening drawers, climbing scaffolding or shimmying through vents, eating cookies, fiddling with all the dials in a car while sitting in the passenger seat, but the most fun comes in when you use your tools to pick locks, sabotage electrical panels and better yet, if you time it just right, you can catch an enemy grenade being thrown at you and lob it right back at them!
London Streets
The game takes you to many different locations, like the deserts of what I can only presume to be Iraq, a Casino in London called Fortuna Hotel and Casino (owned by Tony), a modern art gallery (also owned by Tony) and then the streets of London while in a high speed ballistic chase. While pursuing Tony, you also infiltrate an airport hangar and then discover that the mystery and threat is far greater than Tony, as the goonies are soon replaced with highly trained military soldiers that go far beyond the “power” that Tony could possibly possess. Who or what is it… that much, we will not reveal, you will just need to either come play the game at the CodeBro Cafe or buy it and play it at home!
In the below video, we unbox the Blood and Truth Press Kit, show you the Digital Art of the game and then get into about an hour and a half of uncut footage, so please be aware that by watching passed the unboxing, you will see spoilers and be able to see what I am describing to you with far greater detail.
I have to this day, never played a more engrossing game. It is polished beyond perfection. With Blood and Truth being a PSVR exclusive, if you do not own a PSVR Headset, now is the time to invest, because the game is just that good! The only point I could think of to “complain” about (and is where our score reduced the game from a perfect 10), is the movement controls. You can only move forward, which in some instances is very inconvenient, because at certain points I accidentally triggered movement and missed out on ammo drops, special loot (collectibles) and an upgraded gun. I understand the reason behind this, because there are special “target” markers hidden in the game that you need to search for and shoot to rack up mod points, but at least allowing you to move back one or two waypoints would have been great instead of just outright denying you that ability.
The game also offers you a “challenge mode” which you can access through the main menu after unlocking content by playing the main story. This challenge mode is basically a time-trial through sections of the game where you can replay and improve on your first few run-throughs and is too much fun. I can honestly say that I am going to be doing a few playthroughs of the game after completing it, which I am literally on the brink of doing, but after that, I will be sitting through many hours of challenge mode as well, to allow my inner John Wick some time out from his cage.
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Conclusion
Blood and Truth releases globally today, 28 May 2019 and we were fortunate enough to receive an early review copy to bring you our impression on launch day. Blood and Truth is developed by SIE London Studio and is published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation VR. At the time of this review, the Pre-Order price for Blood and Truth was R645.00 from BT Games. This is such a low low price when considering what you are getting! I would happily pay the standard AAA+ title price of R999.00 for this game, purely because of how damn good it is. As stated above, if there is one title that is incentive enough to buy a PSVR headset for, it is Blood and Truth. Thank you London Studio for putting so much effort into this game, I am smitten with every aspect of it. I look forward to a sequel.
