Zombie Grenades Practice

Developer / Publisher – ARVI LLC / AGA Ad Media LLC
Price – US $12.99 / EU €12.99 / UK £10.29
Release Date – April 10, 2018
Input – Tracked Motion Controllers
Play Area –  Sitting, Standing, Roomscale
Store – Steam
Reviewed on – HTC Vive

Zombie Grenades Practice… sometimes it’s all in the name and this title pretty much explains exactly what this game is about. Throwing different type of grenades at zombies, in VR, sounds like a good old time, and it is, but only for a very short while.  Watching the trailer for this game, you can see that this has a lot of work on the visual side of things with a well done semi-realistic look, spooky looking zombies and some nice scenarios. I enjoyed the audio as well with really cool sounds effects matching with a perfectly fitting heavy-metal soundtrack which does a solid job of getting me pumped up…for a few minutes anyways.

The environments are fun

The hype created when I first started playing quickly vanished as soon as, after relaunching the game about 3 times to avoid crashes or frame drops, I realized just how horrible the positioning of my virtual world hands is.  The models are not accurately placed to how you hold the controllers in real life, and to some people the discontinuity between the game and what you do in real life creates a lot of confusion.  Even though the controls are easy to understand, I had many issues while throwing grenades. After you pick one up it feels like it’s 20 cm in front of your hand, another disorientating issue and on multiple occasions, instead of detaching the pin with my left hand I ended up just grabbing the entire grenade and subsequently dropping it to the ground.

In some maps there are objects you can interact with, but it can be difficult to do that as the inventory that displays your remaining grenades is always in front of where you look, and there is no option to move it, causing me to act like a contortionist to grab random objects or press buttons around the map. The player can move around with a standard teleport by holding the touchpad with a small cooldown in-between actions. The developers also implemented the option of turning the play area by pressing the sides of the touchpads, a function I never used because I think it kills the game immersion, but for those that get sim sick, the devs have your back.

Zombies zombies everywhere!

Nearly every level has its own types of grenades, and the mechanics are fairly original and satisfying to master. You have access to normal grenades that explode after a predetermined amount of time, some that detonate as soon as they touch a solid object, and other types bounce 4 times before exploding. There are also remote-controlled and UV special ones. One level even gives you only stones you can throw onto landmines scattered around the map.

The main problem with these features is that you practically use every type of grenade only once at its full potential. This takes me to another bad point, the amount of levels. There are only 15 available levels in this game. If you don’t care about how well you complete a level and do not replay each map until you get a perfect score, you can finish the game in less than an hour, and with the absence of a level editor or custom content, it’s quite lacking. I think they should have at least doubled the amount of levels, with maybe some more focused on mastering a certain skill.

You’ll see one or 2 explosions during the game

After completing it I also realized that the achievements on steam are not working, because I had none unlocked, and I’m pretty sure I completed stuff like; Kill a zombie and Find a collectible item.  Overall, even if the graphics are really nice, as well as the audio, it feels like Zombie Grenades Practice is lacking something, feeling  too “casual” and not polished, especially regarding the controls.

What would I pay? I think that the game is currently overpriced, considering how much time it takes to finish the game without aiming at the perfection in each level. I could be tempted to buy it at 4.99 because of the nice presentation, but not more than that. I think it would be worth the current price only if all the problems I’ve explained in this review were fixed, if there were more than 15 levels and maybe even a support for a map editor, to allow users to create custom levels.

ARVI LLC Provided The VR GRid with a review code for this title and, regardless of this review, we thank them for that!

Good

  • Very nice and satisfying graphics and scenario
  • Cool music and great sound effects
  • Original concept

Bad

  • Short gameplay
  • Many areas need a little more polish
  • Disconnect between hand positioning in and out of VR
5

Mediocre

12 Comments

  1. The game looks great!

  2. I wonder how the online community holds up. I never got in on RIGS and always wanted to… hopefully there’s still a chance to try it.

    Thanks for the opportunity!

    • It’s a little light, but guaranteed events happen every Sunday and Wednesday night so the community is small, bit still active

    • The gamers are active…I have about 20 people I regularly play with…but keep adding more as I run across new players that have the game. You only need 3 others to get a ranked multiplayer game started. Though if you are short on players (crew) you can also do a private match and have it filled with bots and adjust their difficulty. For best result, gotta join ps4 community starblood arena, and its discord. Friending people you see online only helps the pool of players you can draw from to get games started.

  3. With a lower price might need to snatch tjis one up.

  4. Sounds really cool! Shame that I don’t have a whole lot of money to spare right now. I would buy it otherwise!

  5. Been holding off picking this up… but 20 ain’t shabby at all.

  6. I really loved playing descent, wayyyy back on the IBM pc in the office. This looks like a great homage to the 80’s era and I bet it’s even better in Vr.

  7. Great review, hope to win the contest! I’m loving PSVR and really want to pick up this game now!

  8. I’ve had this game since launch. It def had a rough start, as I couldn’t even get single player burn circuit to work then…but after the patches, it is definitely the game I keep coming back to the most. The HOTAS 4 controls are awesome…even if they don’t match up with the tutorial (read them in game, in options for accurate controls). The past 2 weeks I really got into its community of gamers, which is a must for vr gamers who are battling being a small community, spread out over several games, AND Time zones. I’d urge everyone that picks this up, to join the ps4 community, and discord (which is listed in the ps4 starblood arena community) and adding as many psn friends as you come across. Players are always on, and down to get a party started, and crew up. Just got to met them…some of the cool players you may ever come across in multiplayer chat.

  9. I played the demo, amazing game! I bought the game via PlayStation network download and I can’t play it at all. Online multiplayer says “my network can’t connect” and when I try to load single player it either won’t load at all to where it needs refreshed, or it will load to stage screen and a error message will pop up. I’ve looked up reviews online and every review was saying they could not get their game to load, some have had success loading but to only cut to the main screen a few seconds later. I’s the issue not fixed properly yet? And if it hasn’t how come it’s still being sold on the marketplace? Especially for 50% off. i would just like to know when the issue is going to be fixed or if refunds are possible untill the update goes out. Thank you.

    • The community is only active Wednesday and Sunday nights so your best bet is to join them on psn. As far as the single player stuff. It should work np but I haven’t played in awhile so I can’t say for sure

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