Swarm 2 review

Swarm 2 has some of the best movement I’ve experienced in VR, even if it takes a fair amount of time to get familiar with it. As a grapple commando, you’re tasked with using dual pistols to shoot the swarm, and alien robot race, as well as swinging around environments and causing chaos at every turn. The freedom is sublime, and the shooting is pretty satisfying, and by dashing through the air and getting the drop on enemies, there are few games quite like this on Meta Quest devices.

Unlike the first game, Swarm 2 is a roguelike that sees you dropped into different settings, killing all the enemies, and collecting shards which can be used after successfully clearing a stage to provide permanent upgrades to your character. These will make every new level slightly easier and provide more reasons to keep ono playing. There’s plenty of replayability, even if you die and have to restart because the gameplay is so much fun.

Despite how fast you’re moving around, there’s no motion sickness at all. It’s something I never really suffer from, but the fluidity of movement is so delicate and precise that Greensky Games has managed to make it feel comfortable. Your two pistols have to abilities which keeps things simple. You can shoot at enemies, but you can also fire your grappling wire at anything on the map to swing wherever you want to. It took a lot of time to get comfortable with the movement and knowing when to let go, fire your grapple, and generally move about.

When you’re factoring in shooting the bad guys, there’s a lot to get used to, but when it clicks, it features some of the coolest gameplay in virtual reality. It can get frustrating when you’re being fired at from behind and can’t see where it’s coming from because of the grandeur of Swarm 2’s verticality, but again, getting used to the controls and the traversal makes this much easier. It helps that the levels are so gorgeous, with plenty of colour and diverse level design, and it shares the same kind of cartoonish vibrancy as Overwatch.

The more you play, the better the weapons and power-ups you get, along with the ability to use slow motion, improve your health and your shield, and more. The progression is gradually introduced, but this helps to improve each run and give you the tools you need to both improve and enjoy every new level. I enjoyed getting a perk after every run that improves the next run, and with stages constantly mixing up your objectives and enemies, there’s plenty to dive into.

Along with the main mode of Swarm 2, you can play Arcade which tasks you with getting the highest score in a set time across the various stages, but I thoroughly enjoyed the free roam mode because it allowed me to get used to the game’s movement without the threat of fighting off waves of robots. It’s just you, an open city, and your grappling, offering freedom to learn the ropes and learn how the momentum works for when you finally decide to dive into the roguelike elements of the game.

Swarm 2 is a fantastic VR title that gives you plenty of freedom to swing about the city and kill bad guys at the same time. It’s tough to learn at first, due to the frantic nature of enemy attacks and learning how movement works, but once it all falls into place, there are few games that nail that kind of traversal, especially in virtual reality. The roguelike elements are structured well, and offers a nice change of pace with every new stage or run. While there is somewhat of a story, it’s not exactly exciting, but who cares when you’re free to become Spider-Man with guns!