EVANGELION: Δ CROSS REFLECTIONS is the upcoming XR game based on the hit ’90s anime Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). Find out why I’m excited to play when it arrives next year.
I went hands-on with an early build of both the game’s ‘Story Mode’ and ‘Battle Mode’, which proved to be an exciting look at what could be one of the bigger games to release in recent memory.
Notably, when asked how long Cross Reflections will be, I was assured it would be a “full” game, and not simply a short sampler of cool things. The first installment is coming early next year, although the entire game is slated to follow the original 26-episode series: memorable characters, massive city-destroying Angels, and locations ripped straight from the anime.
Narrative & Exploration
As a NERV officer cadet—let’s call you not-Shinji—you have to defend your NERV home base and battle the stunningly massive forces of evil.
It seems the game will follow a pretty tight narrative like many other visual novel VR experiences, which means there is a lot of directed cinematic scenes interspersed with moments of bespoke interactions, like Angels bounding over you and destroying the city as you gun it down in a sort of mini-game.
That’s not gameplay below, although it does seem to give clues on the sort of immersive interactions to expect.
That said, there are some serious ‘wow’ moments here. Granted, I was wearing a bHaptics Tactsuit haptic vest and bangles, which did some of the immersive heavy lifting, although Pixelity has absolutely nailed the scale of the Angels and Evangelions.
For the demo, exploration around NERV was fairly limited right now, although it did showcase a novel locomotion method using hand-tracking. Simply point in your desired direction, and you’d smooth move as if you were pushing forward on a thumbstick. To go backwards, simply raise your finger upwards. I can’t say it’s the most intuitive method, but it certainly gets the job done.
Pixelity tells me the hand gestures shown in the preview are not final, and that the team has been actively researching and testing different gestures to make the controls more responsive, intuitive, and natural for each interaction. Still, the current implementation for locomotion (and combat, more on that below) actually seems to be a pretty good fit so far.
Combat
I was worried combat would be the moral equivalent of quicktime event like I saw in the Mobile Suit Gundam game, but there is actually some meat on the bone here.
As with exploration, combat is all about hand gestures. Again, they may not be entirely intuitive (or final), but are actually quite clever and effective once you get to grips with them. At least in the combat tutorial I played, fights took place in a single line, like you might see Olympic fencers do. It’s a smart way to bottleneck the user and build around its locomotion and combat scheme, which requires you to punch your hands to dash forward and hold your left thumb up to dash backwards.
Melee is done by physically punching, and shooting is done by holding you right palm open and mimicking holding onto the foregrip of the air-rifle. Shooting requires pulling an air-trigger with your curled index finger, which both aimed and shot surprisingly well.
Probably the easiest to remember was raising a temporary shield by holding up both hands in a blocking gesture, allowing you to defend against incoming punches and projectiles. Again, not the final implementation, but surprisingly effective.
Meanwhile, executing all of my best moves unlocked a slot-style upgrade UI, which gave you random buffs, heals, and even special weapons, like an ethereal throwing spear that you can lob right into the heart of your Angelic foe. All in all, it was a fun little workout, and way more involved than I thought it would be. I want to learn more about the buff system, upgrades, all of the little things designed to flesh out combat beyond the punch-block-shoot trope that, at least so far, worked pretty well.
Excited? Yes.
It has been so long since I properly sat down to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion, but with Cross Reflections on the horizon, I honestly don’t think I even want to. I’d much rather be just a little surprised at how much I remember, meanwhile engaging in what thus far feels like interesting and seemingly novel VR stuff.
In any case, I’ll be looking out for EVANGELION: Δ CROSS REFLECTIONS when the first installment launches sometime next year. Pixelity hasn’t mentioned any official target platforms yet, although demos took place on Quest 3.
