Wanderer: The Fragments Of Fate Review – An Ambitious Puzzle Adventure In Need Of More Time

Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is an formidable VR puzzle journey recreation developed by New Zealand-based studio Mighty Eyes. After many delays the extremely anticipated recreation has lastly made its technique to Quest and PS VR2 platforms, however the huge query stays: Was it definitely worth the wait?

A Observe To The Reader

It’s price noting a couple of factors on the context by which this assessment is delivered earlier than we proceed any additional.

Following up on the unique Wanderer (launched on PCVR in 2022), Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny exists within the grey area between a remaster and a pseudo-sequel, insofar because it makes use of components of the unique recreation however expands the scope of the journey.

Having by no means performed the unique, I used to be capable of expertise the world of Wanderer independently throughout my playthrough of The Fragments of Destiny. As such, this assessment doesn’t remark as to how a lot of the content material on supply is recycled from the earlier iteration.

Additionally, my playthrough was accomplished completely on Quest 3 and as such doesn’t instantly touch upon the comparative deserves of the PS VR2 iteration of the sport. For those who’re eager about seeing PlayStation VR2 model, try Don Hopper’s no commentary livestream exhibiting the primary hour of gameplay on that system.

With that out of the best way, let’s take slightly journey via time, we could?

Time Journey Is By no means Straightforward

Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is a narrative-driven, single-player puzzle journey that takes place throughout quite a few factors all through historical past. The story sees the participant start among the many ruins of Boston in a not-too-distant future, the place you’re prompted to make a deadly journey to search out your grandfather’s condo. From right here, a time-bending story of thriller and intrigue begins to unfold that sees you traversing all through historical past throughout a number of convergent timelines.

The narrative is each intelligent and interesting, staying attention-grabbing all through the prolonged 12 – 15 hour marketing campaign (it’s a puzzle recreation, so your mileage could fluctuate). From an early level you’re joined by a information of types (no spoilers) who helps you navigate via what would in any other case be a reasonably tough path to comply with.

Regardless of occasional factors the place you may select from a spread of targets to pursue, the journey is broadly linear. Nevertheless, that linear pathway just isn’t all the time apparent. As such, your companion turns into important to creating positive that you simply’re in the appropriate time and place to proceed your journey.

Time Flies When You’re Having Enjoyable

So far as the puzzle element of this journey goes, Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is prime tier.

The sport presents a formidable number of puzzle sorts, all of that are well-integrated into the time-bending mechanics. There may be little or no sense of repetition or iteration among the many puzzles themselves, with most using contemporary strategies to get you scratching your head.

The inevitable backtracking via historical past (and your grandfather’s condo) can get tiresome after some time. Regardless of this, the puzzles stay difficult and every new space can have you taking a second to mentally reset, shifting your pondering as you determine the right way to method the subsequent sequence.

The puzzles make nice use of the physicality of VR and supply gamers with an actual sense of accomplishment upon completion. It’s tough to painting the sophistication of lots of the puzzles with out spoiling the narrative, as these mechanics are so neatly interwoven with the story. Broadly talking although, they’re assorted, creative, truthful and constant. Nicely, for essentially the most half.

Later within the recreation there have been a couple of puzzles that diverted from beforehand established recreation logic, making them harder to resolve than they need to have been. There have been additionally a couple of puzzles that required the usage of seemingly unconnected objects gained hours earlier within the marketing campaign, and these felt like a totally unbelievable remedy on reflection.

For these cases (and some others the place a puzzle simply legitimately stumped me), there’s an in-game trace system that helps gamers push on. Whereas I typically detest to make use of hints for puzzle video games, being supplied with an answer that I might by no means have labored out, permitting me to progress, was a godsend. Used sparingly, this technique is nice for preserving gamers of all aptitudes shifting via the story, avoiding game-abandoning frustration alongside the best way.

Time To Kill

Along with the puzzle components, Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny additionally contains quite a few motion sequences, starting from hand-to-hand fight to pitched gun battles. Whereas the idea of an epic, time-spanning action-packed puzzle journey sounds nice in precept, the implementation of those sections falls far in need of their potential. Each aspect of the fight is woefully under-baked and because of this, these sequences find yourself detracting from all the things else that the sport does so properly.

From the primary fight encounter the failings are painfully apparent. The sport instructs you to punch somebody, however the controls gained’t allow you to type a fist, so that you’re left to aggressively poke your attacker with a single prolonged finger. Makes an attempt at parrying are clumsy and inconsistent, and opponents’ actions are restricted and jerky. Quickly sufficient, any sequences that require close-quarters fight elicit a groan of resentment reasonably than any sense of pressure.

Sadly, ranged fight doesn’t fare a lot better. Gun dealing with is needlessly exhausting as a result of physics system. Reloading is finicky and the auto intention is so overactive that it virtually negates your participation in any respect, though this may be turned off. Headshots don’t appear to do something and regardless of the big array of historic weaponry on supply, each encounter seems like a rinse and repeat. Merely intention within the basic path of your assailant, shoot as soon as, wait for his or her recoil animation to play out (hits don’t register whereas this animation is enjoying) then make a second shot.

If the fight had been higher executed, with even half the depth of Blade and Sorcery or Zero Caliber 2 for his or her respective fight genres, Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny would have been on observe to being one of many all-time greats. In its present state, nevertheless, fight feels so cumbersome and pointless that the sport is lessened by its inclusion.

There’s At all times A Paradox

Sadly, Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is totally affected by technical points which significantly affect the general enjoyment of the sport. The Quest model struggles with fixed body drops, glitches, and damaged physics interactions that undermine the entire expertise. The body charges chug so laboriously that they ultimately prompted me complications and delicate nausea.

A number of instances physics interactions would go haywire and my hand or an merchandise would embed inside an object, which might drive me to restart the sport with a purpose to progress. Along with this, I skilled a minimum of a half dozen exhausting crashes all through my play via.

These technical difficulties are extreme sufficient to frame on recreation breaking. There have been quite a few occurrences the place I spent 30 – 40 minutes trying to find the subsequent step solely to find later {that a} key merchandise had not loaded in and progress was not possible with out reverting to a earlier save.

The most important affect this has on a puzzler, is that it makes you lose religion within the integrity of the puzzle. After the third occasion the place a glitch held me up for a major period of time, each time I struggled with one thing I discovered myself defaulting to “it have to be one other glitch” versus “perhaps I ought to do this one other method”. For a recreation stuffed with brilliantly difficult puzzles, this psychological change was a loss of life blow and marked the tip of my enjoyment.

Judging The Ebook By Its Cowl

Graphically, the Quest model of Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny is a combined bag. Whereas the environments are giant and fantastically designed, they undergo from grainy textures, fixed pop-in, and extreme artifacting throughout object interactions. The physics system, which is spectacular in idea, appears to overburden the {hardware} and creates efficiency trade-offs that hinder the expertise.

The truth is, on the finish of my time I used to be in the end upset that my first (and possibly solely) run via of this intricately designed world had taken place on a model so riddled with compromise. Have been I gaming strictly for enjoyable, after the primary hour I might have given up and waited for the Steam model. Or at very least, a raft of patches to roll out earlier than heading again into the long run.

Is That You, Matthew?

The sound design is the very best aspect of the sport’s presentation. The voice appearing is superb, significantly from the timepiece companion, who channels Matthew McConaughey so properly that I’m nonetheless not 100% satisfied that it’s not really him. The wealthy, characterful voice appearing from your complete forged goes a good distance towards bringing the narrative to life.

The soundtrack is well-composed, figuring out when to swell and when to fade into the background. In a recreation the place silence is commonly essential for puzzle-solving, the rating does an awesome job of disappearing in an unobtrusive method that enhances the gameplay completely.  The number of in-world music, accessed via cassette tapes hidden all through the sport, can also be wonderful and actually builds the authenticity of this alternate timeline.  

Wanderer: The Fragments Of Destiny Evaluation – Closing Verdict

Wanderer: The Fragments of Destiny reveals immense potential, providing a uniquely partaking narrative and an excellent array of inventive and satisfying puzzles. The truth is, the puzzles are actually fantastic that with out the fixed technical points this might simply have been the very best recreation of its style that I’ve performed.

Nevertheless, the technical points and poor fight implementation make it tough to suggest the sport in its present state. It’s clear that beneath these issues is a very distinctive recreation that, with correct patches and enhancements, might simply change into top-of-the-line VR experiences out there thus far. For now, nevertheless, it could be finest to attend.

UploadVR makes use of a 5-Star ranking system for our recreation opinions – you may learn a breakdown of every star ranking in our assessment tips.