PSVR Robinson: The Journey – PlayStation VR

This game is not bad, but it’s not what i expected. I thought it would be more of an adventure; more of a journey. It’s nicely immersive and visually stunning, but not much more than that. It feels more like a polished tech demo than a game. I had no issues with motion sickness whatsoever. It’s just really quite boring.

If you are not prone to motion sickness and even if you are, you just can’t deny the level of immersion and scale this game offers with its world and creatures. I’m only hoping Crytek would eventually add more areas and Dinosaurs as while what’s available are stunning to behold, there are just very few dinosaurs than expected. Not to mention just a very brief glimpse of that well known predator that many expected will have plenty of screen time in this game but didn’t.

Remember how Alan Grant fell to his knees when he first saw a sauropod in Jurassic Park? I might have done exactly that had I not already been seated while playing Robinson: The Journey. The game conveys the awe and majesty of the creatures of the Cretaceous in ways that, as someone who grew up fascinated with dinosaurs, nearly brought a tear to my eye.

You’re stranded on a planet that has evolved similarly to Earth’s late dinosaur age, but you’re not entirely alone: a milquetoast AI named HIGS looks after you, and you in turn look after an orphaned baby T-Rex who imprinted on you after hatching. Guided by HIGS, you search for signs of other survivors and for answers about why your ship went down.

The game connects its set pieces with mechanics of exploration and puzzle-solving. The puzzles generally aren’t terribly complex, but they’re just diverting enough to be fun, particularly when teamwork with your T-Rex is involved. The mechanic for scaling rock faces feels surprisingly similar to rock-climbing at the gym. Finally, while some players interpret scanning the wildlife as a bonus feature, I interpret it as a core game mechanic. When you’ve scanned just one of a creature, it shows up as a model in the Infotarium, and the more you scan, the more animate the model becomes. Scanning a firefly is easy. Scanning a raptor is more challenging.

I left the motion controls on their default settings and never once got motion sick even when playing for hours at a stretch. People vary in their tolerance of VR movement, so gauge your own body’s reactions and practice with shorter sessions if you need to! While I’ve heard the PS4 Pro can sharpen objects in the distance and get rid of the occasional texture pop-ins, the game looked superb and felt immersive on my original PS4.

One possible disappointment bears mention: the scenes from the trailers where you crash land on the planet and where you dodge a sauropod stampede only to encounter a T-Rex are not in the final game. The different T-Rex scene which made the cut is spectacular, if brief, but the exclusion of the crash sequence is baffling. Still, playing the game without expectations, I can’t help but rate it as anything but 5 stars.

My first playthrough lasted about 7 hours. Amazon offered the title at release at , and yes, I absolutely got my money’s worth. My girlfriend cackled as she watched me dodge the beak of a Quetzacoatlus and hide from Utahraptors, and she’s looking forward to seeing the dinos up close herself. I took my time and scanned every creature I could get my eyes on, and I enjoyed every minute of it. You can speed through the game in less time, but why would you? Robinson isn’t about the goal; it’s about the journey.