Taking place two years after the events of the
middling 2014 film, Jurassic World: Aftermath
sees you play as Sam, a mercenary who joins
a small expedition returning to the abandoned
park on Isla Nublar to retrieve valuable research
materials from the Park’s main compound.
However, after your plane is brought down by
aggressive Pterodactyls, the mission turns into
an urgent fight for survival.
Aftermath is primarily notable for achieving
a lot with relatively little, starting with the
presentation. A Quest-exclusive title, the game
deftly sidesteps the headset’s limited rendering
power by adopting a highly stylised cel-shaded
aesthetic. The result is one of the sharpest-
looking games on the platform, with hyper-
vibrant colours and crisp, cleanly drawn lines, all
packaged into a file just over 600MB in size.
Presentational quality doesn’t end there
either. Aftermath offers a tense, low-key
survival story that’s compellingly written and
superbly acted. Actress Laura Bailey excels
as Amelia Everett, a geneticist and your
primary companion, guiding you through the
compound’s maze-like layout via remote link.
Bailey is crucial in selling the game’s story,
adding drama to even the most mundaneprocesses of getting the park’s basic systems
up and running.
In play, Aftermath takes its primary cues
from Alien: Isolation, replacing the latter’s
Xenomorph with a prowling velociraptor
that hunts you dynamically through large
portions of the game. Although the raptor isn’t
as coherently simulated as the Xenomorph,
Aftermath does a good job of making its
behaviour lifelike. It will investigate noises you
make, search for you under desks and, when it’s
not on screen, you can hear it clunking around in
the compound’s ventilation shafts.
These bouts of dino-evasion are coupled
with some light puzzle solving. In a nod to
Half-Life: Alyx, doors, computers and other
electronic items require you to solve a range of
holographic puzzles in order to access them.
Doing this while also watching for the Raptor is
one of the main drivers of the game’s tension.
You can hide in a cupboard for safety, and you
can also distract the dinosaur by remotely
activating certain electronic equipment.
Aftermath does an impressive job of creating
a compelling experience out of a handful of
systems, although it does err on the side of
being too slight. For example, you can’t throwDinos, Doom and
sci-fi road trips. Rick
Lane rounds up the
latest happenings in
the world of VR
Doom has been ported to every electronic
device imaginable, from calculators to
pregnancy tests, and now the Oculus Quest,
thanks to the unofficial QuestZDoom mod.
It adds support for fully immersive
stereoscopic 3D, 6-DOF head-tracking,
teleported movement and even touch
controls, converting the game’s weapons
into 3D objects that you can manipulate with
your hands. In other words, it transforms
Doom into a fully functional VR game.
And it doesn’t just run Doom either.
Currently, the list of supported games
includes Doom II, Final Doom, Wolfenstein
3D, Hexen, Heretic and Strife. It also includes
free versions of certain games as part of
the package (such as FreeDoom), and even
features support for mods such as Brutal
Doom and Maps of Chaos.
To install QuestZDoom on your headset,
first you need to install SideQuest, another
third-party app that enables you to sideload
non-Oculus-approved software onto the
device. After that, you’ll need to install two
further applications – the QuestZDoom
launcher and the QuestZDoom engine.
Once completed, Doom WADs can then
be uploaded directly to QuestZDoom.
You can play the free versions of Doom,
Wolfenstein and so on right away, but if you
want to play the official versions, you’ll need
to own them separately.NEWS
QUESTZDOOM
JURASSIC WORLD:AFTERMATH / £18.99 inc VAT
REVIEW
DEVELOPER Coatsink / PUBLISHER Oculus StudiosREALITY
CHECK
GAMES / VIRTUAL REALITY