Have you ever dreamed of exploring space? You might want to be one of the first people to live on Mars, even if only for a short time. In Per Aspera VR for the Quest, players are tasked with terraforming Mars. That means bringing Mars closer to Earth to host human civilization.
But as science tells us, there are a million and one theories about how to terraform planets. One of SpaceX’s Elon Musk’s Leading Theories — Now Famous on His Twitter (opens in new tab)perhaps — dropping nuclear bombs at the poles of the Earth, evaporating the ice caps, releasing carbon dioxide and water to create a more livable atmosphere for human life.
In Per Aspera’s convoluted story, it turns out that China has tried just this and has mostly succeeded. The reason for the failure will be explained in-game, but Per Aspera VR will start with that failure. He is now one of my favorite Quest games. (opens in new tab) Not only is it incredibly deep and challenging, but it’s also one of those games where time goes by so fast that it leaves you wondering how you’re still playing at 2am.
life begins on mars
In fact, according to Per Aspera, it is artificial life that will begin life on Mars. More specifically, he plays the role of AMI, an artificial intelligence tasked with building the first habitable base for researchers on Mars. You start with a lander and some resources, but you can use worker drones to build buildings quickly.
And yes, the game uses real-world topographic maps of Mars to create realistic planets, but the quest graphics may be a bit simplistic.
Just like in classic RTS games such as Starcraft and Age of Empires, your first goal is to mine as many valuable resources as possible. To do this, place task-specific mines (iron mines for mining iron, silicon mines for mining silicon, etc.). This allows you to build factories to build more research bases.
You play the role of AMI, an artificial intelligence tasked with building the first habitable civilization on Mars.
Throughout the game, you will study how to make the Earth habitable for humans. All of which eventually dissolves the polar caps and injects enough CO2 and oxygen into the air to make it breathable. That atmosphere also works to keep out unwanted intruders such as asteroids that you deal with many times early in the game.
There’s nothing more harrowing than hearing a terrifying crash of an asteroid and wondering which buildings were shattered.
As you progress and terraform the planet, water begins to emerge to the surface, eventually creating vast oceans and turning red earth into lush green. As you can imagine, what you build early on can be drowned out as water levels rise, forcing players to scrap old habitats and start building elsewhere.
As you progress, you can find remnants of previously attempted missions to discover and even colonize Mars. The aforementioned Chinese mission to nuke a planet? It comes with a very interesting backstory that you will get to know as you play the game.
Per Aspera VR is fully voiced and includes a TV series quality narrative matched with deep strategic gameplay.
Throughout the game, you will struggle with the fact that you are “just” an AI and not a creature. Per Aspera VR is a fully voiced game with truly outstanding voice acting that combines compelling and professional sound. This is not an indie he game where one person does all the voice work.
So you have the intelligence to take calls from NASA engineers, answer questions from researchers, and learn how to deal with the fact that the fate of mankind on Mars is almost entirely up to you. You can even talk to yourself as an AI with Yes, that includes monolog trees that can affect responses in future conversations.
Great gameplay and mechanics
As the VR translation of the popular PC strategy game, Per Aspera VR does a phenomenal job of translating the complex and deep gameplay mechanics from a keyboard and mouse interface to one powered by the Quest’s touch controller. .
In fact, Per Aspera’s mechanics work so well that we hope to see some of these concepts applied to other strategy games in the future.
Surprisingly, one such mechanic was visually distracting at first. Like most VR strategy games, Per Aspera VR lets you zoom in to see buildings and units up close, or zoom out to get a planetary view of the action. This mechanic works incredibly well, and it doesn’t take long to zoom in and out quickly, rotate planets, and switch settlements in seconds.
You can easily and quickly zoom in and out, rotate planets and switch settlements in seconds.
However, when you zoom out, the building quickly disappears and is replaced by a simple icon representing a structure or resource type. At first I thought this was too simplistic, assuming it was done mainly due to technical limitations of the Quest’s hardware.
It may have started that way at first, but after a few hours of playing, the iconography used is so unique that you can tell exactly what’s going on in a particular area of the planet in just a few seconds. I have found that it is possible to identify
The UI is very nice, even if it could have used more contextual popups that help players who might forget what something does. Still, it translates to VR incredibly well.
Holding down the grip button gives you a complete view of all your colony’s resources, giving you quick, actionable information on what to build next.
The radial interface for building and switching between different “sites” in the game to manage things like power, maintenance, traffic, and other necessities is very well done and less confusing than Cities: VR’s method. I think. (opens in new tab) For example, do it.
Overall, its complexity is somewhere between Cities: VR and Little Cities (opens in new tab) On top of that, it has the added bonus of having a great story worthy of a TV series. Maybe play sitting instead of standing. There are no real comfort options to speak of, and spinning the planets while “standing” in space can feel a little weird at times.
