Thumper remains one of my favourite VR titles, and got a lot of play from me when it first launched for the original PlayStation VR. It’s also a title I enjoy picking up from time-to-time sans headset, given it’s perfectly playable as a “flat” game and still a really good bit of tripped-out, moderately unnerving rhythm gaming.
Now, artist and composer Brian Gibson has returned (along with Fuser and Rock Band VR’s Mike Mandel) for a brand-new bit of music-driven video game art in THRASHER, and much more so than Thumper, it feels like a game that could only have been conceived for the world of VR as we know it currently.
At a glance, THRASHER seems to borrow liberally from the style guide of Thumper, and there’s no denying that there are plenty of conceptual similarities, but the moment you start playing it’s evident that this is a very different experience. For starters, the entire thing is built around free movement in single-screen encounters, with players controlling a steadily-growing geometric space eel that snakes along the screen in concert with your own gestures. And rather than challenge players with rhythm-based inputs, it’s all about painting flowing motions through waves of shapes and other abstract objects, destroying some while avoiding others and attempting to clear every screen before time is up.
Keeping your efforts in check is a time, giving you a minute per “wave” of obstacles to swoop around the screen and destroy all of the blue-tinged objects. Getting through them in quick succession awards combo bonuses that add time back onto your counter, and hitting red shaves time off. It all starts off simply enough, but each area has its own aesthetic as well as its own new mechanics and often power-ups, offering new challenges and approaches, like being able to “attack” the red objects or slow down time momentarily.
The game doesn’t actually care if you blow through your allotted minute in any given wave either, the only real punishment being a hit to the ego, so most will be able to play it through, but not all will be able to say they play it well. Even if you’re not interested in earning those coveted S+ ranks for your times, just being able to progress to see what wild new idea, visual flourish or entrancing soundtrack is coming up next is reward enough – especially the “boss” encounters that tie off each stage as the game eventually culminates in a showdown with a cosmic baby god.
What’s crucial to understanding and exceeding at THRASHER is learning to work with your psychedelic eel companion. Navigating dangers and hitting all of the right marks isn’t just about waving your hand in the right directions, because the eel is its own being with its own physicality and inertia – mastering its movements and achieving a level of oneness where it becomes an extension of you is tantamount to success and exactly as fucking spiritual an experience as it sounds.
I reviewed the game on the Meta Quest 3 and here it can be played with the standard controllers or via full 1:1 hand tracking. The latter is, naturally, the most engaging and cool-feeling way to play the game and in my entire time playing never once felt anything but accurate. Using the Quest’s controllers isn’t necessarily more reliable, but it is more responsive, so if you’re aiming to crack those leaderboard times you’ll want to opt for those. If you’re here for the vibe, put ’em down and get to gesturing like 2002 Tom Cruise conducting a space orchestra.
Much like Thumper, THRASHER does take a little sticking with before it eventually shows its hand and for things to really click into place as you enter a sort of virtual reality trance state. When it does though, the vibes are undoubtedly immaculate, and you’ll feel like you’ve slipped into a world tucked between the natural rhythms of time and space, bonded to a cosmic ribbon of unexplainable beauty and gifted the power to slay incomprehensible beings at the turn of your wrist.
If Thumper was billed as “rhythm violence,” this is “rhythmic gymnastic violence.”