Evasion

2 Minute Video Review →
Evasion is a sci-fi shooter with a big story campaign and lots of surprises.
In your dominant hand you have your main weapon (for me it’s my right hand, but you choose which hand you prefer). On your secondary hand you have your tether gun which includes a small shield.
The tether gun is like a high tech tractor beam with many uses. When enemies are near death the tether can finish them off and pull in powerups for you. If you play co-op the tether can heal your friends and revive your friends as well.
Store up enough powerups and you can unleash a powerful surge attack.
Before the game begins you choose between four different classes, each of which have unique weapons and abilities.
When I started the campaign I was instantly struck by the overall quality of the gameplay. It feels like a AAA console action game. The campaign stayed interesting with the story driven objectives constantly changing and presenting new challenges.
For example: in one of the early levels you need to destroy some towers, but the only way to deactivate the towers’ shields was by standing on a specific pressure plate. And doing so made you a sitting duck for all the robots to pummel you. So it was a constant battle between taking cover for myself or lowering the towers’ shields.
Top it all off with good voice acting, well timed humor, and great physics with destructible environments.
Evasion has some of the best production quality I’ve ever seen in a VR game. It has raised the bar for action games moving forward. This game is awesome. I highly recommend it.

I'm recommending this but I have a vive pro with a wireless and have a slight issue. This error is not confirmed but the only way to launch this on my setup is having the vive wireless on, steamvr off, and launching the game from the library vr or regular launcher. It then autoactivated my steamVR and was able to play in VR.
THE QUALITY IS THERE FOLKS! DIVE IN. It has 3 ways of locomotion, teleporting, etc. Graphics can be configured to your liking., it is top quality.

Experienced on the Oculus Rift with Touch Controllers
Note: I received this game for free as part of the Steam Curator Connect program, but as you guys know, that doesn't stop me from being as objective as possible. I review the game as though I had paid for it and judge accordingly.
This is one of the best wave shooters / bullet hell type games in VR that brings the challenge (in the later levels). I would rank it in my top 5, along stuff like Serious Sam: the Last Hope, Blasters of the Universe, Time Carnage VR, Brookhaven Experiment or Space Pirate Trainer. However, this game is very different from all the above.
The reason is because (at least the campaign) plays out like a normal shooter such as Halo (with no ADS). In fact, this game level designs / worlds looks like it was inspired by the alien worlds in Halo. You have free locomotion and smooth turning options. You have big environments to traverse. Enemies come from all sides, but are generally in front of you. The reason I call it a wave shooter / bullet hell is because all the action takes place in the wave shooter paradigm (with audio dialogues usually before/after a fight). You can physically duck behind cover, but I find just moving around (dodging) & using your specials to get powerups is usually sufficient.
There are epic boss fights. Just when you think you have figured out a boss, two of them come in the next level. Then a whole pack and their friends, along with trash enemies (not trash as in garbage, but like the trash before the boss fight). There are 4 different hero classes to play and although the core gameplay stays the same, each hero has a different style. The bad thing about this system is there there are no gun upgrades or different guns to try ... only the 4 heroes available with their different type of guns / specials. You can play online coop with up to 4 people. I was unable to find anybody online during my playthroughs.
This game is the same price as Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope, but I think it's too expensive. There are 9 levels and I would estimate it would take 3-4 hours to finish the game depending on skill level (I'm on level 6 in just under 2 hours). It just doesn't have the replayability and variety in Serious Sam for extended gameplay. Especially if you're going coop and want 4 of your friends to each shell out $40.
Rate 7/10. Fun game, just priced a little too high so I took off a point on my rating system. $24.99 would have been a better original price given the content. On the other hand, it's solid all around.

Excellent performance, medium lenght storyline (~4hs) excellent voice acting, audio and fun gameplay.
This game feels like it has great production value all around, the coop is very easy to host and join games (no mid level joining though)
I played this game a couple of times with my son in coop and its been a blast, the mechanics are simple, but they mix them up a bit to keep things interesting... As the enemies are robots, there is no blood and although violent, id say its family friendly.
BUT the game does feel a bit on the "simple" side, and does get a bit repetitive, in my opinion because you are forced to use the same weapon the whole level. (you choose before starting) The weapons are fun but would have loved the ability to mix it up mid level. and they are all similar, so there is no variation there.
There are a bunch of enemy types and bosses that then turn into midlevel bosses, the setpieces are cool when they happen.
Some VR veterans will wont like the simpleness, but i recommend it because of it.
It is the perfect game so my wife and kid played can play together and dont ask my help.
And they both had a blast, sure i would like more complexity overall, but i also liked the simplicity, enemies, bad, destroy them all.

VR is in strange place right now. I feel it’s waiting for the individual elements of greatness that are slowly emerging in disparate software to come together (with cheaper hardware) to create a game that will bring the platform into the mainstream.
It’s only fair that I make it clear from the start that Evasion is not that game.
I recently played 'Space Pirate Trainer'; a VR game that ostensibly has a lot in common with Evasion, but which is not as successful thanks to the high level of repetition that leads boredom to set in very quickly.
Evasion and SPT share similar weapons, similar shields, and even a similar ‘leash’ mechanic, but Archiact’s 2018 game adds two things that help it to hold off the yawns far more effectively; Environments (with the requisite ability to move through them) and co-op play.
'Evasion' marks the third attempt by me and my brother-in-law (let's call him Bob, as that is, after all, his name) to play something in VR multiplayer since lockdown.
The first endeavour involved freebie social gaming platform ‘Rec Room’ in which we wandered around, got beaten by 12-year-olds at paintball, and ended up with me depositing my lunch into the nearest suitable receptacle during the intense VR activity of ‘Ten Pin Bowling’.
Note to self: Leave the Cubre Libres until after VR in the future.
The second venture was with 'Pay Day 2 VR', a VR-ification of the existing game that neither of us enjoyed. Chunks, however, were resolutely unblown. Small victories.
We had three criteria for the game we wanted to try next: It had to have a mission structure, it had to be cheap, and it had to at least look like it was fun to play.
That third point is more difficult than you might expect, as so many VR games have fallen into a very ‘seventh console generation’ feeling of gritty earnestness deployed while killing hordes of zombies; not something either of us are that interested in.
The bright, polished graphics of 'Evasion' immediately appealed, as did the co-op campaign, frantic gunplay, and very low price point.
The game calls itself a ‘Bullet Hell’ shooter and, while I don’t think it ever lives up to that billing, there’s certainly plenty going on to keep two players occupied during each of the ‘walk-to-the-waypoint-and-kill-a-bunch-of-robots’ missions.
Basic levels and limited enemy types are common with VR games and 'Evasion' is guilty of both, but the pace of the game and sheer number of assailants make it easier than usual to forgive.
Some small level of variety is added to the all-out shooting with the ability to tether near death enemies and smash them around, ripping out a power core or health pack in the process. This also ensures communication with your teammate(s) as it’s otherwise easy to power on into the mayhem tethering everything in sight.
And alongside at least one teammate is definitely the best way to play 'Evasion'. Towards the end of the session Bob suffered a network connection failure and I was left to take on the hoards of mechanical meanies alone - it was not fun - the overwhelming number of bad guys, coupled with the fact I was involuntarily abandoned during a boss fight, made it a very tough experience. It did, however, serve the purpose of illustrating just how much better the game is when playing it’s primary, co-operative, format.
Exacerbated by my curious tendency to stand still while shooting, the game lacks dynamism when played alone. The enemy simply powers forward to bludgeon you with gunfire while you strafe and retreat with your shield up until they explode.
The presence of another human, with their unpredictable actions and the attention given to them by the opposition forces, brings a healthy dose of chaos to proceedings. This rounds out the experience and brings Evasion together as a very entertaining game.
It may not be the platform defining, boundary pushing, eye catching game that VR needs right now, but for early, and not so early, VR adopters 'Evasion' is a lot of fun - and offers a polished, comfortable blast-em-up time for multiple players.
In my experience it appears harder than you would imagine to get these elements balanced into an enjoyable co-operative shooter, so these seemingly simple successes should not be underestimated.
Evasion - A full motion, enjoyably chaotic, well polished co-op VR shooter that (despite a sneaky pre-game Kentucky Mule) didn’t make me throw up into a bin. Thumbs up all round.

Is Evasion a hit, or did it miss the mark?
How do you translate the top down bullet hell shoot em up genre to VR? You do what Evasion did. Spoilers, Evasion was a hell of a lot of fun!
Evasion excels in most areas.
The music got me pumped up and ready to blow shit up. The way that stuff blew up was beautiful. The scenery around my was great. The "cinematics" were well done (for what they were...)
The voice acting and the humor was great. While there were only 2 NPCs, I loved the attitudes they had.
There was a good flow to the action of the game. I never felt like I wasn't actively doing something or waiting around and sometimes just blowing up the scenery was entertaining.
There are 4 classes, each with their own weapons and abilities. I only played one of those classes but after a minute of figuring out how my weapon functioned, I fell in love with it.
I have a feeling co-op multiplayer in this game with a close friend would be a blast. I didn't try it out but it's a feeling I get similar to how Borderlands or Smash is better with people to shit talk.
Pretty much everything was great. That doesn't mean everything was great though...
Content is lacking for the $40 price tag. It's great that there's a wave shooter mode but at this point, how many of us aren't burned out on those? I know I won't play more than the campaign. Unfortunately a liberal estimate of the campaign mode puts it at 3-4 hours which is still in line with the cost of a couple movies but it's going to be a hard pill to swallow when there are cheaper games with more content.
For me, the quality of the content makes the price tag worth it but I do still think it's a bit steep for the game. Definitely look for sales if you're on the fence.
Aside from the price, the difficulty levels that were introduced in the last update (1.03) still need tweaking. I didn't have to focus or try hard enough to breeze through Bullet Hell, the highest difficulty. As much as I'd love to think so, I'm not all that good and shouldn't have been able to progress as easily as I did.
Overall the content is the real deterrent to this game and why some people may not want to pick it up. I had fun with the game and I'll be recommending it however be aware that this is a one and done sort of game. Once you burn through the campaign you're not likely to pick it up again.

I guess at one point this game was going for $40 which caused some negative reviews, and no this game is not worth $40 at least not if you're playing mostly solo. Devs seems to agree so at $20 it's an easy recommendation. Crazy to me that a VR game with solid performance, decent graphics, free locomotion, quality 90s Fear Factory inspired soundtrack, and a pretty wicked leash system (for weakened enemies) is sitting on Mixed reviews. On a 50% sale this is an absolute steal but it's worth it at $20.
There's even destructible environments / cover and I can't even think of another VR game pulls that off as well as this one does. And sure the story is goofy and by-the-numbers but if you're playing sci-fi VR shooters (that aren't HL: Alyx) for the story then you're gonna have a bad time.
This game bangs and needs far more exposure. Will at least watch for more from these dvs.