The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR Reviews
Until Dawn continues to elude Supermassive, and now even Rush of Blood appears out of reach. Switchback VR is a scruffy game that fails to match up to its well-liked PSVR predecessor, delivering low-budget visuals, lousy combat encounters, and some pretty low-energy level design. There are a handful of memorable moments, and some may find fun in the jump scares – but this should and could have been so much more.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR offers cheap chills and thrills along with eye-catching lighting effects, but not much else.
A moderately entertaining on-rails action game that fails to learn anything from its predecessor Until Dawn: Rush Of Blood or indeed other, much older, lightgun games.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR is not a bad game, but it is certainly a disappointment. We expect more from Supermassive. Similarly, we expect more from PSVR 2. The gameplay is too ordinary and schematic, lacking more interesting ideas and features. Although the action is still fun, that is no longer enough.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Switchback VR is fun, and tries to make the most of the PSVR2 but its wildly bouncing storyline and one-trick-pony gameplay means you’ll tire of it fairly quickly.
Switchback VR is a steady rail shooter that offers decent variety and an interesting tour through some old levels, but never tries to earn The Dark Pictures name. The choices don’t matter, the Curator is just a creepy Where’s Wally?, and the stakes or even setup for rescuing characters was lost on me. However, it’s reliably spooky, action-packed, and has the best designed villain in the series. It’s a rail shooter obsessed with its own past, so it makes sense that it’s two steps forward and one step back.
An enjoyable romp made for VR let down by shoddy execution. The definition of a game that thrives mainly as a launch title.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
While this review may sound very negative, you can have some fun with The Dark Pictures Anthology: Switchback VR. The problem is, we just expected it to be better. While we didn’t find it scary at all, some might. We at least appreciated that a number of its scenarios put us under pressure. It’s perhaps apt that it puts you on a rollercoaster, as like a real rollercoaster ride it’s full of highs and lows, both technically and mechanically. At the end of the day, there are better on-rails shooters available on PSVR 2 already. And the unique elements on offer here just aren’t accomplished enough to draw us away from them.
It’s a decent enough arcade shooter, and if you look at it that way, the length and mood of the game make sense. However, it doesn’t make as much sense as a game with the Dark Pictures moniker. As widely varied as the quality of those games have been, they take the time to tell a story. Switchback doesn’t. It focuses on the gunplay, action, and thrills. While it does a decent enough job of that, the performance issues bring even that end down a bit. If you’re a fan of Supermassive’s brand of horror, it would be hard for me to recommend this over their other games. If you want to play something more like a modern light gun horror that makes decent use of the PS VR2’s technology, then you could do worse than Switchback, but you could also do better.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR is a fun arcade shooter, but its short length, a weak story, and lack of scares hold it back.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR is an on-rails shooter with multiple paths but has subpar visuals. It offers immersion through haptic feedback, 3D audio, and eye tracking, but the puzzles can be frustrating, and it requires patches to fix technical issues before being recommended.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback is a confident rail shooter that celebrates Supermassive Games’ unrelenting knack of horror, but not even the PSVR 2’s impressive use of eye-tracking can save this ride from a nonexistent story and cheap thrills.
At the end of the day, The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR delivers what it sets out to do with an on-rails shooter that is low on the story but high on the shooting action. While the fun may not last for a long time and the genuine scares are few and far between, it is still a good demonstration of what the PS VR2 brings to the table. Just like Until Dawn: Rush of Blood set the stage back in 2016, hopefully, this will only be the beginning when it comes to exploiting the full potential of PS VR2.
Switchback VR is a fun, albeit flawed, arcade shooter. While the game lacks enemy variety, has disappointing bosses, and has some graphical issues, the core gunplay remains fun and the variety of locations you'll visit keep the game entertaining throughout the rather short campaign. While I wish the rollercoaster theme was utilized for more thrills, it is still a blast to take down a horde of enemies as you ride through a burning house or a creepy backwoods road.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR is a really solid PSVR 2 shooter with some fun uses of the headset's eye tracking and haptics, though it is sadly let down by some annoying technical hitches.
An extremely fun and satisfying shooter gameplay, but with a very strong and indivisible arcade component of the proposal, something that is transferred to its short duration.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Solid and definitely has an audience. There could be some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.
As a more or less classical rail shooter, Dark Pictures Switchback VR is no complexity monster – and it's short concerning a single playthrough. But the simple and good working gameplay mechanics are nothing less than a perfect match for VR. The shooting trip also benefits from its scary atmosphere while particular connoisseurs of the core series will enjoy the similarities.
Review in German | Read full review
Switchback VR is one of the best demonstrations of what terror can do on PS VR2 taking advantage of its technical innovations. Uncomfortable, intense and with moments that you will remember, you can only reproach the limitations that it brings as standard: it is not far from what was seen in Rush of Blood and it is somewhat expensive for what lasts.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The graphics and sounds in the game are sharp and immersive and the game does a good job of setting a chilling atmosphere and engaging players. My only regret was not having a multiplayer option and that at times some of the later stages became a bit frustrating trying to shoot and reload when enemies kept coming but in the end, the game delivered and I highly recommend it to any horror fan and the game actually worked well when we had guests over as the family enjoyed taking a turn or watching the mayhem.