If there’s one thing I really appreciate about Deadpool VR, out now exclusively on Quest 3 and Quest 3S virtual reality headsets, it’s how the first-person action-shooter lets you know right away what it is.
The opening minutes of the game feature Neil Patrick Harris as Wade Wilson aka Deadpool, carrying out his wild plan to use a jeep filled with explosives to blast open a hole in a large aircraft taken over by an evil group of ninjas. If you like what this opening offers, the rest of the game only gets better. But if you can’t stand Deadpool or prefer VR games that feature interactivity, you’ll likely be ripping the headset off in minutes.
What is Deadpool VR?
Developed by Twisted Pixel and published by Meta, Deadpool VR is, as the name very clearly states, a virtual reality game in which you star as Deadpool as he gets sucked into a bonkers intergalactic reality show and quickly agrees to do evil villain Mojo’s bidding while getting as many viewers as possible. If he pulls it off, he’ll be a famous star. If he fails, he’ll be canceled, which in Mojo’s world equals death.
Well, actually, to get to this part of the game, you’ll have to slog through the opening level set inside an occupied Shield helicarrier that Deadpool is being paid to rescue from the Hand Clan. And this part sucks, and is the worst bit of Deadpool VR. Prepare for a lot of dark grey corridors filled with the same enemies. And because Deadpool is very hard to kill, you rarely feel in danger in this section.
The game is also very, very slow about offering up more ways to kill and interact with stuff during this elongated intro. So you spend a lot of time flailing your swords at baddies and watching them crumple in unsatisfying ways, or slowly walking around empty rooms. At one point, Deadpool himself pipes up to point out how dull the ship is and how easy the enemies are, and while it did make me chuckle, it didn’t change the fact that this part sucked a lot.
Swords are great, guns are bad
Thankfully, after a fun boss fight that combines all the tools you acquire during the intro, like a grappling hook and grenades, you are sucked into Mojo’s World. This is when the actual game starts. From here on out, Deadpool VR is about tracking down targets for Mojo, fighting lots of baddies as stylishly as possible to gain more viewers, and then using the cash you earn from your antics to buy new weapons and cosmetics.
While combat in Deadpool VR isn’t groundbreaking for virtual games, it works well enough and has some solid mechanics. I especially liked being able to toss a gun at a bad guy, which reloads it and bounces it back to Deadpool. Fun stuff! I also liked being able to divekick stunned enemies to pop their heads off. Oh, and flinging Deadpool’s swords at enemies is wonderful. They fly with a lot of speed, autotarget just enough that you always feel cool doing it, and pin their targets to nearby walls.
However, all the guns feel weak, and enemies don’t respond to hits in a way that feels satisfying. Picking up a shotgun, I was excited to blast fools away. But it doesn’t do that at all, and it often took more than one shot with it to take down people, who then didn’t go flying back in an explosion of blood. Boo! This is a Deadpool game, guns should blow people up and feel awesome and powerful.
And you’ll get your fill of all the good and bad of Deadpool VR’s combat and then some because many fights go on way, way too long. At least during these bigger encounters, you can easily fill your special meter, letting you activate a special attack that uses various Marvel character weapons, like Gambit’s cards. During these sections, the game plays different licensed tracks, and I’ll admit I bobbed my head and smiled as I used playing cards charged with energy to slice down a dozen ninjas in a level set in Japan.
Shut the hell up, Deadpool
But throughout all of this, Neil Patrick Harris is voicing Deadpool, and it is a drag. He often sounds as if he walked into the booth and did one take while reading the script for the first time and called it a day. Often his voice sounds lifeless, his quips lack emotion, and he delivers jokes as well as a kid trying to explain why that one moment in the latest MrBeast video was so damn funny.
What’s odd is that there are times when NPH actually delivers some genuinely funny lines with emotion and care. But they happen so infrequently that it makes me think he or whoever was in charge of directing his performance decided that for most of the game, Deadpool should be disconnected and nonchalant. It doesn’t work and just makes the few moments where he does come alive feel out of place. And the writing doesn’t help, with a lot of jokes and material being the kind of dialogue that would get cut from the first draft of a Ryan Reynolds-led Deadpool movie. I’d say the ratio of jokes that actually got a laugh out of me was about 1 in 5.
I don’t even hate Deadpool! In fact, I really liked the last two movies and that Xbox-360-era game. If someone like me was struggling with some of the writing and with NPH’s performance, I’m not sure how people who truly despise Deadpool will handle playing Deadpool VR. Having your head strapped into a hot machine that screams Deadpool lines directly into your ear for hours might be like torture for them. *shudders.*
Ultimately, if you mostly like Deadpool, you own a Quest 3 or Quest 3S VR headset, and you don’t mind playing through levels that lack the interactivity seen in games like Half-Life: Alyx, I’d recommend Deadpool VR. But be prepared for a bleh intro, bad jokes, and performance hiccups that can make the game chug hard. I have a strong VR stomach and powered through these moments, but others might not make it without feeling sick. And if you hate Deadpool, well, you’ll probably feel sick for a whole other reason. So to Deadpool haters, I’d advise staying away from Deadpool VR. Doubt I needed to warn you anyway.
