Smash Hit Plunder – PSVR | Review

By John Hay
| 3rd October 2018
| PS4, PSVR, Review
| 0

Every once in a while a game comes along and does exactly what it says on the tin, Smash Hit Plunder is one of those games.

Smash Hit Plunder is a new PSVR title from developers Triangular Pixels, it’s set in a medieval castle done in what can only be described as a Minecraft style. The game has a basic story that revolves around you inheriting a haunted castle and you need to pay off debt to ghosts to unlock more of the castle, lucky for your money is easy to come by as it’s just laying around the place under and inside items that you have to smash or move and then hoover up the loot.

Anyone that has ever played Job Simulator knows that it’s fun to throw things around in VR and that’s pretty much all this game is. Throwing things about does get old quite fast though, I feel it would be something that’s more suited to having the odd quick blast on every so often rather than a prolonged gameplay session with. It is fun to smash things up and there are things to do within levels like try to hit the birds or insects darting around to discover more loot and push the rating of the level up to 3 crowns (it uses crowns in the place of stars), the more loot and crowns you unlock the more levels you will have access to, but ultimately it just boils down to smashing and collecting loot.

When I saw a trailer for this game I was a little worried it would look “cheap” in VR but I’m pleased to say the Minecraft style actually works very well and the graphics actually look quite good when you have the headset on, rooms look big and you have a good sense of scale while playing. The controls are also quite good, it’s easy to pick up what you want as you simply point at it and it’s sucked towards you by magic with a press of the trigger on the move controller so you don’t have the issue some VR games have when you try to pick things off the floor, collecting loot is just as easy as you simply hold the x button and hoover it up. Levels are timed and sometimes there are multiple rooms within levels. The aim is to get in, smash the place up, and collect as much of the loot as possible in your quest for the 3 crowns. This may take completionists a little bit of time as it can involve having to find little bits of loot that are squirrelled away pretty well. That’s really about it for gameplay, smash loot move on.

There is also a multiplayer option in the game where someone can play on the TV while you play in VR. You can either loot together or take part in a poltergeist mode which is a sort of VR hide and seek, the VR player is invisible to the non-VR player and they have to look for furniture and items moving to track your location and try to catch you. I had fun chucking items at the unsuspecting non-VR player, but, the experience was not as fun when you are the player that’s not using VR. It’s good that the developer has included multiplayer like this, as not many VR titles have this option, but it’s always going to be more fun being the person that’s actually playing in VR.

Final Impressions

Smash Hit Plunder was fun while playing, but it’s a bit of a one trick pony that may struggle to hold people’s attention long term, especially when there are other VR games out there which do.

*Code kindly provided by the publisher for review*

Developer: Triangular Pixels / Publisher: Perp Games
Release date: 03/10/2018
Platforms: PSVR
Platform Reviewed on: PSVR/PS4 Pro