Much has been said in recent months about arcade virtual reality (and VR in general) declining from the heights of its second boom period. That doesn’t stop new pieces from appearing altogether, however, as here we have news of one appearing on location test. LAI Games was the first company to have a big hit in this space with Virtual Rabbids (2017), and now they are working with Ubisoft again as they have begun testing Ubisoft All-Star Blast VR. Let’s see what this one is all about.
Disclaimer: The game discussed in this article is a prototype, which has been seen on location (beta) test. Final production model might vary greatly from what is seen below, or it may not even be released, if it fails the test. As such, reserve your final judgments for later.
Background
For some months now, I had been hearing little whispers about LAI producing a brand new VR shooter piece, that was bound to be revealed at any time. I was not sure on the specifics further than that, or if it was being conflated with the Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars shooter, but it was known in the rumor mill.
That rumor mill was correct in this case, as Outerlimitsgameplay on Instagram then spotted the brand new VR shooter piece in question out on test. Their account is private at the moment, but Jdevy fortunately sent in a glimpse of what they posted. This sees LAI return to the world of Ubisoft, who they originally collaborated with on the successful Virtual Rabbids – which also jumpstarted the whole second wave of arcade VR in the first place, as most games before that were arenas.
As for the game that this one is apparently and very loosely based on, Ubisoft All-Star Blast was released for mobile devices as a sort of Ubisoft-focused Bomberman-style game – wander around the maze laying down bombs, but instead of playing as one of Konami’s bomb-laying characters, you play the likes of Rayman, Sam Fisher from Silent Hill, the Rabbids, and more. Although, from what’s out there online, it was such a blatant clone that it doesn’t seem as if anyone liked this at all. I can’t blame them, as it’s not hard to just find the original Bomberman and play that, which also comes with a lot more polish.
Ubisoft All-Star VR
That all said, this arcade virtual reality title bearing the Ubisoft All-Star VR name appears to only use the concept of combining the original Ubisoft characters into a wholly new VR shooter game of some sort – something to challenge Raw Thrills’ Godzilla Kaiju Wars VR. As this is the only media we have of the game at the moment, it limits what we know about the actual gameplay, but after the photo here, I’ll share some observations and educated guesses:
Observations & Thoughts
This is a mounted gun game, so that would suggest that this follows your classic first-person gun game format – I would be shocked if it was just a VR rehash of the Bomberman-style mobile game, since that would make no sense to convert into something like this.
Perhaps you pick which Ubisoft franchise you want to play in, then enjoy a level of shooting things within that mini-universe. If so, then at least that means fans of Splinter Cell have a new experience to look forward to that isn’t the remake that the company announced back in 2021.
The big curved screen is quite interesting – I’ve been wondering when more developers would start to jump onto that bandwagon again, after it disappointingly didn’t take first time around when Sega’s Showdown did it – and from the graphics on the screen, this also appears to be a completely new creation. Those are hardly Flash-style HTML5 browser game graphics. I have to laugh at the “Activate Windows” though, which we also noticed on Cyberpunk 2077 Turf Wars when it was at Amusement Expo.
As for what is “patent pending” as noted by the sticker on the game, I’m not sure. The motion base does look more compact than usual, but that could just be the angle here. I’m not sure which types of VR headsets they are using (they look like DPVR from the size and shape) and I would assume that those fixtures on each side of the gun are speakers – they could be fans, but they don’t appear to be pointed in a focused way at the players. It would be very surprising if they were extra controls.
Of course, this could all completely change when and if this game tests well enough to reach mass production. Assuming it does well though, perhaps we’ll see it once IAAPA 2025 rolls around in November. Virtual Rabbids was first spotted on test back in the Summer of 2017, then it landed late that year, and went on to become the most successful VR arcade game up to that point, influencing other VR developments in the industry. While most of the steam has left the VR segment at this point, games like Godzilla Kaiju Wars and VR Agent do show that they can still be a success, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters when it comes to the industry moving forward.
What do you think of Ubisoft All-Star VR? Would you like to see this new VR arcade game release?
