Kill It With Fire VR – Anmeldelse

This spider-killing game, which was released three years ago, got a VR version earlier this year, and now it’s time to play it on Playstation 5. Actually, it’s very logical to transfer this to virtual reality since it’s in first-person perspective , but after hunting hundreds of spiders in several rooms and houses, I wonder if it was really necessary. Something that is of course very fun in VR is interacting with objects. I remember the excitement the first time I tried Job Simulator and stood behind the counter throwing things around, opening doors and pushing buttons. It may seem a bit unfair to judge this partly because time has passed, but that is a bit of the problem here. As time goes on, everything evolves, but Kill It With Fire VR feels a little too simple, and like it’s coming way too late.

I start in a house and the first little black insect quickly appears and runs for its life as I grab a photo frame and run after it. Repeated blows are needed, then it lies dead and well, that’s really how the game goes. You look for and find one or more spiders by rummaging around, and then you kill them. The game wants me to do it in different ways, and the very first task is to throw a book at the insect. Done and done. Then I can set fire to both the bugs and the environment, and when I unlock a box I get a revolver so I can shoot them dead too. This is how it continues, bit by bit.

A big problem here is that everything sounds a lot more fun than it is. Yes, there are moments of euphoria, like when I’m at the gas station blowing up the gas pumps. The flamethrower is also pretty fun, and as the title suggests, it’s also the one you use the most because it’s the easiest way to kill bugs. Set fire to a bookshelf or closet and hopefully kill someone while it burns.

The biggest strength of the format is that you can pick up and use most items you see. So you can knock over books, household appliances, photo frames and wine bottles among many other things, and although the environments have the same goal of killing spiders, there are other things to do as well. You pick up tasks that are linked to the track you are on, but these are optional. To progress in the game, you only need to kill the number of spiders needed to unlock the door, but if you want to extend the game time a bit, there are a few other things you can do. Additionally, you must do these things to upgrade your gear. Because it’s not just a flamethrower that you can kill the insects with, no, there are revolvers, frying pans, petrol cans and other things that you can pick up, and you can always take an object in the environment and kill the spiders. Everything feels very simple, but quite fun for brief moments.

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I have also come across quite a few bugs in the game, with poor tracking. The worst has been that if I’ve stood too close to a wall, the game has gone completely black and I haven’t returned to the game area. I’ve had to go back to the menu and then restart the course, but thankfully my progress has been saved, except for the number of spiders killed, which is a bit of a bummer. I also think that the rather primitive graphics in VR are a little too simple. Effects like fire and other things look pretty bad and I would have liked to see the game polished up a bit in this version. I don’t feel like this version adds that much extra. It was fun when I played it before and it’s exactly the same in VR with frantic waving or setting fire to everything you see to make the spiders die. For example, I would like to see that you could burn things to the ground instead of them just burning a little. It would have done a lot instead of just certain things exploding. However, it is possible to destroy many objects, but not all. It feels a little inconsistent. Likewise, it’s a little annoying that some items seem to be “locked” so you can’t pick them up and throw them around.

So although one might think that this should do well in VR and utilize all the possibilities of the format, it doesn’t feel particularly fun. It’s a bit too simple, and really it’s just the perspective itself, and the ability to pick up all kinds of objects, that could have been a plus. But despite some joy in brief moments, Kill It With Fire VR is by no means the entertaining or natural transition to VR that it should and could have been.

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