Ever since the amazing game Accounting Plus VR from Squanchtendo and Crows Crows Crows, there was no doubt we needed a Rick and Morty VR game. Now a sweet, sweet collaboration between Owlchemy Games, the dev behind Job Simulator, and Adult Swim Games has become a Rick-ality! See what I did there?
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is an absolute hoot. From the moment you place your headset on you are thrown into the world of Rick and Morty, quite literally into their living room. Looking around you find a few cupboard doors below the TV, open them using your PlayStation Move controllers (you will need two of them) and finding a CD to place into the nearby player. The infamous TV series music begins on the TV in front of you and you press play to start your adventures.
After apparating into Rick’s garage lab you are immediately greeted by Rick and Morty who enter via a portal and immediately cut over all the bullshit by telling you that you are a Morty clone and to place a load of washing into the washing machine. Of you can do that, it just get crazier from there.
Without spoiling too much, most of your time is spent inside the garage and as tedious as that may sound, there are countless objects, puzzles, portals and TV show easter eggs to dive into. It is a fan-boy or girls wet dream and it is as close as you will ever be to living in Roiland’s wonderfully eccentric and politically incorrect world of Rick and Morty in the best possible way.
Geeking out aside, it’s not without its issues that you find in most other VR games on the PlayStation and that comes down to lack of freedom and only having a single camera on your TV screen tracking your movement. Rick-ality will want you to turn around and interact with things above and below your actual head height time and time again, while that’s usually ok when facing the TV, when facing away from it, things start to get really messy when the PlayStation Camera loses sight of your PlayStation Move controllers. It’s not game-breaking, but trying to reach an important piece of Rick tech on the floor behind you and having a couch in my very close vicinity in my home, caused some nasty issues.
Thankfully they make it a little easier by use of the in-game Mr. Meeseeks, throwing one of these interactive blue orbs to a previously unreachable area lets it mimic your movement (including your hand gestures) from a distance, for example: throw a Meeseeks ball outside the garage window and next to an object you cannot walk to, then lean over with your controllers and pick it up and turn around and lean forward for Mr. Meeseeks to reach out and hand it to you himself.
Mild interactive issues aside, the short (4 hours for me) story was fast paced and over too soon, leaving me wanting more and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but for the RRP of $49.95 it may be a hard sell. Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is another hilarious creation by Justin Roiland and Owlchemy Labs. The humor of Rick and Morty comes to life in a way that you simply can’t ever experience outside of VR.
Aside from a ton of Easter eggs for hardcore fans and difficult challenges for completionists (that bloody battery game), there aren’t a lot of reasons to jump back in to play it again once Rick and Morty vanish through that portal for the last time. Virtual Rick-ality is for those who love Justin Roiland’s style of humor. For anybody else, the interactions between characters and short story may not be enough to pull you back in for another round, unless your showing it off to friends as an introduction to VR. I liked this game a lot, as it stands however, Accounting + is still the go to Justin Roiland game, at least until we see more.
Score: 7 out of 10
Highlights: Fantastic voice acting and it’s Rick and Morty, you can never get enough. Interacting with the Plumbus is just creepy.
Lowlights: Loss of tracking when interacting with certain objects can be infuriating, a very short campaign.
Developer: Owlchemy Labs
Publisher: Adult Swim Games
Platforms: PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive
Available: Now
Review conducted on PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation VR hardware with a retail copy provided by the publisher.
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