Astro Hunters VR Review

The infrastructure for an exciting VR extraction shooter exists here, but without meaningful challenge from either AI opponents or human players, the experience falls short of its potential

Astro Hunters VR places you in the role of a space-faring mercenary, tasked with exploring hostile planets in search of valuable resources and technology. The game's premise is familiar yet appealing - you're part of a group of independent contractors operating from a massive mothership, taking on dangerous expeditions for profit and glory.

The central hub, your mothership, serves as both your home base and preparation area. Here you'll find various stations for crafting, weapon modifications, and equipment management. The modular upgrade system allows you to enhance your arsenal with elemental effects like fire, acid, plasma, and electricity, theoretically adding tactical depth to combat encounters. You can craft pretty much anything inside the mothership, if you have the necessary materials, and the crafting system is pretty tactile with you having to throw the necessary components in the machines, pull some levers, push some buttons, it's a really nice system.

Once you've equiped the weapons you want to take with you, grab the correct ammo type and maybe a couple of health sprays, it's time to drop onto the one available planet, Volcano. The theme of this planet, as you might have guessed from its name, it's volcano based and presents vast alien landscapes, otherworldly vegetation and filled with hostile wildlife and different structures.

The core gameplay loop revolves around landing on this planet, gathering resources, and attempting to extract safely. The planet has multiple POIs where you can find loot be that guns, resources and whatnot. You also an assortment of random tasks like kill x number of a specific alien creature or destroy some satellite dishes. These are minor tasks that you can complete to earn some extra cash. Otherwise, you are free to roam around the planet, mine materials with your pickaxe, vacuum different gas resources or even harvest crystals by shooting them with your laser tool. Your inventory management becomes crucial as you space is limited and collected materials can be either sold for profit or used in crafting.

Now it being an extraction shooter, the risk-versus-reward mechanics should create tension, especially with the potential for encountering other players who might either cooperate or kill you for your resources. Unfortunately, no one seems to be playing this game online as no matter the time of day I tried, I just couldn't find any other player on the planet. The game's design clearly anticipates player-versus-player encounters as a key source of tension and excitement. But since finding other players was impossible, at least for me, it leaves you to focus primarily on PvE content, but that in itself lacks sufficient challenge to maintain long-term interest.

The PVE's balance currently undermines its potential. The starting shotgun you get for free in your room proves overwhelmingly effective against all threats, requiring minimal tactical consideration. The relative ease of dispatching enemies - from small creatures to larger threats like the big alien creatures you'll encounter - diminishes the survival aspect that should be central to the experience. Without meaningful challenge from the environment, the tension that drives extraction shooters dissipates quickly.

Before I talked about the crafting and modification systems and while they are comprehensive, they feel somewhat underutilized given the current combat balance. Why invest in elaborate weapon upgrades when basic loadouts prove more than sufficient? I could kill all of the creatures on the planet easily with my level 1 shotgun, where even the biggest alien looking thingtook only three shots. Why should I bother upgrading and go through the crafting process when I can just use my basic weapon and be more than fine? The game needs some major difficulty rebalancing. I want to be scared of losing my life and all of my gear. I want to suffer when I encounter the other aliens and wildlife. I want to escape by the skin of my teeth. Sure, I also want to feel like I am the apex predator on this planet, but I want to feel that way because I worked for it. Imagine how boring Ghosts of Tabor would be if you immediately had the best armor and weapons, you'd be unstoppable and that fun wouldn't last long.

The controls are intuitive and responsive, with weapon handling being a particular highlight. Two-handed weapons like assault rifles require proper stance and grip for accurate shooting, adding a welcome layer of immersion. The recoil simulation for the assault rifle feels natural, making each shot satisfying. But the shotgun, my shotgun, you can one hand it and it's absolutely overpowered. Once I understood how OP it was, I never bothered to use anything else and that kinda ruined the fun for me. I know I did this to myself, but again what is the point of using anything else? Maybe if the alien wildlife was way tougher or some of them were resistant/weaker to certain types of ammo or elemental damage or the ammo economy itself was more scarce, then I might have to use something else that I find in the environment.

Visually, Astro Hunters makes good use of the Quest 3's capabilities. The alien environment, while not pushing any technical boundaries, create an effective atmosphere. Sound design is functional, providing necessary audio cues for combat and exploration without being particularly memorable. It also runs really smoothly even when using Quest Games Optimizer to boost the resolution.

The game shows potential with its solid foundation - responsive controls, interesting crafting systems, and atmospheric environments. However, it currently feels more like a framework awaiting proper balance and population rather than a fully realized experience. With some rebalancing of combat difficulty and a growing player base, Astro Hunters VR could evolve into something more compelling. I can't wait to see how the game evolves in the next six months. For now, it remains a technically competent but ultimately hollow extraction shooter that needs more time to develop its core systems into something truly engaging.

The game was reviewed on a Quest 3 via a promo copy provided by the developers. Astro Hunters VR is available on Meta Quest and PCVR.