With some additional polish, expanded forensic mechanics, and bug fixes, Detective VR could become a standout VR/MR experience
In Detective VR, you step into the shoes of a detective investigating the murder of Richard Hues, an eccentric artist known for his controversial work using blood as a medium. The premise immediately draws you in - a wealthy patron, shady dealings, and a cast of suspicious characters all weave together into an intriguing narrative web.
The game's core concept brilliantly combines virtual and mixed reality elements. You'll spend time at virtual crime scenes gathering evidence, then return to your physical space where a investigation board materializes before you. This blend of VR and MR creates a unique investigative experience that feels both innovative and immersive.
The narrative follows your investigation into Hues' murder, and the story proves genuinely engaging. As you dig deeper, you uncover a fairly complex web of relationships, motives, and secrets. The victim's unconventional artistic methods and connections to wealthy patrons add layers of intrigue to the investigation. While the story might not revolutionize the murder mystery genre, it's well-crafted and keeps you invested in uncovering the truth and honestly, it is the best thing about the game.
The investigation unfolds through three main components: evidence gathering, clue analysis, and suspect "interrogation". At crime scenes, you'll use hand tracking to capture evidence by taking virtual Polaroid photos. While this mechanic is intuitive, the implementation feels somewhat simplified - important clues are rather obvious, and the game explicitly tells you how many items you need to find in each area.
You also have the ability to manipulate time at crime scenes. You can rewind and fast-forward through events, observing conversations and actions from different angles to gather additional information. This mechanic adds depth to the investigation and helps bring scenes to life.
The mixed reality investigation board that appears in your physical space is initially impressive. Here, you can examine collected evidence using a special magnifying glass with different detection modes for blood, fingerprints, and object identification. While the concept is cool, the execution feels somewhat limited. The analysis process is straightforward and repetitive, lacking the depth that more involved forensic mechanics could have provided. I would have loved for example to have been able to dust for fingerprints or use a UV light to detect invisible ink or even swab the blood of objects and use a tool to find the blood type. These would have been some nice additions to the game that would immerse you more in the investigation.
After you inspect the clues, you can connecting them to the suspects' blood, fingeprint and persona and if that connection makes sense you unlock "interrogation" sequences where you grab a VHS from the thread in the board and play it. While it's neat to have suspects materialize in your room via mixed reality, these interactions are mostly passive, limiting your role to that of an observer rather than an active interrogator.
I like the whole web of threads thing, but the evidence board quickly become unwieldy as you accumulate more clues and connections. Currently, there's no clear way to see what VHS tapes you have played and which ones you have yet to play. Also, some of these connections you make and the break in the case that you get is kinda weird. For example, I connected a clue to a suspect and when I played the VHS, I get a break in the case for another suspect. What?
But the worst thing that happened to me is that I got stuck at one point and couldn't progress. I was near the end of the game with only two scenarios left and the next scenario did not unlock even though the lady that talks to you said "The next scenario is waiting for you". Nothing I did seemed to unlock it so I had to abandon my investigation prematurely. This was not an isolated incident as it happened to another reviewer I was talking to.
The visual presentation is adequate but shows room for improvement. Character models and animations occasionally feel stiff, with some awkward movements where they just slide around the environment or twist the body in weird ways. Keep in mind that these were motion-captured sequences so something definitely went wrong with the animation pipeline on the Quest version. The game's audio presentation is similarly mixed - while the voice acting itself is generally strong, there are noticeable inconsistencies in recording quality with volume being all over the place, a couple of mic pops and some weird issues with spatial audio implementation.
Detective VR presents an innovative concept with its blend of virtual and mixed reality investigation mechanics. The core story is engaging, and when everything works as intended, the game delivers uniquely immersive moments that make you feel like a real detective. However, the simplified gameplay mechanics and technical issues prevent it from reaching its full potential.
With some additional polish, expanded forensic mechanics, and bug fixes, Detective VR could become a standout VR/MR experience. As it stands, it's an interesting but flawed experiment in bringing the detective genre into virtual reality. Players interested in mystery games and unique VR experiences may still find value here, but should be aware of its current limitations. Thanks for reading!
The game was previewed on a Quest 3 via a promo copy provided by the developer. Detective VR is available on Meta Quest.
