Eagle Flight is a VR game developed and published by Ubisoft. You play as an eagle, flying through the skies of Paris in France. The game takes place in the future where humans do not inhabit Paris anymore, allowing nature to reclaim the city. Therefore, there are wild animals like elephants, bears and wolves roaming around, as well as buildings being overrun by plants that has grown there.
The premise and the story are simple. You are an eagle, who was hatched into this world and am flying through Paris to learn about it, such as the best places to hunt, and the best places to nest. This is presented via a story mode where you fly to the next challenge, have a bit of a voiceover by the narrator (so that it can feel like a documentary at times), and then proceed to complete the challenge to unlock the next story mission. It’s simple and a little bit boring to be honest. It’s understandable given that this is not a story driven game, it’s only there to provide a bit of context at what is happening.
Gameplay is easy to pick up. The eagle is constantly flying forward, to turn left or right you tilt your head in the respective direction. Then the left trigger button slows you down while the right trigger increases your speed. The game was designed to minimize motion sickness and nausea as much as possible, so it includes things like seeing the beak of the eagle at all times and the blackening of edges whenever you turn, as well as whenever you get close to a building. This is to minimize peripheral movement, and the blackening of the edges is very aggressive. It won’t work with all people, and it can be nauseating at times especially when you forget to turn by tilting and instead looking left and right, while moving forward at the same time.
There is combat of sorts. You’ll face off against other flying creatures such as vultures and crows. They attack eagles who have encroached into their territory. To fight them off, you eventually gain a screech attack that basically fires off a projectile with the press of the square button. You aim with your head and since there’s always a permanent crosshair, once you get used to it, it’s pretty easy. Later on, you’ll also gain a shield that you can deploy for a limited time.
The combat is probably the weakest area of the game because while it’s easy to pick up on what to do, it is really easy to miss the first many times you do it. You need to factor in the time it takes for your sonic screech to reach the enemy, who is constantly moving. This means you’ll need to anticipate their movements and where they’re going to be at half a second after you fire. Once you get the hang of it, it’ll be fun and be second nature.
Level variety is low, they comprise of flying through wings, flying through tunnels, collectibles, and combat. These all have plain and predictable objectives with only the novelty of VR that keeps it interesting enough. It seems like the whole game collated together some of the most hated mission types, like escorts and time limits, in its level. Since you can fail any level by crashing against something or running out of time, it can be painful and annoying when you are forced to restart. That’s not mentioning that it can be stressful when you know you are on a strict time limit and can’t take your time.
You get rated on each level too based on the time it took you to clear it. Getting all three stars is tough. You need to be flying as fast as you can, all the way, and being perfect in your run to have a good chance in the later levels. The instant death that comes when hitting or being hit by enemies is extremely frustrating during these attempts since you have to repeat the whole level again.
While it is not a big deal in the earlier levels, the later harder levels where you fly through rings are a pain because when you’re flying at high speed, you are not able to see the next ring when it is blocked due to poor level design. Then there are the levels that takes place as night so you literally cannot see anything sometimes. If Ubisoft wanted to give a challenge, then at least make it a fair one and not the cheap stuff where you lose due to not providing enough time to react. The levels ends up requiring you to attempt multiple times and die in order to memorize the layout, and it also revels in forcing you to fly through small tight spaces where the control scheme is not perfectly suited for it.
Combat can also be annoying when enemies are out of your field of vision, so it’s harder to track where they are. There is a marker that points towards them but that disappears as soon as they’re in your field of vision but it doesn’t mean that they are easy to make out. What makes this worse is that you’re constantly moving, the enemies are constantly moving and turning your head will cause you to turn. It can be a real mess at times.
This is a typical Ubisoft open world game though. It has a decently sized map which is scattered with hover a hundred collectibles (which in typical Ubisoft fashion, are feathers). The whole game takes place in Paris and while there are five “areas”, they’re not that much different to each other. There is little of anything else that makes it actually worth exploring though. The graphics are okay. Due to the low resolution of the headset and the low power of the PS4, the buildings are fuzzy and in low detail, particularly when you’re close to it. This is partially masked by the aesthetics though and in motion, you don’t notice it.
The game’s story mode does not take long to finish given that it is comprised of only 24 levels in total. If you have no issues in a level, then it’ll only take you one to three minutes to complete it. Therefore, the story mode takes around two to four hours depending on how proficient you are. While this may feel short, the story is really only a tutorial for the tougher challenges that unlocks as you progress through the game and earn the more stars for completing levels under the shortest time limit. There is also a multiplayer mode (with one game mode) to spend more of your time in if you wish and can find players.
Overall, Eagle Flight is an average game, even more so if it wasn’t for the novelty of VR. The controls are done well enough but there is not enough meat to the game to justify its price. It feels more like a tech demo at times with its simplistic gameplay. There are definitely moments where the rush of flying is great but with some cheap level design that may frustrate you, this isn’t even close to a killer app for VR.
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