Ghost Town Mine Ride is one of the most unique games we have yet to find inside of virtual reality. Although you can get the gist of the game early on, there are many parts of this game that will genuinely surprise and impress you throughout your time inside of the game. You might think this is another scary ride at a theme park, but it couldn’t more far off. Unless of course, you regularly fall off the rides.
This game starts out as a simple ride down the mine, but it ends with a different theme and feel than it starts with. When you are thrown off the cart, you are given your weapon and your shooting experience begins. We don’t want to spoil this fun game too much, so let’s hop into the review and see what this game is all about!
Getting Up and Running
This game is available on the Steam Store, and it is also available on the Viveport Infinity subscription as of the end of October. This game however is not on the Oculus Store, as it didn’t make the cut for content that is available on the Rift platform or even the Oculus Quest. This game is about 8 GB in size. This means that if you have a less than reliable internet connection, you could be looking at a download speed that is over an hour. If you have incredibly reliably fast internet, you might have time for a bathroom break before this game starts.
This game is $8.99 on Steam and is made by Spectral Illusions.
The mine ride itself in this game is mostly the tutorial. You are practicing shooting your weapon while moving, trying to increase accuracy throughout the game. It is not until you fall off of the ride that you are tossed into some seriously fun gameplay. Until the, you are mostly going to be nostalgic of all of the theme rides you did or didn’t go on as a child.
Type of Game
This game is a shooter on wheels type of game at the start, and it transitions itself into a first-person shooter on foot as you ogres through the actual haunted mine throughout the entire game. This isn’t going to make you feel like you are in a real war, but the mechanics do enough to get you by as you feel like you have a somewhat real gun in your hand.
This game is only going to last about half of an hour start to finish, and it lacks some real replay-ability that some shooter games offer. This doesn’t play too much of a factor though, as this is an eery experience that you are sure to not want too much of after you pass through the levels. This is more of an interactive experience, but it still feels like a great game to play.
Player Perspective
This game is played from the first-person perspective, just like most great shooter games are played from (sorry Fortnite, you are still fantastic). You won’t be changing perspective in this game at all, and you won’t be seeing much more than the flashlight in your left hand the gun in your right hand. You won’t be seeing your legs, arms, body, or head in this game either. This doesn’t take away from the immersion too much at all.
Theme and Story – Score: 8/10
The story in this game isn’t bad at all, and it offers some realism that you aren’t going to experience in other virtual games. The theme in this game is constant and is what is propelling this game to an incredibly high score, one that we don’t give out lightly. You will feel creeped out for the entire experience and you are going to feel the strong theme no matter what you try to do to escape. A great score here for some great execution from the developers.
Controls – Score: 7/10
The developers stayed away from overdoing it with the controls, and that helped maintain a high score even when they are on the easier end. The devs didn’t utilize all of the controller imputes like some games do, but they didn’t confuse us with the complexity we could have seen either. You are only going to fire your weapon, reload it, and move in the direction of your flashlight in this game. Nothing too scary, as that is reserved for the theme of the game.
Music and Sound – Score: 8/10
Not only did the music and sounds of this game make the immersive lightyears ahead of what we thought it would be, but the spatial audio was more than perfect in the game. Because this was so well done, you could tell where your enemies would be coming from at any given time. All of this mixed with the unique sounds you would hear throughout the 30 minute experience, you are going to very pleased with the audio.
Player Movement – Score: 6/10
In this game you are going to be experience two different movement engines. The first, shooter on rails, is completely fine. It takes about 12 seconds to become accustom to it, and you will be fine. Things really take a turn for the worse when you get off of the cart. The only way to move is by pointing your flashlight in the direction you want to walk. You will be continuously moving and that messed with your head just enough to take a few points off the board in this area.
Kinetosis – Score: 6/10
A typical shooter on rails is going to be somewhat disorienting, but not enough to grab the game a 6. Have the devs left the silly flashlight movement out of the game, we might’ve been seeing a score a little higher. Moving all the time in any direction you point to can be a bit weird and cause some serious motion sickness. You won’t be throwing up after this game, but you won’t be feeling your absolute best either.
Environment and Immersion – Score: 7/10
This game does a fantastic job of making you feel like you are really in the mine. This happens by the undead making a fantastic showing once again. Many games make zombies a features, but not many of them put them inside of a haunted mine. This mixed with the fantastic sounds and spatial audio make for a game that is rare to not get lost in. A fantastic showing from Ghost Town Mine Ride in this category, but still not perfect.
Overall – Score: 7/10
This game does a lot right, but the towards the end of the experience put it out of reach of an 8 or anything higher. You won’t be bragging about this game to your friends, but you won’t be mad you took time to play it either. It s not available on the Oculus Store or Play Store, but it should make a great game and time if you are able to lose yourself for 30 minutes while you play this game.
