A boy and his blob T-Rex..
Robinson: The Journey is the latest PSVR game from Crytek, most famous for the Crysis series. This game is much different than that, this lets you play as a young boy named Robin who is stranded on the planet Tyson III after his spaceship crashed with his family aboard. Robin isn’t alone however, he has the AI companion HIGS who is charming and sarcastic, but he also discovers a hatching egg that contains a baby T-Rex…
The game fast-forwards a few months to see Robin establishing shelter and he has been training the baby T-Rex. You can give her commands like fetch, follow, move and even roar. Robinson is set in a jungle environment and you can scan all the wildlife through a fun, but tricky process where you need to hold down the right trigger over a bunch of green circles, while avoiding the red ones. Robin can also pick up heavy items and throw them great distances, as long as he is in an area powered up.
You will have to solve a number of puzzles such as restoring power or rescuing AI units that have insights into the crash of your spaceship. The solution isn’t always simple, but you do feel smart once you figure it out. It’s also a superbly beautiful game, easily the best looking of the PSVR games to date and even better, gets a performance advantage from the PS4 Pro.
Scanning small creatures is fun, with the exception of the moles that try and avoid scanning. You eventually get to scan huge dinosaurs, but that does take ages and it’s easy to accidentally hit the red spots. HIGS can also be used to distribute power between different areas, activating specific parts of the island so Robin can proceed. It’s definitely the most in-depth PSVR game, which is just as well considering the price tag is £50+. But it’s money well spent and the most impressive PSVR game to date.
Visually, it’s stunning. The jungle is just crawling with life from butterflies and fireflies to gigantic dinosaurs, and everything in-between. It doesn’t suffer any framerate issues, plus the soundtrack and voice-acting are impressive as well. Crytek has created something truly special here.
The Verdict
I haven’t given too much away about Robinson: The Journey, but that’s because it’s a journey you need to experience for yourself. If you have PSVR, then you need this. There’s no other way to say it, you NEED this.