Trover Saves The Universe

We sit down and review Trover Saves The Universe. An interesting VR game from some amazingly twisted minds. Here is our review of Trover Saves The Universe

Hopefully by now you are at least aware of Trover Saves The Universe and the team behind it all here. I am not talking about just Squanch Games, but all of the minds that have input into the humor and worlds that the game is either based on or takes influence from. Fans of Rick And Morty will know exactly what I am talking about here as those influences can directly be seen all around. Being a huge fan, I was glad to put on my VR headset and dive right into the world of Trover Saves The Universe and see if it could live up to it all. Here is my review on just how well it did and also how it handles as a game in general.

Story

Welcome Chairopian to your life of sitting around all day and willing your eyes with entertainment. It is a tough job, but someone has to do it. Sadly, someone has taken away part of your entertainment in terms of your pets in a plot to destroy everything. It is a good thing that our new friend Trover knows all about this and is willing to help us reclaim what we lost and also save the universe. I mean, it is all kind of right there in the name of the game. Even if we do not get any of the billing…

Hated

One of the smaller bits in Trover Saves The Universe is one of the collection side quests to find all of the "power babies" on each specific map and level. It is a fun little way to keep some of the darker humor going, but also a way to help power up Trover. It is basic and needed. Sadly, it is part of Trover Saves The Universe that felt more tedious and pulled me out of this extremely immersive experience. There was no solid way to track which ones you may have missed and would leave me doing more or less a pixel hunt to truly complete each level. At first, it was fun but soon became a huge bog down of time. Almost like there needed to be some kind of semblance to the order they show up in the menus so you can tell if it is one you missed earlier in the level or later. I gave up at one point and just powered on through with fewer powerups.

Another thing that felt a bit off in Trover Saves The Universe has to be some of the basic movement mechanics. These would be more of the motion of the headset and controllers. There are specific times where the game asks you to nod or wave and you need to do this in the real world. It would have been an amazing addition to it all had it tracked everything perfectly. There was one scene specifically where you cannot progress further without shaking your head and I was stuck hearing the same dialog bit multiple times until it registered I was doing the motion. Not a game-breaker by any means, but was something that detracted from the overall fun of the game.

Loved

I cannot go further on about Trover Saves The Universe without going into the story and humor of it all. I am not going to spoil anything, but if you are at all a fan of the show I mentioned above, this is one of the truly shining points of the game. Graphic enough to get the point across but never just vulgar. Sometimes things were thrown in just to mess with the player for using "video game" logic, which made the meta jokes work so much better. Even down to the random insults thrown around, I found myself laughing at every scene and event. This makes Trover Saves The Universe even a fun game for others to watch passively. Even when not in control there was always fun to be had.

Building from the cleverness of the story and humor, Trover Saves The Universe took this even into the basic game mechanics for moving around in the game's world. It is a teleport system with a slight pan from side to side as needed. The reason for this being that your character's race is all bound to a chair and uses it to move about. Again, the real world joke playing right into the game mechanics. I am not exactly why it felt so clever to go this path in the game, but it truly did. Which, having the set up to do so, only really required me to have a chair that could turn all the way and a cord suspended from above. Further immersed in it all just on some basic gameplay choices.

The other core mechanic that played well in Trover Saves The Universe was our ability to "mind control" Trover in the world. This is where the game shifts from first-person to third-person and is how the whole game plays all the time. Other titles that have done this make it feel like you are just a passive observer in the VR space. Here it all felt perfectly natural and blended so well. Even when you need to pay close attention to what the main character is doing while having Trover platform and kill all of the enemies on the screen, it never felt tedious. Tricky at times, but never to a point where you would want to throw Trover Saves The Universe completely aside and not move on.

Overview

I am not going to lie; Trover Saves The Universe has to be one of the best VR titles I have played in quite a long time. Not just because of the great humor and story involved, but also because of the use of the hardware with the software. I actually felt transported into this new world as everything was presented in a way that felt natural. Outside of the two smaller items I listed, Trover Saves The Universe was pretty much perfection. If you have the ability to play this game, do so. If you have the ability to watch someone else play it, do so. Unless you are not a fan of the mentioned show or get easily offended, I have a feeling you will love every second of this game. When you ignore some of the collection bits…

I give Trover Saves The Universe 28 Power Babies on the Power Baby scale.

Trover Saves The Universe was developed and published by Squanch Games for the PS4 and PC on June 4^th, 2019. A PSVR copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.