Mothergunship: Forge Review: Expertly Reimagined
- Fun and hilarious crafting system
- Addicting with plenty of replayability
- Looks great and is wildly immersive
- Battles can be frustrating (but that's the nature of a bullet-hell title)
- Rewards could be a bit more varied
A Steam code was provided to SVG for this review. "Mothergunship: Forge" is available now for Meta Quest, Quest 2, and PC via Steam.
Every year, the virtual reality community adds more and more members thanks to the onslaught of available VR headsets being added to the marketplace. Although many people are still drawn to the classic control schemes of traditional gaming, newcomers have found themselves more deeply immersed in virtual reality thanks to the relative ease of access to modern VR technology. Even with its recent price increase, the Meta Quest 2 is sure to have made its way into plenty of homes during the holiday season, bringing with it new players in search of unique and exciting VR experiences.
"Mothergunship: Forge" is a perfect fit for these newcomers, pitting them against hordes of robotic enemies in a thrilling, action-packed shooter with an intense sci-fi aesthetic. It's a quintessential virtual reality title for any new player to get a feel for what high-quality VR craftsmanship is capable of while offering enough challenge and creativity to satiate even the most experienced of VR players.
Dismantle the mothership
In "Mothergunship: Forge," you play as part of a crack team tasked with taking down the powerful "Mothergunship," collecting resources and power-ups along the way to help you in the process. You travel from room to room facing off against ever-increasing hordes of adversaries in a roguelite fashion that was inspired by the bullet-hell FPS design of the original game from 2018. This is, after all, a reimagined VR version of the original "Mothergunship," allowing you to wield a variety of weapons and tools in thrilling battles against robotic enemies.
And what a variety of weapons and tools there is! You wouldn't be able to keep up with the aforementioned "ever-increasing hordes of adversaries" if your arsenal wasn't up to snuff and evolving with you. Fortunately, as you progress through each room, you can pick up and use a wide range of firearms and gadgets that attach to your "ever-increasing" plethora of gun attachments — including everything from powerful machine guns to devastating rocket launchers to grenades that are shaped like a decapitated cat head.
If you build it...
The core element that makes "Mothergunship: Forge" stand out is its unique crafting system. The game features an extensive crafting system that allows you to create and customize your own weapons on the fly with collected resources and elements. It adds a nice strategic layer to the gameplay, allowing you to tailor your weapons to the ever-changing enemy types in each room. Of course, your rewards are randomly generated, meaning you may be given the same couple of options for three rooms in a row. This doesn't happen often, and it ultimately just continues to buff the attachments you already have equipped, but getting new options more frequently would be a lot more incentivizing.
Battles can be overwhelming — at times, frustratingly so — but that's to be expected with the game's bullet-hell nature. Thankfully, the first-person controls are straightforward and comfortable, whether you're shooting at enemies or ducking out of the way of their incoming fire.
You can also level up and increase your stats through experience points earned from successful runs, giving you an edge against those increasingly difficult foes. If you don't manage to survive — which is a whole lot more likely — you'll respawn with whatever points you earned, dust yourself off, and jump right back into another run (one that is, hopefully, more successful than the last). What's nice, though, is that each subsequent run is just as fun as the previous one. They never really ever get old.
Festive and fun
"Mothergunship: Forge" features incredible level designs that keep the action and challenge fresh from room to room, as well as its intense visuals. The game looks stunning in VR and it's clear that the developers know what they're doing in terms of the game's immersive graphics, detailed environments, and smooth animations that really bring the experience to life. It's also clear that the development team shows no signs of slowing down. The most recent update — aptly titled the "Festive Update" — adds a fun holiday spin to the game, bringing in new seasonally inspired weapons and a festively decorated base of operations to keep you entertained throughout the holiday season.
"Mothergunship: Forge" is an excellent and addicting virtual reality shooter with plenty of action and loads of replayability thanks to its challenging missions, detailed graphics, immersive sound design, deep weapon customization system, and comfortable controls optimized for VR gamers of all skill levels. So, if you're looking for your next solo adventure in virtual reality or ready to join up in a co-op session online with friends, then look no further than "Mothergunship: Forge."