The story in Under Cover is what you would come to expect from a light gun shooter. You play as one of two under cover cops named Red Eye and Magnum. Your mission is to take down Pax Harrison, the CEO of a mega corporation called Infinidyne. He’s attempting to use mind-control technology to make everyone into mindless meat puppets.
Once you select to play as either Red Eye or Magnum, the game puts you into an office building and you have to take down Pax Harrisons henchmen. Like other light gun arcade shooters, enemies will come out of designated areas around the stage and you have to take them out before they take you and your partner out and they will either pop up from around a column or similar object, and even will come in through a door. This is much more natural movement by enemies than in your typical shooter of this genre.
Destroying things like barrels can help you take out your enemies quickly while destroying other objects can reveal weapons, power ups, and health. Power-ups are usually going to be either a shield of sorts that will let you take damage without taking out your health, or one that will temporarily make your weapon stronger. Weapons in the game are of a good variety; offering your standard machine gun, pistol, and even a rocket launcher style gun.
All of these weapons are satisfying to use and really feel like they pack a punch as you’re taking out the hordes of enemies coming at you. Holding the guns using the touch controllers feels natural and the way the game handles reloading is a nice aspect. The way this is done is by using the games gimmick or namesake of being under cover.
When you go under cover, your guns will automatically reload, you can regain some of your health, and you can’t take damage. This makes reloading a breeze, unlike other VR shooters I’ve recently played. It also helps to alleviate the frustration that can come from games like this that can sometimes feel overwhelming due to the difficulty and number of enemies the game throws at you.
Another aspect of the game I wanted to touch on was the way the game handles character movement. It uses a teleportation mechanics that a lot of VR games use that I just don’t care for at all. So you use the analog stick on the touch controller to point where you want your character to move and the game both moves you there, then teleports you to that position. What I mean by this is that your character will start to move to the desired position, and then once you get there, the screen fades for a second and then comes back. This gives a feeling of teleporting which is like I said, what a lot of other VR games do.
I wish the game would have either chose to use teleportation or automatically moved your character there and be done with it instead of incorporating both. The reason the game does this appears to be to mask having to load the scene and bring in the enemies. But then again, once you get to the designated spot, the game seems to pause and load anyway by telling you to get ready.
The last thing I want to bring up about the gameplay is the games AI. The enemy AI is pretty good. Enemies will duck and cover, try and somewhat coordinate attacks and communicate among themselves surprisingly well. It appears the developers put all of the focus on the enemies when it comes to AI because your partner’s AI is severely lacking.
In an arcade light gun game, you would expect to either be flying solo or your partner to at least be able to take out a couple of enemies. Instead what you have here with Under Cover is a partner that is a horrible shot and can’t really do much at all. They will occasionally hit an enemy or two, but primarily will be firing at objects and the environment as a whole. This leaves you to dispatch all of the enemies on your own, and question why you even have a partner to begin with.
Under Cover is pretty impressive graphically. The stages you play in are all in 3D and look really good in VR. Enemies are also all 3D and look good running around the environment. Each level has a couple of floors that feel pretty large as you have to move around a couple of times within the stage before moving on to the next one.
A game like Lethal Enforcers will give you a stage and enemies to kill, kill them all, stage ends, you move on. Where as with Revolution X and Area 51, you take out the enemies in a stage, the camera moves you through to the next area and you take out the enemies in the next area and move on. This game looked at those games and said hold my beer and took it a step further. This sense of depth and immersion was not what I was expecting at all and completely blew me away with the way it was presented.
The game performs well enough for a game like this. Load times are what you would expect from an arcade light gun shooter on the Quest 2 with the load times averaging a couple of minutes at max. The only fault the game has when it comes to performance I feel like is coming back to the way it handles the character movement mechanic. Masking loading of a stage with character and camera movement really breaks the flow of the game that feels just unnecessary.
The music in Under Cover is an in your face mix of rock and techno that compliments the action nicely. Nothing like a good beat to go along with mowing down enemies. Though you have to be careful not to get too into the music. Bobbing around too much, and you may find your headset leaving your head/face and you’re suddenly and violently brought back to reality. Gunfire in the game sounds good, both from the gun and hitting enemies along with things in the environment. It sounds both natural and arcade like at the same time. Meaning firing the guns doesn’t sound too realistic, but the way the bullet physics cause the bullets to hit things, does seem authentic. Enemy and character one liners sound really good and help to bring a bit of over the top action movie humor and feel to the game.
In conclusion, the game handles AI very poorly along with the movement of your character and loading of assets once you’re actually in the stage. Are these issues big enough to make you steer clear of this game? Well in my personal opinion, I think the game is fantastic. It’s an action packed arcade light gun game that expands on the genre it sits in and does so in a unique and fantastic way.
Over all, I think that Under Cover is a must play game if you’re a fan of light gun games and want a great arcade experience in VR.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.