One thing I dearly miss is booting up my PlayStation 2 and plugging in my G Con 2 lightgun. I’d spend the majority of my time perfecting my shots in games such as Virtua Cop & Ninja Assault. But time moves on and so does technology and sadly of all the great things technological advancements have given us, they have taken away lightgun shooters, because those new beautiful flatscreen 4k monsters you may have mounted flush on your wall are just not compatible with the tech which made those games possible.
Fast-forward 20 years and finally we might be getting back some of that shooty goodness care of indie developers Actuator Digital, a small team out of Brisbane, Australia with their latest early access title for Quest headsets, On Point.
On Point is a VR Light gun Arcade shooter for Meta Quest Pro, 2 & 3, which offers up some seriously nostalgic lightgun arcade action on your VR headset. Taking more than a little inspiration from the classic 90’s shooter series Point Blank, this game is pure reflex and precision shooting at its finest.
On Point boasts more than 90 mini games, each being short and carnival-esque and bringing a dizzying variety of mad cap shooting challenges, likened by the developers as Warioware-style. From destroying pottery and clay pigeon shooting, to playing keepy-uppy by shooting a tin can or destroying flying dragons, these rapid fire (no pun intended) games provide heaps of fun and varying degrees of challenge.
There are three skill levels in On Point – Easy, Medium & Hard and believe me when I say there is a distinct increase in difficulty between the levels. Easy starts you off gently and gives you only a few games to play before kicking you back into the lobby area, Medium a few more challenges which really do pose more of a challenge, and then there is hard – which is almost nightmarish. In each of the three modes you will have three lives, if you fail the given objective you will lose the mini game and a life. Lose all three lives and you’re kicked back to the lobby.
The shooting does feel incredibly accurate and responsive and I’d go so far as to say is supremely enjoyable. Added global leaderboards are a welcome addition, although these were not functional during my pre-launch review period.
Although the game offers up a whole heap of mini games, it does currently lack substantial content, and maybe that’s okay at it’s current early access phase. The addition of hidden easter eggs or even the ability to select individual mini games to practice on would be a welcome addition and I would absolutely love to be able to dual wield a pair of weapons and potentially even be able to select new weapons (let’s get creative here, how about water pistols, cork / spudguns or even ray guns). However, On Point shows that there is a place for lightgun shooters of old and this fills a void very much left since HDTVs took away our ability to live out our quickdraw fantasies.
There are way too many VR shooting titles which try to base their guns on their real life counter-parts, which for me is distracting and somewhat off-putting. I don’t want to have to offload my spent magazine, reach for a new one and pop it into my gun prior to every engagement. I strive for that shooting-off-screen-to-reload momentum I used to so love and On Point delivers exactly that – mindless arcade pewpews. I for one am willing to be first in line championing for a return to lightgun arcade ports and for the moment, this homage very well might be the slice of nostalgia the industry could use to kickstart this genre. Now, who do I have to call to bring me VR House of the Dead 2?
Verdict: This game is ON POINT and certainly worth a shot! Go and buy it now!
On Point is available right now via App Lab for Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro & Meta Quest 2 priced at £11.99