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New PSVR Game ‘Blood & Truth’ Is ‘Time Crisis’ In A ‘Lock Stock’ Style

Mike Diver

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New PSVR Game ‘Blood & Truth’ Is ‘Time Crisis’ In A ‘Lock Stock’ Style

Featured Image Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment

There was a time when you couldn't step foot into an arcade without someone almost poking your eye out with a plastic pistol, slinging it offscreen in a frenzied attempt to reload in time to shoot down enemies popping bullets back in their direction. Namco's Time Crisis, with its colourful toy blasters, was a true classic of the 1990s coin-op scene - and its PlayStation port of 1997 wasn't bad either.

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And playing Blood & Truth, the new PlayStation VR title from SIE London Studio, it's this game from over two decades ago that comes straight to mind, rather than anything more contemporary. Just as Time Crisis moved you on a linear path, through a shooting gallery of goons, so too does Blood & Truth. Yes, it has some movement available - you teleport from spot to spot when not shooting, and can strafe left and right when you are. But for the most part you're locked in position, ducking down behind desks and DJ decks and whatever other cover is available as a cavalcade of cockneys try to give you a crew cut using live ammunition.

It's a game also indebted to another cultural hotspot of the 1990s - Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a 1998 movie that made East London briefly look like the coolest neighbourhood on the planet. The film starred real-life criminals - like the late Lenny McLean, an associate of the Kray Twins - and its cheeky and somewhat cheesy breed of gangland hyperbolism is precisely what Blood & Truth zeroes in on, putting the PSVR-immersed player right in the middle of some violent negotiations between two less-than-legit family businesses.

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Basically: there's a properly hostile takeover afoot, and it's your job to put some daisy roots right up the collective Elephant and Castle of these Toby Jugs, before it's time to ball to the rub-a-dub-dub for some giraffes and a pig's ear or five.

SIE London Studio is the team behind the PSVR's introductory guns and gangsters experience, The London Heist, and Blood & Truth is essentially that short VR Worlds demo expanded to a full-blown 'blockbuster'-style affair. It's the studio's love letter to the likes of Lock Stock, and much like Ritchie's movie it succeeds for the most part by never taking itself overly seriously. It hits and hurts, but always with a nudge and a wink.

You play as army officer Ryan Marks, whose family (yes, there is a 'Marks Brothers' gag in there, mercifully early) are approached by a rival naughty sort called Tony Sharp. He wants in, but they're not about to let him, as siblings and surviving parent set about turning the tables. Early scenes of a grim and grey London are marvellously atmospheric, but Blood & Truth wastes little time in upping its environmental stakes, moving from luxury hotel shootouts to head-swivelling driving sections and pure Hollywood showdowns with helicopters after a spot of heart-stopping parkour. Okay, maybe we can lose the inverted commas from blockbuster, after all.

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Blood & Truth / Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Blood & Truth / Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Decent acting talent keeps the somewhat thin story crackling - Colin Salmon, a star of the James Bond series, is the most recognisable face, but he's ably supported by a cast commonly seen on stage and screen - and everything rolls along at a steady pace. The option to play on a 'cinematic' setting, increasing health to make it more like a rollercoaster and less of a challenge, ensures that even the most chaotic gunfights can be navigated without too much fear of a game-over screen - and really, with its heart and soul in the movies, that's probably the best way to tackle Blood & Truth.

How you play Blood & Truth is up to you - DualShock 4 pads are supported, but it's much better to use Sony's Move controllers, if you can grab a pair. It's easy to bump their glowing balls together as you physically reload your firearms, or whack your left one against the headset as you reach over your shoulder for a rifle, but the odd clang and bang doesn't snap you out of the action.

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And it's all very tactile stuff. You need to reload by picking ammo from your chest with one hand and slapping it into your gun, being held in the other; when you approach a ladder, you'll need to pull yourself up its rungs; and air vents aren't going to be slithered along without adopting a dragging motion. Even when you're not really doing anything, there's plenty to do, like fiddle with the air vents in a car's passenger seat, take a puff on an e-cig, or toss screwed-up paper balls through a basketball ring above a waste bin.

Blood & Truth / Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Blood & Truth / Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Blood & Truth really nails VR immersion in a way few titles on the PlayStation have before it, from its motion controls to its grimy backstreets, and is another welcome shot in the arm for the platform, the peripheral, after the brilliance of 2018's Moss and Astro Bot Rescue Mission (albeit with a lot more f-bombs). And, quite brilliantly, the dizzying turns and fast-paced chase sequences don't lead to any nausea - perhaps because there's no nodding to your perspective (as felt in Layers of Fear and its new sequel) as you chase down Sharp's array of armed and angry acquaintances. You may still wish to take a break after an hour or so - but that's more down to the demands the game asks of you, to be its all-action star, pumping clips and clambering up buildings, than a queasy stomach.

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Time Crisis meets Lock Stock, then, with strong first-party production values and consistently rewarding gunplay. Blood & Truth might look like so much cliched nonsense at face value, and there's no doubt that its gangster schtick would be tiresome if it were a movie. But it isn't - and when you slip that headset on, Blood & Truth proves to be a triumph for its medium. It's a deal, it's a steal... and I think I'll keep it.

Topics: virtual reality, PlayStation, PlayStation 4

Mike Diver
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