We see plenty of strange (and sometimes downright creepy) VR games coming out of Japan, but every once in a while there’s one that we can’t help but highlight.
A.I am Monster is one such game. Cave, a studio known for scrolling shoot’em up arcade titles, is working on this bizarre experience in which you play as giant robotic Japanese school girl.We can’t work out much of the story from all the Japanese, but it looks like the protagonist is a normal girl that has the power to transform into this giant because of course. You tower over Tokyo and use position-tracked controls to swat buildings away, pick up military tanks and throw them into helicopters that are trying to bring you down. No, I’m not making any of this up. Just watch the trailer below.
Fair warning: the trailer does have a school girl actually playing the game, but not all is as it seems. Wait until the end of the footage.
Honestly, Tokyo can’t catch a break when it comes to giant monsters that want to destroy everything. You even have a laser beam, which you fire out from your chest to destroy multiple buildings at once. You get points for making as much carnage as possible.
In truth, gameplay looks incredibly rough. The framerate slows to a crawl every time the players topples a building or enters combat, and the textures are bland, blurry, and plain. We’re not sure why Cave is showing the game in such an early state, but we certainly hope the team can dress things up a bit in time for the full launch, which is scheduled for some time in 2017. We’re also not yet sure if it will come to the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR too.
Kaiju games are already pretty popular in the VR field, with several games that let you destroy cities already available on both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. We’re also looking forward to next year’s Giant Cop, which puts a different spin on the genre by tasking you as a giant that protects a city.
