Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine VR is the only time I don’t have motion sickness in VR -.

Recently I traveled to what looked like an unassuming warehouse in Trafford Park, Manchester. Just outside the city is the local Zero Latency experience, where you can fight hordes of zombies, become insane and become a Space Marine.

As the Warhammer nerd of the office, I would naturally choose the latter option, a gun under my arm and a headset over my head, I stepped into the arena and was suddenly thrown into Avarax, huge city fans of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II will be familiar.

Something I will bring up right away is that I usually struggle with VR because of motion sickness. “You people can’t do anything,” I know, I know. It can be quite taxing to do strenuous VR gameplay, so there were some concerns when I realized how much room there was to move around here, but during my 30-minute experience with Defenders of Avarax, I remained without a trace of sickness. It was probably because I was so focused on keeping hordes of bugs off my back.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine VR – Defenders of Avarax is nowhere near as sharp as Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II when it comes to visuals. It also does not allow a long time for so many Tyranids to appear on screen at once. However, the immersion added by the fact that it was a VR experience heightened the sense of danger, and there were plenty of bugs chattering at you at all times to keep tensions high and the action high. There’s no melee, no executions. You just have your trusty bolter with a grenade attachment and the occasional heavy weapon that you can grab from ammo pods on the small maps. On the one hand, this gameplay is pretty simple, but on the other, it’s an experience designed for anyone to just pick up and play. You don’t have hours to learn the controls, and I found the feeling of shooting rewarding enough without additional flashy effects. Gore still runs across the screen when you kill a Tyranid, and you really get the feeling of being a walking tank like a Space Marine, even if you can be torn apart when surrounded.

The Warhammer 40,000 universe feels well represented here, especially in the feel of the weapons. Similar effects to those in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II are ported, and the heavy weapons especially sing as they make their way through the hordes of enemies coming at you. The Melta gun was a personal favorite because it floods the screen and your enemies in a flash of purple and orange light. It is impressive that the headsets can keep up with so many effects and enemies on the screen at once. I’m no expert on the platform, but the HTC headset I wore never struggled with the game, even in more intense sequences like the Hive Tyrant fight at the end.

The controls were simplistic and responsive. It was my first time using an attachment for a VR controller, and I was surprised to see that even with a huge plastic gun attached to the controller, there was no problem in the feedback for my shots, reloads and grenades. It keeps you immersed in the action when you don’t notice a small pause before reloading, and you can concentrate on the rows of teeth trying to clamp down on your head. Being able to run through a large room as well made you feel like you were in the middle of the action. I will say, however, that it was just me and another player in the experience, meaning we could easily maneuver around each other. I can’t imagine what it was like for people in an 8-man squad.

With a score, the guy running the game assured me it was pretty impressive for a first-timer (50,000+, but who’s counting?) I made sure I made the Emperor proud in my time with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine VR – Defenders of Avarax. There won’t be a score on this piece, because it’s hard to stick a grade on a 30-minute experience, but it changed my opinion of VR. Maybe I just need to find the right games to really give me that same experience. Too bad I passed on my VR headset to the Spanish office.