Have you ever bought your kids a gift and then realized you wanted it? Well, that’s what happened when I purchased my son an Occulus Quest 2 for his birthday. It’s not quite the Occulus itself that I wanted. Virtual reality is cool and fun, but I wasn’t hooked until he got a game called Contractors VR. Now I might be a tad addicted.
As a grown adult, I don’t have a ton of time to play video games, and honestly, the gaming scene doesn’t offer what I like that often. I prefer single-player first-person shooters, but unfortunately, everything on the market these days is some kind of multiplayer-focused shooter. Not for me, so I’m stuck playing games from 2014 as a pastime. I haven’t been passionate about a video game for a very long time. Contractors VR might be a fairly simple game, but its obsessive details with the guns make it a ton of fun for gun nerds.
My family is quite annoyed with me talking about the little features and details I love, so now you get to hear all about it instead.
Contractors VR — Is There A Story?
No.
Contractors VR — Modes and Modes
Contractors VR offers you a number of modes, including various single-player modes. These single-player modes include free roam, where you can just explore the levels with either friendly or enemy bots or a mix of both. I spent a lot of time in this free roam mode, learning how to play the game and use the various weapons, attachments, gadgets, and gizmos.
There is a series of ‘missions’ that have very simple objectives, and there are only a few of them. They served as good tutorials to introduce you to concepts of the game and how to play it.
The zombie mode is a lot of fun and is fairly difficult. Zombies come rushing at you, and you start with a handgun only. You kill zombies, earn gold, and can buy new weapons, gear, gadgets, ammo, and more. Zombies is fun, but I’m a fan of the more tactical modes.
The survival mode is a fair bit of fun. Like in zombie mode, you start with a pistol and have to face off against waves and waves of bad guys that are all wielding guns. You earn money, buy more guns, and face more and often better-armed enemies as the waves go by.
Multiplayer Isn’t Bad
There is also a multiplayer mode with various modes. You get team deathmatch, capture the flag, base capture, etc. I typically hate playing with other people, but the Contractors VR groups I’ve fallen in have been fun to play with. It seems like a smaller player base keeps out the screaming 10-year-olds.
Single-player is mindless fun, but multiplayer is fairly competitive and difficult. My KD ratio sucked for quite a few matches. Every kill you get is quite the thrill. If you watch gameplay, it just looks like Call of Duty with dated graphics, but you have to play to understand it.
Move, Move, Move
Contractors VR is a bit like Call of Duty. It’s all fast-moving gameplay that’s a lot of run-and-gun fun. Getting used to playing VR is tricky, but once you immerse yourself, it’s the most fun you’ll have in an FPS with your pants on.
I started just running around the free roam mode, blasting away with the various weapons you can choose. You can pick from well over thirty-something weapons. You have plenty of rifles, carbines, SMGs, shotguns, sniper rifles, and handguns to pick from. Not to mention the melee weapons.
What makes Contractors VR fun is how the VR works in regards to the guns. You have your main long gun slung, your pistol holstered, and your knife sheathed. Across your chest sits your magazines and any gadgets you are carrying.
To use your gun, you have to ‘grab’ it with your hand and pull it upward. With a long gun, your support hand can grip the forend. This is optional but understandably provides way more support and control, just like real life. The weapons are crafted well and realistic to how they are actually used. To aim, you have to bring the gun up and look through the sights or optic.
Guns like the M4 allow you to hit a button on the control to drop the mag, but guns like the AK require you to grip and remove it manually. You then have to grab a mag off your vest and reload, making sure you rack the weapon if you aren’t doing partial reloads. Handguns reload accurately as well, and it’s fun to get fast at your reloads.
Geeking Out
There are little things I love that give Contractors VR its charm. If you run your shotgun dry, you can reload through the port. If your shotgun has a side saddle, you can load the side saddle and reload the shotgun faster.
If you and a buddy are using the same gun, you can toss him a spare magazine if he runs low. To lean around corners, you can literally just lean your body and headset. Players can even dual-wield their main gun with their handgun, but it’s not super effective.
Optics like the Leupold HAMR allows you to swap between red dots and magnified optics intuitively and quickly. There are just tons of little details that I absolutely adored and enjoyed discovering.
There is also just something fun to raise an Uzi over my head, and firing blindly over a trash can is peak fun to me.
The Downsides
The real downside comes from the single player and AI. It’s fun to play but not thrilling and not like a dedicated tactical shooter. The AI has zero actual intelligence. They just come at you, maybe duck, but that’s it. I’d love for them to use cover at the very least.
Staying Tactical
Digging into Contractors VR has been a ton of fun. Something about raising a gun up and feeling the action of your arms, properly aligning the sights, and pulling the trigger is so much more exciting. Peaking around corners and rapidly reloading guns with actual motions beats the hell out of pushing B to do it all.
Contractors VR isn’t perfect, but it’s fun to just goof off in single player. Testing yourself in survival is thrilling, and delivering a smack down in multiplayer feels good. Color me converted to the world of VR. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
