If Batman: Arkham VR has almost everything you’d want in a VR game, then Hustle Kings VR has almost everything you don’t want.
Using the four small buttons around the big Move button on the PS Move controller’s front face instead of the main one is one of its smaller problems. Instead of letting you use both PS Move controllers to place and angle the cue, it lets only one of them be used and makes you awkwardly press a button, change the vertical angle, press another button to change a different angle, all while not tracking the position of the move controller, but only tracking the direction its pointing in. It’s not hard for the cue to be somewhere completely different than where you want it to be. A combination of all of these factors and buggy gameplay makes the game something you’ll want to avoid at all costs until they manage to patch it eventually.
Although the game feels like it could be fun at times, the gameplay throws all of that out of the window. The ridiculous control scheme pushes Hustle Kings past any chance of enjoyment and makes playing the game a chore. By not letting the cue be represented by the Move controller and instead having a ball-centric control scheme, any attempt to accurately aim is automatically nullified by the fact that moving the controller up or down messes up the angle. Strength is supposed to be measured by the speed with which you move the controller towards the ball, but apparently the developers decided it would be a good idea to include the “force meter” that every gamepad-based sports game with balls has.
The PS VR doesn’t have an awfully high resolution, but Hustle Kings somehow seems to take half of them. Normally, I don’t care for the graphics in a videogame, but Hustle Kings looked so bad that every movement I made jerked me out of the “immersion” that this game has so little of in the first place. Although the music is somewhat relaxing, the stressful situation of trying to even make the ball go in the intended direction thanks to the awful controls makes it useless.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I tried to find something good in this game. I’m usually optimistic. I wanted to find something I could say was good, despite all the bad in this game.
But I just couldn’t. I tried and I failed. Maybe one of my many complaints will be fixed in an update, but since they’re all such fundamental aspects of the game, things that are usually only fixed in sequels, I won’t get my hopes up.
Hustle Kings VR takes the worst aspects of traditional controller-based sports games, puts them in a game with motion controls and expects something to stick. All the things it could’ve done right, it doesn’t. If you want a cool party game to play with friends, get something like Tumble VR or Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, but don’t sacrifice your money for this bombshell of a disappointing mess.
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