Hands-On: Deadpool VR Shoves Meta Head-First Into The Future Of Gaming

I was looking down at Romi and Michelle in each hand and admiring Deadpool's trigger discipline. Only when my finger touched the controller would he actually touch the trigger of one of his guns.

Romi & Michelle's High School Reunion is a 1997 comedy film starring Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow as the titular characters. Apparently, in VR, they're also the names of Deadpool's guns. It looks like he taped the names on and scribbled other stuff onto them in crayon. Deadpool is so deeply violent and unserious he just might be the perfect hero for VR.

When Meta first showed the trailer for Deadpool VR at their offices in New York, I was sure it was Ryan Reynolds' voice I heard. Now, writing this later, I can't tell if the voice in my head and influencing the words on this page is Reynolds or Neil Patrick Harris.

On second thought, it definitely is Neil Patrick Harris. Which is impressive because I only heard him in game for a relatively brief time, while the guy who played Hal Jordan has had at least three whole movies to convince me he's “the merc with a mouth.”

No shade on Reynolds' work. He does his best for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the moment I heard the hint of Doogie Howser as a decapitated head on a table, I started to smile.

Head-First Into Gaming's Future

Twisted Pixel's demo starts off needing to navigate Deadpool's body over to rejoin his head. Starting a VR game demo as a decapitated head on a table is a new experience for me, but ultimately, donning Deadpool's body makes a lot of sense.

In comics and movies Deadpool is aware he’s in a form of media and speaks directly to the reader or viewer. Meta-owned Twisted Pixel continues that into VR, starting with this bloody introduction to the character.

“4th wall breaks are something unique to Deadoool’s character and we wanted to make sure we acknowledge that and have fun with it in a few different ways throughout the game,” Meta’s Dan Bullock wrote over email. “These come across both through Deadpool’s dialogue and a few specific scenarios that directly relate to the gameplay. It can be easy to over-use a mechanism like this but I really like where we landed and I think our players will too!”

It's easy enough to use the analog stick to tell the body where to go. The body dispatches the lab tech for you and then, as Deadpool's fleshy neck approaches, you get the same sense of relief Deadpool must feel locking back into control over his perspective in step with his body's actions.

Deadpool's got a pair of katanas accessible over each shoulder and handguns at each hip. Toss them at enemies and more will respawn to grab and do it again. This is run-and-gun arcade gaming with no apologies for extreme VR movement, except for the most extensive comfort options screen I've ever seen. I didn't have time to look at it long. Instead, to get my preferred comfort setup, Deadpool made me tell him I'm new to VR. He's such an asshole.

By the end of my demo, I was strafing left toward three bad guys while another shot at me from my right. I grabbed the katana off my back and stuck him to a wall without missing a beat gunning toward the other guys. I did so many things as Deadpool in such a short amount of time, I cannot remember it all. The developers repeatedly encouraged us to try stuff out to see if it works. I had incredible fun killing bad guys in wildly different ways, and I couldn’t find any obvious spots breaking the illusion of embodying Deadpool. That level of immersion for that length of time handling that many weapons and it all just worked? It suggests Deadpool is shaping up to be an impressive game. That it can only be played in VR is the point, sure, but Twisted Pixel went all out in taking the best of gaming’s traditions and sharpening them up for VR in an accessible way.

I pushed through major discomfort about 15 minutes into the demo. For the first time I can remember, I found myself comfortable again in VR without taking a break. I always recommend taking a break when someone describes feeling the way I did during an active VR game with as much simulated movement as this one. Here, I pushed through and felt great afterward.

Deadpool VR feels like Twisted Pixel brought the complete power of Quest 3 to gaming and pushed it to somewhere very special. Everything the studio is doing here with Meta, from the hardware's clarity and frame rate to the lighting and bright color palette of the game, appears drawn to the task of making extended active gaming in full VR a fun and comfortable experience. Sometimes slicing someone right down the middle in VR is fun and satisfying, and Deadpool embraces this.

Double jumping as Deadpool feels really really great in VR too. The developers said mixed reality wasn't a consideration during their development cycle and thank god for that. Why do I need my physical living room if I'm double jumping over a rail to kill some dudes in VR? Batman doesn't care about my living room when he's prowling Gotham, why would Deadpool give a fuck about furniture?

Deadpool is the guy sliding into kneecaps while slicing another guy in half and using his own meat sack body to just aim his mass in the direction of evildoers. Devs are aiming for a mature rating here and, based on my time, mature gamers skeptical of Meta's dedication to moving gaming forward as a medium using VR should withhold their judgment until after they spend some time as Deadpool.

VR gaming can be really bloody, physical, and funny, and all of that can be pulled together by a very skilled team. That team appears to be Twisted Pixel. Deadpool VR suggests that Batman: Arkham Shadow embodying players as The Dark Knight (and previously, Iron Man) was not a fluke for Meta's VR gaming design experts. When asked, Deadpool's creators said Camouflaj's work on Batman was entirely separate from theirs. That suggests Meta has at least two fully staffed teams incredibly adept at building long-form role-playing power fantasies in full VR.

The comfort options screen I barely touched at the start of my demo might be one of the most important innovations in gaming. VR is for making the impossible something you can actually experience, and that means tailoring virtual reality to billions of people. What I saw in Deadpool is the suggestion that Meta's development studios continue to build out a toolbox for comfort and accessibility — one that other developers can use to make almost any impossible idea much more comfortable to experience in a headset for extended periods of time.

We'll of course be curious to see how Deadpool VR comes together across the full game. I picked up numerous weapons throughout the demo beyond the ones Deadpool seems to come outfitted with, and I expect an extended arsenal throughout. Still, I was left wondering how progression would be handled and how difficulty will stack across a full campaign.

Iron Man, Batman and Deadpool exist in different cinematic universes. Their VR equivalents represent some of the best power fantasies gaming has ever produced, and all of them come from Meta-owned development studios producing games for VR. Alyx's Gravity Gloves feel great, but those were first released five years ago now and ninja-hopping your way through a level as an almost invincible Deadpool feels so much more freeing, even before you start tossing endless murder blades at anyone looking at you funny.

Deadpool's trigger discipline is impressive here, and his almost effortless approach to killing bad guys is a strong fit for the medium. I can't wait to let Neil Patrick Harris' Deadpool back inside my brain later this year for more mayhem. Look for this exclusively on Quest 3 and 3S.