Eagle Flight is a PSVR game published by Ubisoft. I got it in my initial haul from Disposed Hero. After finishing the main campaign in Skyrim VR, I was looking for something short and sweet to bang through before jumping back into Skyrim to knock out the DLCs. In Eagle Flight, believe it or not, you are an eagle who flies. The game takes place in the city of Paris after humans have gone extinct and nature has reclaimed the city.



The graphics are rather simple with solid colored polygons (as opposed to detailed textures) and the game looks great. The controls start out extremely simply. Movement is controlled by the head tracking, so you look down to fly down, and tilt your head left and right to turn. Acceleration and deceleration are controlled with the triggers on the controller, and later in the game combat elements are added. The game starts as a relaxing, breezy experience and I figured I'd be able to cruise through it.

Each story mission is some variety of racing, flying through rings, or combat. Completing each mission nets you up to three stars depending on criteria like time of completion, and the stars are used to unlock challenge missions. The good thing is it doesn't matter if you one-star everything as long as you pass it. Having said that, Eagle Flight has become the first PSVR game that I have rage quit! I was stuck on a particular mission which included combat against bats and vultures. The bats can shoot back at you, and are very hard to hit. Additionally, this mission is so short that I was finding it almost impossible to get even close to dispatching all the enemies in the minute or so which I was given. I banged my head against this mission for three nights in a row before finally passing it.

After getting over that hump, I knew I had to finish the game, even though I figured there would be some more frustrating combat missions. Indeed there were, though not as bad as the first one that troubled me. With great relief, I finished the main campaign and was able to enjoy the final upgrade to the gameplay, which is a look mode where you can move your head to look around without changing trajectory by holding the X button. The fact that you must complete the campaign to unlock this is a bit of a bummer, because it really adds some enjoyment to the pensive, cruise control feeling of free flight. I wish it was introduced earlier, because I felt as if once those credits rolled, I was done with the game.

Eagle Flight is a hard game to recommend. There are so many great PSVR games out there, and to enjoy this game, some real precision with an imprecise control scheme is required. For me, I added this game to my collection via a trade bundle, and I'm glad that I cleared the main campaign because now I can just pop it in and enjoy the relaxation of cruising around the game's version of Paris, but that reward came at the cost of high levels of frustration. I think if I had bought the game on its own I would not have been so accepting of the experience. Thus far this is the first PSVR game I have played that relies so heavily on head tracking for the actual controls, and I wasn't a big fan. This is the main thing to take into consideration when looking at this game. At times, I was uncomfortably whipping my head around to move the way I wanted to. However, if like me this games falls into your lap, give it a try and just remember to cruise around and take it all in rather than literally bashing your head against some of those campaign missions.

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