What I most loved doing in the first Steam VR demo was picking up objects and holding them up close to my face. Next, I would toss them, and watch them hit the floor or bounce around, and maybe also hit other objects. This one experience captures all the magic of what VR is to me as of now, and it is this one experience that Visual Light’s Throw Anything extrapolates upon.
In the game, you toss objects down on zombies as they ascend a building up towards your room. I’ve played the tutorial level as well as the first, and each took place in an apartment complex in a city. You can pick up almost anything, though not anything. There are boxes, pillows, baseball bats, footballs, game consoles, fire extinguishers, guns, and more.
You can drop most objects, but some, like the aforementioned baseball bat, you can swing. These break as you swing them, and you can also break other objects as you throw items around. Tossing a chair at a table will break it, for example. The fire extinguishers and guns are the most fun to use. The guns require picking up and placing a clip into the grip to use. Shooting one at the zombies as they ascended makes me want a VR on-rails shooter.
In each room that you’re in, there’s a human NPC freaking out. I was a bit shocked when I discovered I could pick up this NPC and toss him out the window. I was relieved when he came back into the room, though, with an arm injury. I was shocked all over again when, after a few more throws, I saw him climbing up the building as a zombie.
Throw Anything has the same traits any VR experience would, like inspiring horror when hostile beings come close to you. Despite the cartoony nature of all the characters, I was terrified whenever a zombie would reach the window and climb into the room. I had to close my eyes and cover my head.
In the tutorial segment, there was one moment where I was very frightened. One of the generic baddie things, that the tutorial has instead of zombies, suddenly appeared right in the window. The others had climbed up the building from far below, so the suddenness of this one’s appearance shocked me. I could hardly look at it – and it’s not even scary! This is how I know I couldn’t handle games like Skyrim VR, with its dragons and spiders.
I also got a little motion sick while playing, and had to limit my playtime as a result. Plus, whenever I take my VR headset off – a Vive – my neck and lower head are sore, despite not feeling any pain or discomfort while wearing it. These are downsides that apply to any VR experience, for me. It’s the nature of the beast.
Throw Anything has five levels, but I never got past the first. This was due in part to the motion sickness, but also because it gets pretty hard. Zombies start piling up at the window, and I’m out of things to throw, or can’t grab them. How deep the game goes beyond the first level, I don’t know, but what I’ve done has been a fun VR lark. It’s $17.00, though, so be sure a new VR toy, and not much more, is really something you want.
Trevor played Throw Anything via Steam with a code provided by the developer.
