Out of Ammo (PlayStation 4) Review

Out of Ammo is one of those kinds of games that just by looking at it will set off several dozen red flags. It requires the use of PS Move sticks and it has no alternative control options at all. It resembles a dime store Minecraft knock-off that is commonly seen with Early Access indie releases. Most tellingly, in spite of running 60fps, lots of the in-game characters and animations run at much lower frame-rate. Then there is the fact there is almost no music and there is no sense of character or personality. This is just from looking at the game... Things get far worse when trying to physically play it.

The nightmare begins immediately when pressing start at the title screen. With no introduction or soft tutorial, Out of Ammo shunts the user into an environment that is supposed to serve as the tutorial area but without actually teaching anything. There is a lot of fumbling around with the move sticks and trying to figure out how to physically move in the space. The problem with this is that the control layout poster is located behind the player-character. This is the first thing people need to see before even setting foot into a virtual environment and Out of Ammo deems it best to put it behind the user.

Movement is done by teleporting, which is done with the left stick's triangle button... sometimes. Other times it might break and won't work at all and the only solution is to reboot the game. Yes, it is true; one time during this review there was an instance of teleporting to an area that was close to out of bounds. Not actually out of bounds - close to out of bounds. This was enough to break the action and not allow anymore movement. Did the play-testers not encounter this? Why was this allowed to remain in the final product?

As mentioned earlier, Out of Ammo has no control options of any kind. Since this uses the dreaded snap-turning movement method only, some people who are accustomed to the smooth turning layouts that have been in most other VR games will be in for a shock. Usually in VR games with snap rotational turning, there are options to tweak the rotation radius. Not so in Out of Ammo, which only has 90 degree turning. This is so disorienting and frustrating that it almost renders the whole thing unplayable. The radius of turning is far too big and requires much more concentration and attention than should be needed for this kind of action. The simple act of turning around to move is…well, there is nothing simple about it at all. Even though the movement in this barely works, the gunplay and shooting work well enough. The gun play comes with its own issues, however, like the act of reloading using the Move sticks is a hopeless endeavour as it is poorly optimised.

Busted first-person action isn't the only portion of Out of Ammo, as it has dysfunctional RTS gameplay, too. The real-time strategy gameplay is very shallow and the lack of control over the flow of resources will entail lots of moments where the best option is to just give up. The game typically spawns important assets that users with have to pick up, but will spawn them basically where the user stands or exists. This will result in a very uncomfortable gesture that can be best described as trying to shove the PS Move wand into one's belly button. Don't even try to play Out of Ammo while sitting. There is no creativity in the game design and the winning condition is just to destroy and kill everything. The balance is also messed up with the game just generating more enemy units than any person can realistically contend with given the handicap of unpolished and broken controls. The best quality about Out of Ammo's main missions is that the game is thankfully short and has less than ten maps.