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C-Smash VRS: New Dimension Preview – No VR? No problem!
C-Smash VRS was easily one of the best games from the PlayStation VR 2’s launch window. Taking the cult classic arcade and Dreamcast game Cosmic Smash, it shifted the perspective, giving us a minimalist blend of Breakout and real-life Squash for a compelling VR sports game.
But shouldn’t everyone be allowed to smash cosmically? Not just the relative few with fancy hats? Enter C-Smash VRS: New Dimension, a fresh launch and free update coming at the end of September that will bring back flat-screen play and arcade delights alongside all the VR goodness of before.
New Dimension feeds a lot more of the original Cosmic Smash back into C-Smash VRS, specifically with the shift back to a third-person camera – there’s both a dynamic tracking cam and a pulled-back fixed camera – and seeing your avatar race back and forth as you position yourself to slap the ball back down the arena.
Going hands-on back-to-back with a classic arcade cabinet, there’s a very familiar feel between them, with the way that your avatar is animated in running, jumping and hitting, the ease and accessibility of timing shots, and more. However, New Dimension has added a few extra flourishes and moves on top of that. Whether they’re new moves or old, it’s pretty cool to see your character pulling off wall jumps, seeing the spinning flourish of a power shot, or a last ditch dive to reach a ball that’s heading outside of your hitting sweet spot.
Every mode from C-Smash VRS is available to play in New Dimension, whether it’s the Journey mode through strings of action puzzle stages, the endless Infinity mode, co-op or head-to-head multiplayer. Through all of the multiplayer modes, one of the key factors to New Dimension is that this bridges the divide between VR and flat-screen play.
This isn’t quite the first time that this has been done in VR gaming, since we have cross-play in digital board games like Demeo, or more significantly with racing games like Gran Turismo 7 and flight games. However, C-Smash VRS: New Dimension is possibly the first time that we’re dealing with two completely different styles of motion and control.
GT7 or Star Wars Squadrons might give VR players a greater awareness of their surroundings, but you’re still fundamentally fixed in the cockpit and have the limits of your vehicle. New Dimension has VR players with a first-person view and full motion tracking of your arms going up against the abstracted arcade action of the flat-screen game.
It’s a really fascinating problem, but one that RapidEyeMovers and Wolf & Wood are very close to getting just right. We went through the gamut of head-to-head multiplayer options, myself playing on TV in London against Wolf & Wood’s Ryan Bousfield up in Newcastle, and had some good fun and close matches, despite the completely different controls.
A few things stood out the more that I played, though. Depending on your preferences, C-Smash VRS is perhaps a bit too lenient with allowing you to press the hit button well before the ball gets back to you. You do want to try to position yourself and time the button press to get the best power and control, but there’s a lot of give here and your avatar can almost always make that diving hit to dribble the ball back down the court.
At the same time, there’s more advanced moves that have much, much less margin for error. A jump shot is very easy to end up with whiffing at clean air, and cool as it looks, so can a wall jump shot. When playing against another person who’s actively aiming for the edges of your reach, these are pretty important to master, and hopefully the final product can bring these two extremes a bit closer together.
VR versus TV play works wonderfully well and feels like it should be well balanced. A VR player will need to have better natural hand-eye coordination than a TV player, especially when trying to pinpoint a shot at a small target, but that physical control gives a higher ceiling for play.
Coming out on 26th September, C-Smash VRS: New Dimension is set to be all things to fans of hitting balls with rackets. This is probably the game that fans of the original would have hoped for, a modern successor with a bunch more modes, block types and power ups, but with familiar gameplay and feel. And you can always still pop a VR headset on as well, now hopefully with more people to play with online.
