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About this game, system requirements.

• OS *: Windows 8.1
• Processor: Intel i5-4590 / AMD FX 4350 or greater
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA: GTX 970 4 GB / GTX 1060 6 GB or greater | AMD: RX 480 or greater
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 6.73 GB available space
• VR Support: SteamVR

© 2016 Crytek GmbH. All rights reserved. Crytek, CRYENGINE, Robinson: The Journey and the respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Crytek group in the EU, U.S. and/or other territories. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Robinson: The Journey Review

• First Released Nov 8, 2016 released

Walking with dinosaurs.

By Jason D'Aprile on December 5, 2016 at 9:00AM PST

Crytek has been experimenting with ways to make games more immersive by utilizing new tech for a while, whether it’s the exceptionally good use of stereoscopic 3D effects in the Crysis games or impressive demos for Oculus Rift. Taking that experience to PlayStation VR, the developer has released Robinson: The Journey, a virtual-reality game that’s everything great and annoying about VR all rolled into one.

The Journey is about a boy named Robin, one of thousands of passengers aboard a massive starship seeking a new world. This craft, the Esmeralda, crashes on Tyson III, a habitable world stuck in the equivalent of Earth's Cretaceous period. Unfortunately, Robin and his floating robotic companion (an AI orb known as HIGS) are apparently the only survivors of the crash.

Soon after landing, Robin discovers a just-hatched and adorable T. rex--and, like any reasonable person would, he adopts her, hugs her, squeezes her, and gives her a name: Laika. Their story then jumps forward a year: Robin and HIGS have made their escape pod a home, they have a working garden, protective energy fences, and a semi-trained baby Laika.

The appeal of Robin's adventure relies on the spectacle of dinosaurs to create a visually stunning VR experience. This is easily one of the best-looking, most technically impressive games to hit PlayStation VR, but it’s also an incredibly interesting, engaging game. Crytek has transformed their earlier VR demos like Back to Dinosaur Island and The Climb into a narrative-focused experience revolving around exploration and puzzle-solving that really shows off how VR can create a new level of immersion.

Robin follows the various paths from his home base, searching for the memory cells of non-functional HIGS units. Such memories yield more insight into how the Esmeralda crashed. Of course, finding these robots is made more difficult by the terrain and prehistoric inhabitants. Thankfully, Robin seems to be part monkey; he can easily climb natural structures, vines, giant cables, and more.

This is easily one of the best-looking, most technically impressive games to hit PlayStation VR, but it’s also an incredibly interesting, engaging game.

The climbing mechanic uses two floating hands (controlled with the left and right shoulder buttons respectively) to simulate actually being there, effectively enhancing your sense of immersion. You have to tilt and turn your head to find the next viable hand grip--and some of these climbs are dizzyingly high. At times, getting the correct hand to grab an obvious grip requires shifting your body around to match the precise angle the game demands.

Robin can also levitate and manipulate items from a short distance, but it's a painful mess of trial-and-error since there’s no smooth way to finely manipulate them in the air. This is readily apparent in the endgame, when you must shove cylindrical power cells into round sockets.

Most puzzles revolve around climbing and manipulating objects, but the objectives are frequently vague. HIGS occasionally provides hints, but the game largely relies on you to figure things out on your own. Laika, for instance, isn’t just a cute sidekick, but a useful puzzle-solving tool. She can growl loudly to scare herbivores, go to specific spots, and come when called. Just the same, part of the overall vagueness of objectives may simply be to lengthen the adventure.

Just running straight through, you can easily finish The Journey in less than three hours (and probably a lot less). The game includes hidden data cells to find, which when analyzed can provide more background data and there is a kind of minigame for analyzing and cataloging the array of exotic animals and insects on the planet, but for the most part, this is a linear trek from start to finish.

Short experiences are nothing new for PSVR, though, and when Robinson: The Journey works, it does so amazingly well

Short experiences are nothing new for PSVR, though, and when Robinson: The Journey works, it does so amazingly well. The sheer sense of scope and detail is stunning. Tyson III is a beautiful place, and its massive dinosaurs are even more impressive. Events like a brachiosaurus stampede, stealthily avoiding raptors, and a particularly inspiring climax involving a fearsome T. rex show off just how amazing VR can be.

At times, you see the game from HIGS’ view. These stationary sequences show off an aerial view of Robin’s surroundings and are easily among the most visually stunning uses of VR to date. The game’s use of 3D to create depth is amazing on the whole, with impressive, but the holographic-like visuals in these segments steal the show.

There’s a distinct advantage to playing Robinson: The Journey on the PlayStation Pro. The game defaults to using step turning where it flips like a slide show in the direction you turn to reduce motion sickness. You can select the smooth-turning option, but unless you’re playing on the PS Pro, there’s a far greater chance of motion sickness due to poor frame rates. The frame rate and draw distance of environmental objects are also enhanced on the Pro, and it looks a little better. It’s still a beautiful game no matter what you play it on.

Robinson: the Journey is one of the most immersive, engaging games to hit PSVR, but it suffers from its short length and reliance on vague objectives. Still, the sheer visual splendor and moments of legitimately awesome sights make it an engaging experience. Crytek has taken their usual flair for gorgeous visuals and made a world worth stepping into.

• Leave Blank
• Engaging exploration
• HIGS-view sequences are stunning
• Some truly impressive sights--especially the dinosaurs
• An immersive and involving world
• Far too short
• Slow movement
• Controlling levitating objects is a challenge
• Some obscure objectives and puzzles

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Jason D'Aprile

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• Robinson: The Journey review: Hands on with one of PSVR's most promising games

Robinson: The Journey review: Hands on with one of PSVR’s most promising games

• Katharine Byrne

Could Crytek's Robinson be the PSVR's killer app? We go hands on with the latest build

Crytek made its name with its stunning, superbly crafted Crysis shooters, but its roots stem back to something a bit more prehistoric – dinosaurs, to be precise, and it’s these giant reptiles that Crytek’s returning to in its very first PlayStation VR game, Robinson: The Journey.

A futuristic take on Robinson Crusoe, The Journey sees the titular Robin crash land on a planet called Tyson III that also happens to full of rampaging dinos. Luckily, one of them, Laika, seems rather friendly, and playing catch with a waist-high T-Rex is quite unlike any other VR experience I’ve had.  

It helps that Crytek has absolutely nailed down Robinson’s movement system. Despite having a rather Move-like control clamped in your in-game suit glove, Robinson uses a traditional DualShock 4 controller for traversal and interaction. A push of the right analogue stick sets you going straight, but you can click the left analogue stick left and right to switch to a number of pre-defined angles off the central axis. It takes a little getting used to, particularly if you’re the kind of person who likes to strafe in first-person games, but it didn’t take long before it became second nature.

READ NEXT: Our   PlayStation VR hands on

Your pace is fairly glacial, but that’s to help keep motion sickness at bay, which Robinson’s executive producer Elijah Freeman told me has been one of the major challenges throughout the game’s development. He himself is particularly susceptible to the effect, so makes for an excellent test subject for every new build the team brings him. Indeed, while I experienced a fleeting moment of nausea right at the start, it quickly abated and I was able to play the rest of my demo without any ill effects.

It’s just as well, as it would be a shame for Crytek’s incredible jungle of lush fauna and towering trees to be spoiled by recurring dizzy spells. Yes, it’s not quite as highly detailed as your typical Crysis game, but the sense of place it creates is unmistakable. The opening area alone is sizable encampment perched on the edge of a cliff, looking out over a vast valley of greenery, and a strange, circular structure looms high in the distance, a constant reminder of your end goal and ultimate destination.

The camp is chock full of things to do and puzzles to solve as well. You don’t necessarily have to complete all of them in order to progress through its linear story, but there’s plenty of depth here for those that go looking for it. Admittedly, my attempts to catch a few fish in a saucer weren’t wholly successful, as its confusing set of prompts and tricky set of controls made it quite difficult to accurately judge a sense of depth. It’s certainly not as intuitive as using a mouse and keyboard, for instance, so it’s clear there’s still some way to go before Robinson’s smaller quests and mini-games are as easy to pick up as a traditional console offering.

However, that small hiccup was soon rectified by the next task which involved restoring energy to a nearby generator. By assuming control of your ship’s robotic AI modules, HIGS, you’re presented with an overhead view of your overall environment, allowing you to see the world in miniature as you direct the current from one power point to the next. It’s certainly more immersive than simply looking at a flat 2D monitor, and this blend of first and third person puzzles really allows Robinson to make great use of its new VR technology.

You can also see glimpses of Crytek’s other VR titles in Robinson, as my second demo involved climbing a huge tree to get to a nearby viewpoint up above. While nowhere near as visually impressive as Crytek’s Oculus-based The Climb, the feeling of gingerly directing my hands over each grip point was just as unnerving.

Without any motion controllers at my disposal, the only way to move forward was to use my head-mounted display to look for my next hold, which I then latched on to using the respective trigger button on the Dualshock 4. It sounds simple, but when you really feel like you’re hanging 60ft in the air with rabid raptors snapping at your heels down below, letting go of the next trigger button becomes a surprisingly tense exercise of fine motor control.

The ordeal didn’t end there, either, as I then managed to draw the attention of a rather curious Brachiosaurus, who simply wouldn’t move his lumbering snout out of my way unless I chucked a large piece of fruit at him. Again, simply looking to grab and throw an object isn’t a particularly complicated manoeuvre, but in VR, with a giant dinosaur bearing down on you, your levels of concentration have never been so high.

Of course, the launch of PlayStation VR isn’t far off now, but we’ll have to wait a little longer before the final version of Robinson: The Journey hits our headsets, as there’s currently no word on a final release date. However, from what I’ve seen so far, it certainly looks as though it could be one of the most promising titles in Sony’s VR line-up. I’ll bring you a full review closer to the game’s launch.

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The End of a Voyage.

The start of an adventure..

When the Esmeralda crash-lands on Tyson III, a boy named Robin is left stranded. He must rely on his wits – and HIGS, one of the ship’s AI units – to survive. As he searches for the lost crew and comes face-to-face with dinosaurs, Robin discovers that Tyson III is not the paradise once promised…

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“It started out with us being inquisitive about a new medium,” said Robinson Producer Fatih Özbayram. The release of our debut PS VR game Robinson: The Journey is just months away, and development is in full swing. So today, we’re excited to launch our first dev diary

November 08, 2016

Robinson: the journey is here – check out the launch day trailer.

We have lift-off! Today marks the arrival of Robinson: The Journey for PlayStation® VR, and after a lot of hard work for an amazing new platform, we're very excited to be able to share the launch trailer for the game with you.

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Review: Robinson: The Journey

Everybody’s Gone to the Raptor

Crytek’s dinosaur adventure Robinson: The Journey has the trappings of a compelling VR experience.

You play as a young boy, Robin, the seeming sole survivor of a planned colonization effort on a distant planet that’s brimming with exotic flora and fauna. For a first-person adventure game presented in virtual reality, that’s a winning premise, one that’s easy to become immersed in. It also helps that this is the best-looking PlayStation VR title to date, particularly when played on a PlayStation 4 Pro.

Unfortunately, Robinson doesn’t go far enough. The spectacle is there, but not much else.

Robinson: The Journey (PS4) Developer: Crytek Publisher: Crytek Released: November 8, 2016 MSRP: $59.99

Robin isn’t totally alone. He’s got HIGS, a hovering AI caretaker hellbent on keeping him far away from danger, and Laika, a pet dinosaur who may one day pose a serious threat as an alpha predator.

I have to commend Crytek for its storytelling. Rather than crawl through every tidbit and introduce these characters and this world exhaustively up front, it starts on an average day in Robin’s life, allowing you to pick up more world-building details on your own time (or not at all). He’s already living out of a little encampment built around a drop pod when you step in. There’s a sustainable source of food and energy, barriers to keep stray pests out, and an adorable and mostly obedient pal in Laika.

But this can’t last forever. Robin is surviving, sure, but he isn’t thriving. He’s desperate to learn what forced the space station Esmeralda out of orbit and to find other potential survivors. So, off we go.

Surprisingly, this isn’t a PlayStation Move game, despite the floating hands and the PS Move-looking gravity device you’ll wield to lift heavy objects and to scan the wildlife. You’ll play using a standard gamepad to walk around, walk some more, climb walls, and solve light environmental puzzles.

Robinson is all about the sights and sounds, and on that front, it’s successful. You’ll dangle above a pit, climbing monkey-bar style one hand at a time as a pterosaur flaps its huge wings nearby. You’ll journey to tar pits, plopping down scrap-metal bridges and helping a young longneck get unstuck. You’ll sneak around raptors and, more likely than not, be spotted at least once. Sheer terror and panic will wash over you as you become utterly frozen in place until you come to, remembering that this is only a game.

Aside from those and other effective moments, you’ll either be solving puzzles or walking to them. Occasionally, you’ll go into an elevated view of the world, looking down on the area you’ve been exploring in staggering detail only to… route and reroute energy so that it’s correctly dispersed across a power grid. It gets old. Otherwise, it’s a whole lot of unsatisfying “lift this specific object over to that specific area (in the exact way the developers intended).” There’s rarely if ever that a-ha moment.

The actual alien world exploration, though? It’s a strong pull. I only wish there were more of it. Robinson could probably be cleared in an afternoon if you knew where you were supposed to go at all times (the signposting is inconsistent at best) and if you could handle playing in VR for that long without succumbing to motion sickness. I felt discomfort during my first two short sessions, but never again, though eventually switching over to a PlayStation 4 Pro might have helped to some extent.

Robinson shines on the Pro. Without getting too technical, the visuals outside of your immediate vicinity aren’t so blurry, the textures and lighting look nicer all-around, and there’s far less of a pop-in effect. It’s a better-feeling, more believable experience compared to playing on the standard PS4.

This is a game I was so ready to fall in love with, but it ultimately comes up short. After a couple of hours, I began to wonder, “Is this it? Dinosaur planet sight-seeing?” Basically, yeah. And at its high price point, that’s going to be a tough sell. But Robinson is doing things no other PSVR title has been able to accomplish, visually speaking, and for that reason alone it’ll be worth considering down the road.

[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]

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Robinson: The Journey review

Robinson's squashed.

Peer beyond the foliage that enshrouds Robinson: The Journey's planet of Tyson III and you'll find a little piece of Crytek's history, a fossil that's now been brought to live as a towering embodiment of so much that's defined this developer. Back before Jack Carver had even packed his bags for the South Pacific in the original Far Cry, Crytek made its name with tech demo X-Isle Dinosaur Island. Almost 15 years later it'd return there, this time for a tech demo that explored the possibilities of VR, and now we have this: Robinson: The Journey, a full-priced PlayStation VR title that has you stranded on a dinosaur-infested planet as you strive to find other survivors of your downed spacecraft.

True to many a Crytek game before it, Robinson: The Journey is stunning to behold, and an early contender for the finest looking game to grace PlayStation VR. Confident art direction that takes well-worn sci-fi tropes and infuses them with a little lived-in character - the space pod that your character, the young Robin, lives in is as messy as a teen's bedroom - is delivered with technical excellence. Virtual reality games have rarely looked better, making it all the more impressive that Crytek is getting this performance from a mere PlayStation 4 (the PlayStation 4 Pro version that contains some improvements wasn't available to us before launch, but the vanilla edition is more than handsome enough).

Jungles crawl with wildlife and bristle with detail, tarpits bubble away and all the while Robinson: The Journey harnesses the wonder and awe of having dinosaurs amongst its cast. They're impressive beasts, beautifully rendered and animated, and there's something of that same spectacle that Jurassic Park's CGI dinosaurs harnessed so many years ago. Look skywards to take in the size of a 'longneck' - Tyson III's own brontosaurus - and you'll get that same feeling audiences had in 1994 when presented with something that's part of the collective conscience brought to life in such a brilliantly, shockingly new way.

Like its cinematic inspiration (and at one point towards the adventure's end, Crytek goes beyond homage to straight-up VR remake) Robinson: The Journey is an elaborate theme park where you're mostly invited to stop and gaze at the wonders around you. It's a frequently impressive theme park ride, mind, and one in which you're afforded some freedom. As Robin you must navigate several small interconnected areas, each offering numerous paths as you track down clues towards the whereabouts of your fellow crew members.

You're not entirely alone on your adventure. Laika, a baby tyrannosaurus, joins you, as does HIGS, a floating AI orb, both of whom help you in the light puzzles you encounter. Those puzzles themselves are simple things, sometimes involving re-routing power in a short mini-game and more often involving moving objects around the map via a tool that's ever-present on the screen (curiously Move controls are currently not supported).

There's just not enough to it, though, the puzzles being clumsy and uninspired while the finer details of the world around you fall equally flat. HIGS himself is a banal companion, a weak Wheatley with a personality bypass, while the story you uncover feels like it's been told countless times before. Crytek's environmental storytelling is much more powerful than its writing, however, and for all its failings the world they've created is compelling - visually, at least.

It's also where you'll find the most satisfying part of Robinson's make-up, with traversal that's been borrowed from Crytek's excellent earlier VR outing The Climb. You find hand holds by craning your neck, moving one hand from another and finding a simple rhythm. It's been pared back here from its earlier outing - there's no stamina bar to worry about, nor do you have to bother chalking your hands - but it's enjoyable nevertheless.

It's a small part of a small game, though, and Robinson: The Journey is slight. There's a premium feel to how the world you explore looks and feels, but the price-tag Robinson: The Journey commands is noteworthy seeing as it doesn't offer that much more than Rocksteady's more reasonably priced Arkham VR.

Robinson: The Journey is as hollow as it is spectacular, and only ever makes small steps away from its tech demo origins. Crytek knows VR intimately, and Robinson is as smart and assured as anything else in the medium. It knows all the tricks that make for a great VR experience, and isn't shy in using them. It doesn't quite know how to match that with a half-decent game, though, leaving this a theme park ride that's over too soon and that's all too forgettable. 

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Robinson: The Journey Review

November 8, 2016.

Robinson: The Journey is a name that immediately excites, conjuring up a sense of adventure, evoking the spirit of Daniel Defoe’s classic novel, a story with which it shares its basic premise. You are Robin, your desert island a mysterious prehistoric planet, Titan III. Your spaceship, the Esmerelda has, for reasons unknown, crash-landed and it’s up to you and your buddies, a floating robot named HIGS and baby dinosaur, Laika, to piece together what happened, find survivors and get home.

It’s a perfect set up for a VR game, lost in space on a dinosaur-infested planet, which is brought spectacularly to life by Crytek, who have delivered the most graphically impressive PSVR game to date here. Unfortunately, the intriguing premise and stunning graphics are pretty much completely laid to waste by dire gameplay involving nothing more than a handful of boring object manipulation puzzles and some frustrating traversal elements.

The first thing you’ll notice with Robinson The Journey is that, for all its epic vistas, lush tropical valleys and waterfalls, the actual areas you can move around in are tiny and uninspired. The game, for all the talk of how epic its setting is, is in fact comprised of five small areas connected by small corridors, each of which contains a missing HIGS unit to find and scan for information, a very basic object manipulation or environmental puzzle and a minigame where you redirect the flow of electricity via your pal HIGS. That’s it.

As an example of the gameplay, at one point you’ll be tasked with rescuing a baby longneck dinosaur from some mud, which sounds quite exciting. However, in order to do so you’ll simply use the tool in Robin’s right hand to lift a piece of debris, holding R2 to hoover it up and then place it in front of the dinosaur, and that’s it. In terms of interaction that’s as deep as the gameplay gets. Your smart tool has two modes, scan and lift; you complete most puzzles by lifting debris and making bridges for yourself or grabbing an object and throwing it. In between these “puzzles” you can scan wildlife to add to a catalogue of creatures, the most basic of busywork to distract from the fact there really isn’t anything else to do.

In the most exciting area of the game in terms of atmosphere, a dark jungle area full of raptors, it took me all of five minutes to figure out how to do the puzzles and move on. I used my smart tool to pick up a can and smack a piece of fruit from a tree so that a dinosaur would move out of my path, then I used the exact same method to hit a curled up plant to reveal the solution to the puzzle and complete the area. I then spent about thirty minutes trying to figure out where I had to go next which is, at every turn, the hardest part of the game. The frustration with traversal is compounded by the fact motion sickness becomes an issue during extended sessions, unless you use some of the more constrained control settings which employ a pie-chart movement style to help with headaches.

Moving around the environments is done at a plodding pace with no ability to run, and again I’m aware that this is probably to reduce motion sickness but it really doesn’t help when you do so much backtracking due to the very poor signposting between puzzles. I very rarely have to consult walkthrough guides to help me finish a game but I found myself doing so on more than one occasion with Robinson due to the fact there was absolutely no way of telling where to go next or how to move the game on at certain points, other than walking round in circles looking for a vine or climbable ledge that I’d missed.

Speaking of climbing, this is probably the most immersive part of the game, controlled by using the L and R bumpers to grab ledges, one for each hand. It works fine but it can be fiddly and falling to grab a ledge results in instant death and the loss of a not-insignificant amount of progress due to poor checkpointing.

Robinson was also very obviously designed to be controlled via MOVE: the tool which Robin uses to interact with objects looks exactly like a MOVE controller, it seems like something that was meant to be implemented but for whatever reason was left out and it’s a shame because it really would have added to what little immersion there is here and it feels like a lazy omission, especially considering the game’s ludicrous price tag.

Besides the puzzles and climbing you’ve got your two companions, HIGS and Laika. Laika can follow you around and fetch items, she’ll go where you point your laser and can also perform a couple of simple tricks, it’s cute for a couple of minutes but totally unnecessary save for a crucial bit of teamwork right at the end of the game, which I won’t spoil for those foolhardy enough to reach it.

HIGS proves useful in solving the electricity based puzzles in each area but beyond that he’s C-3PO with all of the whining and none of the humour, constantly putting you down and reminding you that without his help you wouldn’t survive. I couldn’t help but feel grateful that every other HIGS unit I found along the way was dead.

It feels like such an almighty shame that a game this beautiful, with such a compelling premise, should be let down by a failure to include anything approaching interesting gameplay. Robinson: The Journey shows off what can be achieved technically on PSVR, it looks astounding and it’s undeniable that looking up at a giant dinosaur as it towers over you is an awe-inspiring experience in VR, however, it’s not £54 worth of awe. Perhaps if the entry price to this adventure was more in line with the likes of Rush of Blood or Batman VR at £15, it could be more readily recommended just for the sake of seeing what PSVR is capable of. As it is, Robinson: The Journey comes across as a very expensive, very beautiful and very boring tech demo.

Back when Robinson Crusoe was originally published in 1719, it had an extremely long-winded and detailed title, which, if applied to this game would go something like, “The Life and Extremely Tedious Adventures of Robin, Who Lived for God Knows How Long With His Annoying Tin Buddy HIGS on Titan III; Shipwrecked and Forced to Carry Out The Most Tediously Simple Tasks Until Motion Sickness Overwhelmed Them.”

Amazing graphics and beautiful scenery Yyou’ll be speechless the first time you see a large dinosaur. Great premise and interesting story with a satisfactory conclusion

Basic, boring and repetitive gameplay Poor checkpointing and signposting Massively overpriced

It feels like such an almighty shame that a game this beautiful, with such a compelling premise, should be let down by a failure to include anything approaching interesting gameplay.

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Robinson: The Journey Review

Robinson: the journey review (psvr).

For the purposes of transparency, this review was created using a code provided by the company or their respective PR company. The use of a review code does not affect my judgement of the game.

Crytek’s first Playstation VR game Robinson: The Journey takes you to a planet called Tyson III; when the Esmeralda crashes a boy called Robin survives in an escape pod, and creates a home on Tyson III waiting for a rescue.

As the game starts you find yourself in-front of a nest of what are quite clearly dinosaur eggs, this is start of you getting to know the companions that will be with you throughout the game. Straight away an AI unit from the Esmeralda called HIGS will warn you of the danger of these eggs, due to them being T-Rex eggs. Not long after this an egg hatches and you are introduced to your second companion an orphaned T-Rex who becomes known as Laika. Both these characters become essential to your journey, and your survival. But, HIGS is not happy about you adopting Laika because he knows she is a dangerous animal, or will be one day – with him being against anything that could hurt Robin, all he can try to do is teach Robin she is a danger, and a waste of resources.

This then opens up the story a year later from finding Laika, and puts you completely in charge of Robin, who with the help of HIGS has created a world for himself. He has pod he can call home, a farm so he can grow his own food, and a fence that protects him and Laika from the dangers of the planet around them. Your story starts as you leave your pod and work on getting the land surrounding your home back in order, and while playing hide and seek with Laika, you discover a HIGS unit carcass that was cast from the Esmeralda during the explosion. This starts the true adventure offered in Robinson: The Journey, upon scanning the carcass it unlocks secret information regarding the crash, you then set out to find more HIGS units for any more information you can get– with each revelation becoming more shocking than the last.

The gameplay of Robinson: The Journey is all about the adventure of exploring Tyson III, and the challenges that are thrown at you in order to get close enough to scan the further HIGS units you come across. You are taken to a number of areas within Tyson III each one throws a different puzzles at you, which can include challenges like climbing, moving debris (via the multi-tool you are provided with), and repairing equipment to name a few. It is also mixed in with puzzles that you have to solve as HIGS – this is done by looking at HIGS and pressing X. This activates a 3D diorama style view with a power grid on it, in order to restore the power you need to get the right amount of power to set parts of the grid. I thought this was a nice mix in the puzzle aspect of the game. To me the puzzles offered within the game vary in difficulty, and depending on how quickly you can solve them personally will alter the length of the game.

The game is played using the Duel-Shock 4 controller – with the d-pad being used for commands for Laika, the left analogue to move, and the right to turn, the X button is used as your action button, Triangle to toggle the control help, R1 to toggle Levitate and Scan mode on your multi-tool, R2 to Levitate or Scan an object, and L2 becomes a Laser pointer, which can be used to direct Laika places. Also when you come to climbing, your multi-tool will no longer be in your hand and the R2 and L2 are used to grab with the corresponding hand. While the use of the Duel-Shock controller can take a way some of the immersion you could have had with the use of Move Controllers, it was realistically the only way that the control scheme could have work entirely in the game. Although it is reported Crytek may introduce the support for Move Controllers in the future.

One of my worries when I started controlling Robin, was that the movement was fully controlled walking, as previously games using the same control scheme had cause me personally some motion sickness. However, I found I was able to play Robinson: The Journey for a prolonged amount of time, with no feeling of motion sickness at all. This said it is hard to say this would be same for every player as it all depends on each persons tolerance for VR gaming, which can vary.

As soon as you get the glare from the sun as you walk out of your pod you call home, you can instantly see that visually Tyson III is going to a joy to explore. This is the best looking Playstation VR game available to date, with a lot of environmental movement that just adds to Tyson III’s immersion. Crytek have done what is required based on the surroundings and the prehistoric nature of the game’s setting. Each creature on the planet from the smallest bug’s to the brontosaurus’s have all been given character and multiple colour schemes, which is paired with the detailed colour rich environment – making for a visually stunning and immersive world.

A long with the story driven areas of the game, Crytek make you want to explore the world they have created more by adding some little extras. When you come across the creatures of the Tyson III, you can use your multi-tool on Scan mode to scan the animals this will add them into HIGS Infotarium. In the Infotarium you can view more information on the creatures, as well as being given a better look at them in what again could be described and a diorama type object. In order to get them scanned to completion you have to scan multiple of each around the planet. Also hidden around the Tyson III are hidden Communicators which you can scan, again these are added in the Infotarium. The Infotarium is accessible using the touch pad on the Duel-Shock controller, and will also include the audio and images located within the HIGS carcass’s that make the story of the game. The menu is opened by pressing the touch pad, this includes the Infotarium, a map, and information on your progress with the games Trophies.

One small issue I found with Robinson: The Journey is the check point system, which can be unforgiving. Due to the fact it will not only reset your progress back to the last check point in the game if you die, but if you have scanned or found any new creatures in this time it also loses the progress on them as well.

With a lot of the titles on offer on Playstation VR feeling more like VR Experiences rather than VR Games, Robinson: The Journey is a fresh of breath air to the Playstation VR. Offering a good story, mixed with great visuals, and a story campaign that can last four to five hours (depending on your proficiency at the puzzles); which is then extended further with the exploration options on Tyson III. This makes what starts off as repairing your living quarters, and playing with Laika, soon escalate to a grand adventure, that has you walking among dinosaurs of a gigantic scale.

Robinson: The Journey does not only offer the best visuals available on Playstation VR, it also offers one the longest story driven VR experiences to date. With an interesting story and a pet T-Rex (which person wouldn’t want one), Crytek have provided a killer exclusive for the Playstation VR.

Also available on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift Developer: Crytek

Article originally created for http://www.gamesbulletin.uk

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Robinson: The Journey Review – PS4 (PSVR)

John-Paul Jones / November 11, 2016

When twelve year old me sat down and watched Jurassic Park in my local cinema back in 1993, I was utterly entranced; watching towering dinosaurs come to life right in front of my eyes made me want to experience the exact same events that palaeontologist Alan Grant did (minus all that terrifying business with the T-Rex and the jeep of course). It felt like I had been thrust back into a time that I had no right to be in – and that excited me.

As I grew into an adult, I hoped that someone, at some point would have the brass clangers to create an experience to replicate my childhood fantasy, so trust Crytek then to be the John Hammond of this scenario; leveraging their extensive experience in constructing finely detailed worlds and environments to fashion something approximate to those thrills I experienced nearly twenty-three years ago. It’s just a little disappointing that the actual game which underpins that raucous, breath-taking experience is one that cannot quite match its stirring and meticulously rendered setting.

A living, breathing world with the best visuals on PSVR

Robinson’s story begins when the Esmeralda, a massive colonial class spacecraft, crash-lands on Tyson III; a planet steeped in lush forests, tropical jungles, deep caverns and inhabited by a whole heap of dinosaur-looking locals. Left stranded on this world in the safe confines of his escape capsule, players take control of a young boy named Robin who, with the help of HIGS, a massively condescending AI unit and Laika, his pet youngling T-Rex(!), must scour the planet in search of Esmeralda’s missing crew members in order to ascertain just what caused the host ship to crash in the first place.

Arguably, one of the biggest feathers in Robinson’s cap is that the world in which the player inhabits is so evocatively crafted; the practiced hands of Crytek being put to work in fashioning a realm that is magnificently awash in spectacle and rife with the sort of incidental detail that would prove invisible to most other developers. The calibre of Crytek’s world building is immediately felt, as Robin’s escape pod; a lovingly detailed, yet ultimately untidy living space at the beginning of the game, gives way to lush jungles, temperate forest zones and scorching hot tar pits to name just a few of the locations you’ll see.

As reassuringly varied and Share button worthy the myriad of environments are, they are ably paralleled and bolstered by the creatures that inhabit them too. Gazing up at the massive, white-marked and scaly arching neck of a towering Brontosaurus as it majestically stomps past you is just one of many sights that etches itself on memory. Elsewhere, more contemplative spectacles prove themselves to be equally memorable too, such as an agitated swarm of fireflies illuminating a dank cave or a mole popping out of the ground to sniff the air momentarily before retreating back to its underground maze of tunnels. Without a doubt, the world in Robinson: The Journey feels alive and it felt like I was part of a world that I never wanted to leave, rather than just a detached spectator just passing through.

Speaking of passing through, as it turns out, navigating the environment is a mostly simple and pleasurable affair. Despite Robin’s all-in-one tool looking very much like a PlayStation Move controller, the game is instead controlled with a mixture of Dualshock 4 controller input and head tracking from the PSVR headset ; the former able to facilitate turning smoothly (don’t do this method if you want to keep your lunch where it belongs) or in degreed increments, while the latter accurately directs both your view and movement path.

Far more interesting is how the game goes about facilitating movement which isn’t entirely pedestrian, since lest we forget, the organic design of Robinson’s forests, jungles and other natural environments rarely permit consistently flat-footed movement. One such example of this is how climbing is handled; simply put, you just walk up to a vine, or handhold and press one of the bumper triggers to reach a hand up to grasp it. Once you have a single handhold secured with the shoulder trigger held down, you can then reach up with the other hand and so on and so forth, pressing the ‘X’ button to heave yourself up once you’ve reached your destination. Cribbed from Crytek’s earlier VR rock climbing experiment on PC, it’s employed wonderfully here because it actually gives you the feeling of properly scaling the environment; something that very few PSVR developers at this early stage of its life have had the ambition to shoot for.

Simple and uninspiring puzzles

Beyond the sweep of its Spielberg-esque spectacle, Robinson’s primary objective has players searching for additional HIGS units and video diaries in order to ascertain just what has happened to the crew of the seemingly doomed Esmeralda spacecraft. Searching out these units requires more than just trotting about the place, since the developers have intertwined a series of puzzles into the game in order to keep players on their toes, though alas, there is no combat; so folks looking to get their dinosaur-blasting rocks off, might be better served looking elsewhere (next month’s Ark: Survival Evolved could be more your bag). What does grate however, is that beyond a cursory instruction, you’re never reminded about what you need to do the next, as the UI is utterly absent of any kind of objective marker and instead relies on you remembering what needs to be done.

The puzzle mechanics in Robinson: The Journey only straddle two different kinds of conundrums; relatively dull ones where you must use HIGS to reroute power around the environment to power up devices that in turn allow you access to other areas, or, slightly more interesting physics based challenges where you have to use your all-in-one tool to move objects so that you might create makeshift bridges to get to previous inaccessible areas. To say that it isn’t exactly scintillating stuff would be quite the understatement indeed.

Cataloguing wildlife is fun – honest!

Away from such trite challenges and when you’re not searching for clues as to the fate of your fellow comrades, you have the option of cataloguing the local wildlife as a side activity and it’s something that compliments the tremendous sense of place that Robinson boasts extremely well. From flittering mosquitos and lumbering turtles, through to soaring pterodactyls and packs of rampaging velociraptors, just about everything can be scanned (again, using your handy all-in-one tool) and catalogued.

Where the hook comes in though, is that each species has a set number which must be scanned in order for it to be considered ‘complete’, and by encouraging the player to delve into the nooks and crannies of Robinson’s lushly detailed prehistoric-style vistas, it reinforces that connection with the game world at large and provides a reason for exploring its expansive and richly detailed spaces. In a way, the cataloguing feels akin to Pokemon too; the impulse to “catch em’ all” proving to be a pleasingly difficult one to overcome that provides the game with a hefty dose of longevity even after the end credits have finished rolling. The PS4 Pro difference

For those of you who have been fortunate enough to score one of those shiny new PS4 Pro things , Robinson: The Journey emphatically cements its position as a visual masterwork. Increased texture detail, higher resolution and increased draw distance all noticeably enhance what is already a grandly handsome endeavour, elevating Robinson far beyond anything seen on PSVR so far. Regardless of what PS4 you play it on though, Robinson: The Journey is a gorgeous effort and standard PS4 owners will still get a tremendous visual tour-de-force all the same.

Clearly, Robinson: The Journey is a crucial title for PSVR’s prospects going forward. With many detractors of Sony’s VR headset lambasting its massively diminished visual capability in relation to the likes of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive , Robinson stands as a resounding rebuke of such criticism, with its lushly realised worlds and painstakingly detailed prehistoric denizens simply being in a visual class all its own regardless of the VR platform in question.

I should have expected that being a Crytek effort, that Robinson: The Journey would look as good as it does. What I didn’t count on was how deeply it would resonate with me. As a non-VR title, Robinson might have floundered, but the sheer sensation of intimately being part of what is, for all intents and purposes, your own Jurassic Park narrative, overcomes the gameplay flaws which would otherwise prove to be its undoing.

The Final Word

If you want to show off PSVR to your friends, Robinson: The Journey is the game that you use to do it. Equally, if you want to lose yourself in your very own Jurassic Park-style fantasy, Robinson: The Journey is undoubtedly a triumph in this respect; just don’t expect to find an overly challenging core lurking underneath its resplendent veneer.

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Robinson: The Journey – How Long It Is

How Long It Is – Robinson: The Journey

Robinson: The Journey raised many when it was first revealed at Paris Games Week last year as a VR title. Assuming the role of a boy named Robin, players adventure across a foreign planet known as Tyson III with the help of HIGS, a robot AI. The two of you are not alone on the planet, however, with dinosaurs and other creatures roaming the surface and skies of the planet. Oh, and there’s an adorable dinosaur to help you along the way, too.

If you’ve been looking for a VR game that feels more like a traditional gaming experience, than Robinson certainly achieves that. Unfortunately, however, the game clocks in at a pretty short time. You’ll be looking at roughly five to seven hours to make it through the campaign, ultimately varying dependent on how quick you are to work out the environmental puzzles that may hinder your progress.

Unfortunately, you’re not going to get much more playtime out of the game other than that, and unless you fall head over heels in love with the game, there’s little reason to go and play through it all over again.

For more tips, tricks, and guides, be sure to check back with Twinfinite.

‘Expats’ Star Ruby Ruiz to Lead James J. Robinson’s Directorial Debut ‘First Light’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Independent Entertainment has boarded the Australian-Filipino co-production, which has now started shooting

By Alex Ritman

Alex Ritman

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Multi award-winning Filipina actress Ruby Ruiz has landed her first major screen role following her appearance in Amazon’s “ Expats .” She will lead “First Light,” the feature directorial debut of James. J. Robinson.

Principal photography is now underway on the Australian-Filipino co-production, which comes with funding from Screen Australia. Veteran actress Maricel Soriano (“Mother Nanny”), Rez Cortez (“Bukal”), Soliman Cruz (“Blue Room”) and Kidlat Tahimik round out the cast. 

Popular on Variety

Supported by Screen Australia in association with the Film Development Council of the Philippines, Clou Media Productions, the Melbourne International Film Festival Premiere Fund and VicScreen, “First Light” is produced by Gabrielle Pearson through her outfit Majella Productions alongside Christelle Dychangco from Clou Media Productions and Jane Pe Aguirre (“A Prayer Before Dawn”), one of the Philippines’ most respected and longest working producers. GoodThing Productions’ Nick Batzias and Virginia Whitwell (“Nitram,” “The Australian Dream”) serve as executive producers. 

Independent Entertainment have boarded the film and will handle global sales, excluding Australia and New Zealand, where Bonsai Films will distribute the film theatrically.

Robinson is a celebrated Filipino-Australian artist with an expansive career in photography and filmmaking. His work has regularly appeared in publications such as The New York Times and Vogue Australia, where he has photographed some of the world’s biggest names including Kylie Jenner, Sydney Sweeney, Rose Byrne and Harris Dickinson. His Filipino short documentary “Inang Maynila” was acquired by Nowness and screened at the Brooklyn Film Festival in 2022, while his previous short “No Reception” was part of the 2018 TIFF x Instagram Shorts program in 2018.

“‘First Light’ is a captivating blend of Filipino and Australian creativity, delving into themes of mortality, faith and self-discovery,” said Screen Australia COO Grainne Brunsdon. “With universal resonance, this film promises an engaging journey for audiences.”  

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