Deadpool VR review — Merc goes Meta

After duking it out with Flag-Smasher, the mercenary Deadpool is spirited away through a portal to Mojo World to take on his most dangerous contract yet: reality television. After being enlisted by Mojo to track down contestants for his new show, the Regenerating Degenerate embarks on a portal-hopping journey to kidnap villains of all shapes and sizes to appease the fans.

Deadpool VR is a blend of hack-and-slash melee combat paired with acrobatic first-person shooting that leans hard into the arcadey side of VR shooters. There are three main gameplay sections that you'll bounce between: on-rails cinematic shootouts, game-show mini games and traditional level experiences. The on-rail experiences are sprinkled throughout some of the levels, and can be skipped if you're someone who experiences nausea, since these often involve a high level of motion intensity. In most levels, you'll be able to fully move around and explore as you slash and blast waves of baddies on the trails of a wide variety variety of villains. With foes ranging from the likes of Mephisto to Ultimo, each level offered both unique set pieces and new enemies to fight.

The mini-game levels sprinkled throughout, however, didn't feel as interesting to me. These will have you teaming up with another Deadpool variant to take on Mojo's forces for the enjoyment of the TV show audience and features a trio of game show objectives. These range from dunking a ball into a ring to score points to seeing which team can feed more chimichangas to Headpool (the disembodied head variant of Deadpool). These can be fun distractions from the main levels, but often feel like a sideshow to the main gameplay experience.

Regardless of which level you’re playing, the visuals here are great. Whether you’re traipsing through the dojos of the foot clan or battling aliens aboard a Nova Corp spaceship, the graphics are all very solid and enjoyable to move through. And of course it wouldn’t be a Deadpool game without gore, and there’s plenty of blood to spill. You even get some gruesome first-person experiences as you can watch your arms regenerate from tiny nubs after losing them in grisly fashion. Good stuff.

The main interactive element of Deadpool VR is the combat, and the merc-with-a-mouth comes equipped with a pair of melee weapons, a pair of ranged weapons, grenades and a grapple gun. These are all accessible by reaching and grabbing different parts of the body, with the swords being accessed by reaching above your shoulders, and your pistols being around your waist. Most of these are intuitive to reach at a moment's notice outside of the grapple, which is in a bit of an awkward spot behind your back. These weapons can also be customized to your liking beyond just visuals, with the ranged weapons featuring a surprising variety of firearms from shotguns to incendiary shell launchers. You can also pick up weapons from defeated foes, expanding your arsenal even further. I really liked using the ranged weapons at my disposal, but the melee combat didn't really feel that interesting to engage with. Enemies don’t really feel like they’re taking any damage from your blows, and there isn’t great feedback when you’re hitting them either. I rarely opted to use my swords outside of just throwing them at enemies, which ended up being a bit of a bummer.

All of these options are unlocked by earning money in missions, which is where the Big Money Time meter comes into play. You get more points for stylish kills, so you're incentivized to use your entire loadout when slaying out to fill this bad boy up. Get the score meter high enough, and you’ll also earn access to special weapons from Mojo’s armory, like the legally distinct Mojo-nir hammer that certainly isn’t Thor’s iconic hammer. These are admittedly overpowered, but that’s what makes using them so much fun.

It isn’t all high octane thrills throughout the entire experience, however. A big gripe that I had during my playthrough was the long and often drawn-out dialogue sequences that plague many of the levels. Sure, the dialogue is often pretty solid, especially the quips from Deadpool, but it really took me out of the action when I essentially just had to stand there when I really just wanted to get back to the action. There's also no way to skip a lot of these cutscene segments, which is a drag when replaying levels.

A positive of the dialogue, though, is the stellar performance from Neil Patrick Harris as Deadpool. Sure, the humor of Deadpool might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he certainly knocks it out of the park in my book. He’s got some great line delivery and certainly made me chuckle more than a few times, especially with just how many lines of dialogue this game actually has in it. 

As far as comfort settings go, you're free to go as high or low as you'd like. Deadpool VR features a ton of high-intensity segments along with both vertical and horizontal movement, so you might prefer to turn some of these on if you experience VR sickness. Beyond traditional settings like snap-turn and blinders, there is also a ‘Kidpool’ mode that censors all the naughty language, if that’s something that you need. 

If you’re a Deadpool fan already, you’re going to love what this game offers. The arcade-style combat works well paired with the absurdity of Deadpool, and rounding up baddies to partake in Mojo’s gameshow was great fun. Despite some issues with melee combat, lobbing explosives and dumping endless amounts of bullets at my enemies while sliding and dashing through the colorful environments was still thrilling, and definitely made the VR experience worth it.