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.
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