The Last Worker’s satirical themes are particularly raw and nerve-wracking at a time when technology continues to advance in an economic recession.
just last week, Microsoft has announced that it will lay off 10,000 employees. Across various departments (including game studios), Investing billions in OpenAI, is the technology company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E.If you imagine this scenario happening at a retail giant in the not-too-distant future Amazon Eliminating workers in favor of automation sums up the premise of this narrative-driven adventure by Oiffy and Wolf & Wood Interactive.
The player plays as Kurt (voiced by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). The last human worker at the Jüngle megacorporation, he spends his days transporting and delivering packages within the Jüngle Fulfillment Center (or JFC-1). It’s clear he’s good at his job, as the opening montage shows.
That isolation is only enhanced by working inside a huge underground warehouse, but it’s felt even more by experiencing it in VR as well as seeing it through Kurt’s eyes.
The Last Worker – Gameplay Teaser Trailer
The Last Worker was first shown at the 2021 Venice Film Festival as the only game to enter the festival’s VR category. Oculus Quests 1 and 2. However, the plan was always to bring it to non-VR platforms as well as his high-end VR platforms.
Although I had the opportunity to play computer last worker’s build last summer gamescomthis time playing the same opening tutorial followed by the stealth section playstation VR2, there is no denying that this is the defining experience. His 4K HDR resolution and wide field of view in the headset makes you feel like you’re deep inside a warehouse the size of the sunken city of Manhattan.
That’s not to say this is necessarily the next generation VR experience, though. Instead of doing advanced movement at your feet in the style of Half-life: AlyxThe Last Worker is a sit-down experience, but it’s also not rooted in the spot and rail experiences common in first-generation VR titles.
The action takes place with the cart sitting in the vehicle. It resembles the futuristic forklift trucks used to move the JFC-1. The left hand reaches for the lever, pulls the trigger and moves forward, turning on the cross and circle buttons. The right side raises the height so you can reach packages stored high like a skyscraper.
The hand-drawn style of The Last Worker, by renowned 2000 AD comic artist Mick McMahon, is similar to the low-end Quest and switchthe VR1 version was skipped (the 2D version is PS4), although I can understand why.
VR2’s Sense controllers let you keep your hands on the levers, but you’re really just keeping your hands in the air, which gets tired quickly. Instead, you can simply put your hands aside and control the cart’s vehicle with the control stick. This was not possible with the old Move Wand.
“Probably not the best showcase for all of VR2’s features. It looks great, but that’s because the developers chose not to use all the hardware-exclusive features.”
There are also right-handed pick-up devices that resemble gravity guns that can pick up packages of any size with ease. For Jüngle’s only human employee, sending packages to various chutes (where they have to be labeled as such if defective and sent for recycling) seems like a fairly basic task. But this is because his assistant his bot his Skew malfunctioned. A tutorial session as if Kurt were a rookie employee instead of a middle-aged bearded fellow reflected in the mirror.
Luckily, Skew’s annoyingly hilarious corporate voice is also part of the malfunction, so when he returns to normal (or at least the setting Kurt gave him), he’s actually sarcastically. It sounds like a swearing old man.The voice is played by none other than Jason Isaacs, and the actor from Liverpool definitely enjoys the chance to play the role of Scows to the full.
As intriguing as The Last Worker is, we’re particularly enamored with the banter between the central duo, like two pensioners going about their daily chores. It’s probably not the best showcase for all of VR2’s features. It looks incredible, but that’s because the developers chose not to use all hardware-exclusive features.
For example, it doesn’t use eye tracking, so you have to turn your head to look around. Without eye tracking, foveal rendering is also not possible. This allows the hardware to focus more processing power and effects on just what your eyes see. Clearly, no additional rendering power was needed.
However, both the Sense controller and the headset make subtle use of haptics.In the latter case, when you walk through a gate in the tutorial, you’ll feel a light jolt that quickly closes as you boost under it.
In the late-game stealth section, just trying to navigate the labyrinthine space without being caught by intimidating patrol robots is stressful enough, so you don’t feel extra tactile sensations to build tension. Nevertheless, the developer promises that the haptics will become more intense in the story, from races to boss fights.
Ultimately, The Last Worker is set to be the most premium experience in VR2, but we shouldn’t expect any deliberately exclusive gimmicks to set it apart from other VR versions. , which is also why the game will be released in March Sonyheadsets have already hit the market, providing ample distance from the launch-day lineup under pressure to prove the hardware’s prowess.
Instead, this is a narrative experience that can stand on its own when lost deep in the jungle.
