Star Wars Vader Immortal: Five Years Later

Does the iconic VR flagship still hold up?

Meta Quest 2 screenshot taken by the author.

Last year, when Meta launched the new Quest 3 VR headset, they packed in a free copy of their hot new game Asgard’s Wrath 2. It’s a sprawling M-rated open world action title with multiple characters based on an original IP, and it pushes players to the limits of what the headset can do. You’ll run, leap, fight, and gather loot across dozens of hours of content, all while witnessing an original story.

I picked up that game myself a couple of months ago, and I would love to have written a review of it by now — but it’s comically huge. It puts some standard home console/PC games to shame with its amount of content. The many hours of it I’ve played have been reasonably fun and sometimes even great, but I‘m running out of motivation to keep going.

This big epic approach to flagship VR gaming is very different than the one Meta took just a few years ago. When they launched the original Quest back in 2019, the significant game they pushed was Star Wars: Vader Immortal. This is an episodic game in three parts with a largely linear design based on a very well known IP that the company had to license. It’s an equally valid mainstream success strategy, but also at the other end of the spectrum from Asgard’s Wrath 2.