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Netflix’s iconic show gets another video game adaptation, this one letting you play as both Eleven and series 4 bad guy Vecna.
Ratings juggernaut, Stranger Things has become a beacon of hope for Netflix; driving subscriptions and buzz on social media, its 1980s setting and music has created a powerful sense of nostalgia for the era, even amongst fans way too young to remember it the first time round. And, in its steadfast attempt to occupy as many of our waking hours as it can, Netflix has also been flexing its IP and financial muscle in gaming.
Stranger Things has already been made into numerous mobile and board games, and frequently also features that icon of pre-computing role-playing, Dungeons & Dragons – which has been enjoying something of a renaissance ever since. But given the series’ focus on immersive set dressing, and the overwhelming nature of its Silent Hill style parallel universe, the Upside Down, it’s no surprise to see it making a second foray into VR.
The first Stranger Things VR was released in 2017 and was a very brief experience. The premise of 2024’s Stranger Things VR is immediately more interesting, casting you as season 4’s villain, Henry Creel, also known as Subject 001. You’re a peer of series superstar Eleven, who’s also being experimented on by the unsavoury Dr Brenner. Unlike El, though, Henry soon turns to evil, transforming from a child with unusual supernatural gifts into Vecna, a mind-controlling monster capable of corrupting and controlling the beasts he comes across in the Upside Down.
You start the game strapped to a chair in the lab, but swiftly proceed to a cel-shaded version of the Upside Down to start testing your new abilities. These let you grab objects using only your mind and crush them, or pull them towards you before flinging them forcefully at whatever’s in front of you. You can also tear chunks off nearby rocks, smash them, then use the shrapnel to target any cheeky demogorgons you come across.
Looking down at your gnarly monster hands in VR, you find you can shoot out thick tentacles that grip onto scenery, letting you grab and climb vertical surfaces or launch yourself high into the air by rapidly dropping your hands. It gives you an inspiring sense of power and mobility, which is capped by your ability to pick up the limp corpses of defeated foes and enter their defenceless minds.
Doing that triggers sections where you worm your way though dark, squelchy tunnels in search of a tear in reality that you open by pouring yet more tentacles into it. Although not particularly interesting in gameplay terms, there’s a strong sense of invulnerability, your enemies and their primitive intellects no match for your lab grown telekinesis.
The Upside Down itself, while roughly drawn, as many VR games tend to be, is a strange place full of gravity-defying pieces of floating rock, mixed in with recognisable props from the real world, and bits of buildings and furniture. Its continually shifting surfaces and peppering of enemies make it a useful assault course to get accustomed to the controls and understand just how powerful Vecna can be.
Rather unfortunately the bulk of the rest game fails to live up to this initial impression of potency and freedom, mostly abandoning the freeform playground of the Upside Down in favour of far less interesting chapters based on controlling the minds of the series’ familiar characters. There’s also a lot of trudging around boring mazes until you eventually stumble across an exit, or levels that endlessly repeat incrementally different versions of the same scene.
As Vecna you can open portals to remotely view other characters and enter their minds in a quest to inspire teenage angst about being ignored by their friends. These levels play out almost completely without interaction, allowing you to view rather than participate in the action and the dislocated nature of each chapter fails to deliver a coherent story.
The closing chapters, where you play as Eleven, are even more bewildering, the screen regularly filled with chaotic low-polygon surrealism, while the audio grinds away with gnomic but sinister-sounding pronouncements that do little to edify. ‘It’s time to open the gate’, ‘You can’t stop death’. Fair enough, but with no context, these statement only serve to underline the lack of discernible plot. The ending, when it suddenly arrives, is just as baffling.
Despite its delayed launch, which was originally scheduled for November 2023, Stranger Things VR feels embarrassingly undercooked, trapped in its own Upside Down limbo between video game and VR experience. Its simple-looking cel-shaded art style works fine, but that cartoonishness means that when demogorgons stalk you and roar in your face, it’s not even remotely frightening, further undermining the point of the game.
The twin worlds of Stranger Things – one channelling the 1980s, the other Silent Hill – should be perfect for recreation in virtual reality. Unfortunately, the disjointed mess that is Stranger Things VR fails to provide a satisfying exploration of either.
Stranger Things VR review summary
In Short: Somewhere between a non-interactive VR experience and a half-baked licensed game, the latest Stranger Things VR experience has neither a coherent storyline nor proper action.
Pros: The audio does justice to the familiar universe of Stranger Things.
Cons: The basic, cel-shaded art style makes scares fall flat. Many of the chapters are barely interactive, with the action that does exist rarely providing any entertainment.
Score: 3/10
Formats: Meta Quest 2, 3, and Pro
Price: £22.99
Developer: Tender Claws
Publisher: Tender Claws
Release Date: 22nd February 2024
Age Rating: 18
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