Test: Concrete Genie for PSVR

In the case of "Concrete Genie", the announcement of which we already reported, it is a PS4-exclusive action adventure from the American Sony games company Pixelopus. The protagonist of the game is young Ash. The once beautiful coastal town of Denska was afflicted by a mysterious darkness some time ago and has since degenerated into a barren harbour area.

Ash prefers to pass his time in the dreary harbour town by drawing in his colouring book. Until one day he is confronted by a group of teenage vandals who also snatch his notebook from his hands. Pushed into a cable car gondola that leads to a lighthouse, he finds a magic brush with which he can bring his drawings to life. Besides free drawings on walls, you will also create magical creatures called "genies" (English for ghosts or genies in a bottle). These help you with various obstacles, such as locked doors or distracting the juvenile vandals who want to steal your paintbrush.

In the test: The VR content of "Concrete Genie

However, the main part of the game is not held in virtual reality. There you play with the classic controller, which uses its position sensors to perform the various painting tricks, which incidentally feels very smooth. As announced, the picturesque epic contains - in addition to the main campaign - two VR contents, which are very sprinkling at first, but do not necessarily invite you to stay longer. We took a closer look at the VR extras.

For the two VR games of "Concrete Genie", you put the Dualshock PS4 controller aside and use the two Move controllers. You don't necessarily have to be standing. A seated position with a good angle to the tracking camera is also sufficient. You are no longer in the third dimension, but become a "painting god" yourself. You create the stars and lights in the firmament directly from the painting palette in your sketchbook.

In the first mini-game, which you have already seen in 30 minutes, you look after a small onion-like "Tamagotchi ghost" that bounces back and forth in front of you and longs for surrounding objects. As soon as your little bouncing companion sprays love hearts again, you know that you are expanding the landscape to his liking. In this way, you also get hold of further virtual elements such as trees, apples, branches and stars or lightning bolts, which you can place in place until, after a few expressions of desire from your onion spirit for more apples or flowers, further brush objects are added.

Something for the soul

However, a special visual perceptive gift or profound knowledge of socio-cultural realities from art history are not required. The varied sky objects and the spherical sounds are definitely funny and relaxing, but somehow the painting experience from the first-person perspective lacks a bit of the final kick. The mesolimbic brain area waits in vain for reward effects such as achievements or challenging painting experiences in which you paint something yourself.

Free painting

The second VR bonus content is a little more creative. Only when you have completed the VR game will the second VR experience "Free Painting" be unlocked. Four locations are available, where you can spray streets, pipes and walls with the magic brush in the best "Tilt Brush" manner. We find it funny that you can also place various ghosts to bring them to life at the touch of a button. However, the initial painting palette is still pretty limited if you haven't played through the main campaign yet. The cool thing about the second VR game is that you'll happily return later after unlocking more brushes from the main game.

Our conclusion

The first bonus VR game of "Concrete Genius" is not very challenging and serves more as an atmospheric sprinkling, while the second VR game, which lets the creative streak unfold a little more, at least halfway encourages you to return later when you have finished the main campaign. In fact, though, the second Experience is also an entertaining little mini-game. What annoyed me a bit about the first VR game was that at one point a pillar pushed itself in front of my nose for a longer period of time, constantly blocking my view. But it doesn't look like there are many bugs or bad tracking. In any case, the VR bonus levels are by no means decisive for buying the PS4 game for PSVR. If you're mainly in the mood for virtual graffiti, you might be right with "Tilt Brush" or "CoolPaintVR" (PSVR) are more likely to be at the right address.

We cannot give a rating as a VR game for "Concrete Genie" at this point, as we believe the VR part is more of a small add-on to the main game. The first play tests for the PS4 title, however, fall according to Metacritic already looks pretty good.