Moss Is My Most Pleasantly Surprising Game of E3

Ex-Bungie developers are on the right path with Quill’s first PSVR adventure.

By Ryan McCaffrey

I love the idea of VR gaming, but in practice, the last 15 or so months of it have yielded mostly underwhelming results. Maybe that’s why my hands-on session with PSVR’s Moss was so refreshing – because it actually feels like a well-thought-out, complete game that takes advantage of VR without using it as a gimmicky crutch.

Moss places you in the world of Quill, an adorable mouse who’s got some platforming and combat to do. It’s played from the third-person, which is used intelligently in VR; you are in the world in that you can look around and peek down into any of Quill’s set pieces – heck, you can even brush your head or hand up against the foliage in Moss’s jungly world. But you’re never moving, so you won’t have to worry about motion sickness. And not unlike fellow third-person VR platformer Lucky’s Tale on Oculus Rift, the camera perspective lends a wonderful sense of scale and place to your VR experience.

Above: Watch the full 9-minute gameplay demo of Moss that I got to play at E3.

Control-wise, Moss uses the DualShock 4 gamepad rather than the Move wands, which allows for much deeper and more precise control. This comes in handy during combat, where Moss can pick up a sword and slash her way through a series of scarabs blocking her path. But while Moss doesn’t use the Move wands, it does incorporate the DualShock 4 light bar, allowing PSVR to see where your controller is in the world. This comes into play in the environmental puzzles, such as when you have to lift up, rotate, and manipulate a maze-like rotunda structure in order to create a path of Quill to move through it.

Above: The E3 2017 reveal trailer for Moss, from Sony's press conference.

I’m also a fan of Moss’s art style. It’s not over-the-top cartoony, but it’s not gritty and realistic either. Instead, it’s somewhere happily in-between, and Quill is simply adorable. All told, the team at Polyarc – led by some ex-Bungie developers – very much seem to be on the right track with Moss. It went from a game I didn’t know existed to the VR game I’m most looking forward to playing more of.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews and Xbox Guru-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

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