An Endless Runner that Doesn’t Feel Endless

Stride Review

Stride Review

Stride is a simple but fun parkour based VR Game. You can run on walls, crouch slide, and climb. The shooting is responsive, and the enemies challenge you at every turn. There are even a few sections with zip lines and grappling to break up the monotony of it all. If this sounds up your alley, then Stride might be for you.

There are a couple of modes you can play, the main mode being ‘endless runner’, which pits you against an onslaught of prefabricated concrete jungles to maneuver through against the threat of the clock. This is great fun, but my one complaint is that I wish that there was more variety in how these portions are generated. While familiarity with the area may be a large part of doing parkour in real life, with this game setting, it leaves me a bit bored with running through and around the same obstacles over and over again. If they were able to implement some more random tiles, or even open spaces — like the tutorial levels — this would dramatically increase the replayability and enjoyment of this endless mode.

If endlessly running forward doesn’t appeal to you, there is an ‘arena mode’ where you have a set limited area to run around and complete missions in. These missions have several different types, like killing a certain number of enemies, racing from point to point, or grabbing and delivering intel. Similarly to the endless mode, I don’t see why it couldn’t have an option for more random generations to get a different type of environment to mess around in each time you start the game. Jumping into the same arena every time wears you down bit by bit.

The time trials are fun, and test the limits of your skill and knowledge of gameplay mechanics. These will have you playing sections of the endless mode, so in theory, they can be used to practice in bite sized chunks, which is a cool concept, and is super helpful. But again, if I had to choose these or random generation, I would choose random generation.

I haven’t had time to play the multiplayer mode, and frankly I don’t care about it. I don’t have any friends in VR, and many that do turn on their mic are privileged children. But, if you’re looking to play more Stride, and possibly with your friends… It’s there for you to play. I’m sure it feels just as good and dialed in to play.

I have not been able to dive into the paid DLC yet, though I plan to. Be looking for that review in its own separate article when I do.

Overall, I recommend Stride, but the repetition needs improvements to keep me happily coming back for more. After 10–15 hours playing, seeing the same plain concrete generations with the same level over and over again, it gets more and more difficult to want to boot up the game. The game is great fun to play and parkour through, but they can only cover up the bland environments for so long with that satisfaction. This isn’t to say that I did not have fun for the first 10 hours or so; it’s definitely a blast. But I can’t say that I’m not slightly disappointed that as an endless runner game, Stride doesn’t have the kind of endless replayability I was looking for when I purchased it.

Originally published at https://backloggd.com.