Titan Isles Review: Co-op’s Giant Fun

Titan Isles is an absolute explosion in both co-op and solo play, offering a powerful VR action adventure worth exploring. Here’s our complete review.

You can quickly see the DNA shared between Titan Isles and its predecessor, Windlands 2. Nearly seven years after Psytec Games launched an old hit, This Action Adventure takes us into the devastated world of Toska. Some intense movements mean that it’s not particularly rookie friendly, but I enjoy clearing these ancient robots with friends.

It is a story-driven campaign that underpins your efforts, joining a small group of survivors, revealing why these mystical giant Titans suddenly awakened. After you have a more cinematic adventure with a powerful story, what you can find here is functional yet naked. A helpful opening tutorial provides important details, but you can then jump straight into the action, ignoring most of the ongoing story.

Still, Titan Isles balances what works here by providing enough world-building depth to make my interest in this light-hearted story, further complemented by decent voice acting. Repeating the audio lines while walking past characters in Hub, the edge of the cloud can be a bit annoying. Usually you don’t hang there for too long.

Instead of relying on one particular character type, Titan Isles splits the options between the four well-designed EXO suits selected in Cloud’s Edge before the mission. Each comes with a wide range of unique weapons and secondary traversal methods – everyone is mainly moved by the movement of an artificial stick base – it is worth replacing them regularly.

My personal favorite is Storm. This has considerable advantages from more agile gameplay and ranged attacks. This EXO suit provides wrist thrusters, quick evasive operation, fully fueled fuel for jetpacks, and rifles that are conveniently combined when holding motion controllers such as handling such weapons. Provides long-distance support to your teammates while picking up distant robots. This is surprisingly easy to navigate at high speeds, but it’s extremely satisfying.

Other EXO suits offer a large variety for a variety of play styles. Windlands fans will feel at home with a hunter grappling hook near the bow and arrow. Goliath is not mobile, but it offers sturdy support with cannons and summonable shields. The latter is particularly useful for the second boss. Otherwise, Blink offers you useful triple jumps, Viper bolt weapons picked up from your chest, and dashing dashing things that can defensively jump enemy fire and lasers.

While we cannot mix and match the capabilities between EXO suits, we are pleased that PSYTEC does not limit this to one EXO suit type per person at cooperative parties. Anyone can play as a single EXO suit if you wish. Complete missions will earn skill points to unlock upgrades such as enhanced weapons, creating a good incentive to try higher difficulties to clear more points through these awards. It’s a small problem, but you’ll need the option to refund skills and reassign those points.

Titan Isles offers several procedurally generated mission passes before they begin. This provides a good example of a VR-focused design. There is no laser pointer to select a route. All buttons require a pleasant, physical press, but you can grab the screen that displays your choices with the handle and move it according to your height and angle. I also love the subtle touch of a Storm rifle, which has a small light indicating the ammunition available instead of using the HUD.

Along the way, each mission is divided into numerous subsections, and you must kill all enemies before you can advance. Exploration is not your main goal, but thorough exploration will be rewarded through collectable items, hidden targets you can shoot, and secret chambers. This is great as these levels are very large and they handle four players well and provide ample angles for attacks.

As you cross these floating platforms, avoiding liquid dangers and bottomless pits, your exploration will quickly turn into a lighter platform. This can be difficult as EXO suits increase accelerated momentum. This feels particularly smooth in Quest 3. However, I won’t go far. An invisible barrier suddenly lets you know yourself and hurt you.

There are several enemy types in these missions, but even more variety is welcome. This is especially true in boss battles. All bosses have a twist of “hit the orange panel and then hit the core” but there are enough variations to keep these fights attractive. In one battle, you need to attack the tentacles of a giant Titan robot. On board, you attack two at a time on the ship. The other includes zip lining at speeds in various vantage points.

These fights make them feel powerful to beat them in a stiffer setting. When “normal” became easier, I pulled this up to “heroic” and after exhausting the revival I got my return ticket to Cloud’s Edge. Importantly, in cooperative games, Titan Isles is best to play alone and won’t fall into a “good with friends” crutch. Speaking of which, only the progress of the host’s campaign is saved in the co-op, but retains the acquired skill chips.

Visually, Titan Isles looks great in a vibrant environment. The art style works well, but the level design is a bit familiar to the points in a variety of fields. Performance runs smoothly on large environments, additional players, and often desperate encounters. All this is emphasized by a great soundtrack, ranging from calm to proper energy once the action begins. I’m reviewing the Quest 3 edition, and the Steam version is also well-received.

There’s a lot to do after completing the campaign, but there’s no tons of content beyond the edge of the cloud. Endgame missions can be selected through the “play” options available if you don’t like the options offered. Alternatively, you can choose from one of six racing mini-games using an online leaderboard unique to each suit. Add Podium Players to jump after crossing the finish line.

The race is a completely optional extra, opening at the edge of the cloud after completing the first mission. However, Titan Isles displays ads for other VR games, which significantly hinders the immersion of this area. Older PSYTEC titles such as Windlands and Crystal Rift exist alongside other studio games such as Laser Dance, Unseen Diplomacy 2, and Roboquest VR. You are not about to be sent to the store page because you can’t interact with them. But it’s very out of place in this world.

As for actual races, these are divided into three different categories. Standard races are my favorite as they try to find new shortcuts at a record-breaking pace across these environments. It can also be played alone or in a cooperative association. Others involve collecting orbs across the environment and photographing the environment before heading towards the finish line. I appreciate the added kinds but I don’t feel compelled to try them again.

Titan Isles – Final Verdict

Titan Isles offers equally fun and engaging action-adventures for co-ops and single-player. Boss and stage designs may use more variety and racing area ads can undermine immersion, but that is the most enjoyable thing I personally have had in the VR cooperative experience since the eternal dungeon. With its powerful combat, versatile EXO suit system and fantastic presentation, getting my recommendation for PSYTEC games is a strong return.

UploadVR uses a 5-star rating system for game reviews. Check the guidelines.