Review: Tethered (PSVR)

In a magical sky borne world, take on the role of a powerful ‘Spirit Guardian’ charged with restoring life and balance.

Pros:

• Adorable graphics. From the cuteness of the Peeps in game, The game also has some stunning islands and backdrops for you to admire.
• 3.16GB download size.
• God game game play. By this I mean you are in charge of directing your Peeps, Controlling the weather and also fighting off the enemy.
• Opening tutorial level. To be fair you can easily get help at any point from the pause menu.
• Peeps are the name of the race of peeple in the game and come down in eggs. Get a Peep to sit on the egg and hatch it to make another Peep. Ignore it and it will turn brown and an evil slug will come out and attack your town.
• Hub: Every town has a hub where the Totem lives and the stock piles of collected resources.
• Totem is where you send Peeps to upgrade them and also to check your stats on the current game. Stats like how much food you have, How many peeps and what buildings are built etc.
• Peeps can be changed into many different professions from miners to lumber jacks to warriors.
• You mine trees, Mine rocks and gather food to then build and upgrade your town.
• Easy to learn controls. You use the DualShock 4 for the game and the VR headset is your cursor, So look at what you want with the headset and press the button on the control. Uses a drag and drop type system that works really well.
• At any point you can highlight a Peep to see his path of movement and what he is doing.
• Turns very much into a man management type game.
• Day/Night cycle. At night the enemy slugs turn up and try to take all your supplies and attack your Peeps and buildings.
• Clouds are up in the sky and looking and selecting these will change the camera angle. You can freely move between them and they are very useful.
• Control the weather by looking and selecting the different weather cloud types. You can use Tornadoes to move Peeps faster, Rain to grow crops or Snow to again crow resources or even freeze lakes to make shortcuts. Combining weather clouds together can make Rainbows and more. Also you can combine weather clouds with certain buildings to make ven more options available.
• Combat is played out automatically, All you do is select the Peep to fight and the enemy you want him to fight.
• Full Platinum Trophy.
• Many buildings to choose from like a town hall to a pub to fields and barracks to protect your village. All buildings and resource points can be upgraded and improved.
• Full online leader board for each level.
• 13 Levels to play through and you can replay any unlocked levels at any time.
• Info screen will show stock levels of resources but more importantly it shows how far in the day/night cycle you are.
• Some wonderful level design on show.
• Spirit energy is earned from tasks and killing enemies. Spirit energy is blue spheres that you need to collect before they float away. Most levels require you collect a certain amount of spirit energy in order to finish it.
• Books are scattered around and sending a Peep to read it will unlockj a new blueprint.
• Crystals are hidden around the level and these are like little loot boxes with a huge resource gain acquired from them.
• Some really good animations.
• The views in game mean you always feel in control but at the same time you forget you are wearing a VR headset.
• Music is chilled with some great little sound effects.

Cons:

• Constant difficulty spikes.
• You can easily forget about spirit energy due to the way you retrieve them, Its slow and a bit of a pain.
• No endless mode from what I could see, The game would be excellent with a part where you just keep building.
• Slow starter especially as every level you start again and have to go through the same method every time.