Holopoint is pure archery madness

We begin in a fairly large Japanese style dojo, with paper walls and large wooden beams that support a second floor above me. I stand in the center, bow in hand and arrow in the other ready to take on whatever comes my way. The purpose of Holopoint is to shoot these large blue squares with your bow and avoid the strange jewel shaped projectile that launches from it upon its death.

It takes me a little bit to get a feel for the aim of my bow, you also have to reach over your head to pull another arrow every time you shoot which means you gotta be quick. I nail the first box with my shot and watch it shatter like glass in a very satisfying manor. I now hunt around the room looking for my next target, The cubes will show up anywhere in your 360 radius as well as directly above you so you need to constantly spin and check your surroundings.

After finally getting the hang of it and getting past the first few easy targets thing take a more interesting turn. The boxes now shoot back at me after they are destroyed, as soon as my arrow makes contact the shoot back a large dragon ball Z looking blue fireball which you need to dodge very quickly or it hits you. I believe you get 3 hits before its game over and you start from the beginning.

 

Now on wave 6 I am spinning around and shooting so fast that it almost becomes like a natural dance to shoot avoid, aim shoot avoid. Once you get into the groove of things its amazing how ninja you feel. Your body just seems to turn on its threat detection and automatically avoids the projectiles and you find yourself moving so fast that you stop and go… wow did i just do that.

I also found out that if your fast enough you can shoot a box, draw another arrow and shoot the incoming projectile before it hits you which adds quite the high speed workout to your body. Once you reach the higher wave levels the game starts spawning these samurai blue ghost holograms at you. They walk at a fairly steady speed and you have to shoot them before they reach you, they come from all angles so you better get a bead on them quick or your toast.

The game also features a cool leader board imprinted on the wall that shows your name and score and where you are in the overall global ranking which is very encouraging and makes you want to beat that next score.

 

Graphics/Audio

Everything looked amazing and the developer did a great job at selling the dojo type environment, The room was scaled well and looked fantastic with highly detailed textures. The blue boxes and projectiles added a fascinating spark to the otherwise simple look of the dojo the enemy’s complement the environment graphically which made the experience quite intriguing to the eye.

The audio was very well done, from the satisfying shatter of the boxes you shoot to the slow motion sound effects as you dodged incoming projectiles inches from your face. The bow the arrows everything sounded great and nothing was out of place in the experience.

 

Considering how much spinning around and fast jerking dodging/shooting movements I made I never found myself getting sick or experienced any juddery moments. I found myself get quite hot and quite sweaty after about 30 mins of dodging and crouching but other than the workout effect it was a perfect experience.

Only other issue I ran into was that my cord was a completely curl after playing this game, from turning around in a circle dozens of times. Now a user could counter this by changing the direction they spun after each turn or perhaps we will have to wait for wireless headsets.

 

I would honestly love it if the samurai warriors that attacked were fully textured like people instead of the holographic look as it would make the experience more intimidating.

More enemy types or ability to select game modes and type of enemy would be great, id love to just start out fighting waves of the samurai guys instead of having to work up the long wave ladder to get to them.

Maybe power ups for your bow? exploding arrows? Think Turok