The saddest thing about Moss is that a single play-through will only last around four hours. The reason why that is sad is because this is s a game that truly makes PlayStation’s PSVR system seem like a magical device that transports you into an engaging world, full of wonder and mystery – all seem from the perspective of a mouse called Quill.
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The story behind this grand little adventure is extremely simple.
Quill has to rescue her uncle from a terrible evil. There is not much more to it than that. But it serves the purpose of being an excuse for the adventure to take place perfectly well, really, and the general lack of narrative depth is not something that harms Moss much.
In fact, you may not even notice it as you get dragged into Quill’s world.
The game dynamic is a mixture of action and platforming. The action part is never really too complicated. There are relatively few attacks, and combat never gets overly challenging… at least, not until you add the fact that you're controlling multiple elements at the same time.
See, Moss also has a strong platform puzzle element linked to it and, particularly later in the game, the player will find themselves solving puzzle platforms while doing combat at the same time. It becomes a really challenging multi-tasking system that takes very careful thinking and an approach that is not unheard of, but is still relatively fresh in games.
This can get even further complicated by the fact that sometimes enemies are needed to solve those puzzles. The controller has been beautifully used in making this process less frustrating, and more like a learning experience. The controls are well balanced and easy to learn, while remaining sensible within this virtual world.
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Sadly, the game does have a hiccup or two on the technical side, but these generally arise more from the PS4’s tracking of the VR headset than anything else. You may find yourself having to recalibrate from time to time, but there is nothing truly ruinous going on in terms of technical problems.
Quill’s world is rich and detailed, and although the player always feels like a guide more than being in total control of the character, there is a lot of depth and exploration for the player to experience within the world.
The collectibles, for example, may be hidden behind objects that require the player to physically change their view angle to find them (leading to some of those glitches).
Moss is a great example of VR on the PS4 slowly coming into its own; the environment’s beauty and explorability, along with the sometimes complex (but always enjoyable) nature of the game dynamic, makes for an enchanting experience.
The character of Quill is similarly engaging and endearing, creating an overall experience that is quite magical. So while the game does have a short running time, and it is subject to a few technical glitches, as well as not having a truly meaningful narrative, the overall experience is really quite fantastic.
There are only a handful of games available for the PSVR system thus far, and even within that limited number, there are very few that could be called "must play" games.
Moss is one of them, thanks to some great creative thinking and excellent implementation of the tools at hand.
It is a wonderfully fresh take on the idea of action platforming, and makes the player feel extremely involved, and significant, in its beautifully realised world.
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