PixelJunk VR: Dead Hungry

PixelJunk VR Dead Hungry offers a fun combination of zombie curing and food management to create an enjoyable VR experience. Unfortunately, the lack of gameplay variety means that the repetitious nature of the game sets in a little too quickly resulting in anything past the few hours feeling like too much of a slog.

PixelJunk VR Dead Hungry is a great game for showing off the brilliance of VR. It has all the things you'd want: use of move controllers, fully interactive environment, realistic looking reality and rock-solid mechanics. However, the gameplay itself doesn't vary much as you progress, adding only a few more options and bumping up the difficulty, meaning you just have to get faster at doing the same things.

There's a really fun time management cooking game here, but without environment changes, kitchen upgrades, or additional toppings, Dead Hungry's creative and frenetic gameplay quickly grows as stale as the flesh of those it seeks to feed. It seems like it would have been easy to add some kind of economy and progression system to the game, in addition to communicating what the actual requirements are, but instead we're left with the value meal. The VR integration is fantastic, and the idea is sound, but the execution of this hectic time management experience hits the bare minimum requirements, rather than creating a compelling progression that begs for repeat play.

With 30 levels of increasing pressure and difficulty as you progress, you are not going to get that change of scenery and that’s ok because you are serving food to the dead. I did find Dead Hungry quite immersive being in that confined place of the kitchen inside a food truck. To look around and see a zombie at the window or looking at the background and seeing another zombie prepare under a tent just adds something special.