Thrasher

When I heard that Thrasher was the follow-up from the developers the VR cult classic Thumper, I expected another oppressive, vaguely threatening rhythm game. Thumper had a unique vibe all its own, one that made the player feel that when they lost, not only would they lose their life, but perhaps their very soul would be forfeit to some malevolent digital elder god. There was no story to speak of; Thumper was all vibes, needing no narrative to scare the hell out of VR players with music and lights.

Thrasher dispenses with the rhythm gameplay – though music is still very much a part of the experience – in favor of something new and unique. But the “this game kind of hates me” vibes are all intact; each level is a heady mix of a lost 1970's Journey or Boston album cover, the digital polygonal relentlessness of Tempest, and the sort of 80’s technicolor AI murder images that would go through your head after watching The Lawnmower Man on acid while listening to death metal.

You float in the middle of a Heavy Metal lightshow. Giant floating brain-heads hover in the distance, judging your performance and threaten to unleash…something bad if you fail. Neon geometric shapes pulse rhythmically below you, looking like the landscape of a planet that long ago gave up on any sort of natural world in favor of carpeting the ground with a digital nightmare. So yes, visually, this game is a lot.

But Thrasher's gameplay…this is something else entirely. It’s arcade-y,  but too thoughtful and deliberate to simply dismiss as twitch gameplay. There’s an element of puzzle solving here, but it also demands that you solve puzzles fast. Think, but think fast, now think faster, and react, react, react.

So get this: you are controlling some sort of scaley future space fish. Your space fish is dangling at the end of a line, which is controlled by your dominant hand (you can use a controller, or your hand, both work fine). So, you move your hand and point your line where you want your fish to go, and your fish obligingly swim-flies over there.

The game puts some breakable geometric objects in your path. Swim-fly through them with your fish, and they shatter. Shatter all the objects, and you get to move onto the next level. The faster you break all the objects, the better your score, and the higher your ranking on the leaderboard. 

But then a few levels in, the objects start moving. And your fish has momentum, and reaction time. He doesn’t instantly appear where you are pointing – you have to guide him where you want him. Sure, he’s fast, but there is still an instant of time between when you point to where you want him to go, and when he actually gets there.

And then the game starts putting objects into the mix that you can’t break – red objects that you have to avoid, because they subtract seconds from the countdown that is constantly clicking away in the background. So now you’ve got to guide your space fish to break some stuff, but avoid other stuff. And your fish keeps getting bigger. And you realize that not only can he hit bad stuff, but bad stuff can hit him too. 

Then the game adds power-ups. And new space-fish abilities. And more, more, more objects, which swirl faster and faster, in more devious configurations. And the music is pulsing, and the brain-heads are leering, and the digital-nightmare-world is convulsing, and the screen keeps lighting up because your space-fish keeps getting hit by red objects because he won’t stop growing, and it seems like it is all going to come crashing down on you. And before long you are looking at what Thrasher is presenting you, and you are yelling “That’s f-ing impossible!” because it is all too much and it is all too fast, and then you go ahead and do it anyway.

Thrasher is intense, and it constantly builds in the best possible ways. I didn’t invoke the name of Tempest up above for nothing; though the gameplay is entirely different, that’s immediately where my head goes when I play a game of this intensity level. Tempest, Robotron, anything past level 20 of Galaga. You know the feeling – the seat of your pants “I don’t think I can do this, can any human really do this” palm-sweating arcade feeling. You get it.

Interestingly, Thrasher feels like a game that could only exist in the VR space. Thumper was translated reasonably well into a “flat” game, but Thrasher is so gesture-based and overwhelming that I wonder if it will have the same impact when it is less immersive. A question for another day, I suppose.

VR fans shouldn’t hesitate to hop into Thrasher. It isn’t terribly expensive, the gameplay is utterly unique, and the experience is primo VR goodness (if you like being oppressed by your electro-God masters). Grab a line, grab a space-fish, and get on board.