The Merc with a Mouth won’t stop talking

Video game critics love to say that a super hero game makes you feel like Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, or one of the dozens of other spandex-clad something-men. It makes sense, the greatest compliment you can give to a game where you take control of a hero is that it immerses you in that very power fantasy, and there’s no better medium for immersing players than virtual reality. In Deadpool VR you’re in the bright red tights of Wade Wilson, Deadpool, the Merc with a Mouth, only it never makes you feel like him.

Deadpool VR has Wade abducted by the intergalactic gangster known as Mojo as he tasks you with rounding up Marvel supervillains so he can force them to compete in his livestreamed death games. The “audience” can reward Deadpool with views and engagement, which translate into abilities and weapons that Wade can use to cut down more enemies with more style. It’s essentially a Devil May Cry-esque Style Meter, only contextualized for Deadpool’s constant attention seeking.

When in VR, Wade has your full attention, and he won’t let you forget it. He’s called the Merc with a Mouth because he doesn’t shut up, and that’s true here. While most VR games keep cutscenes and dialogue short to get back to the action, Deadpool VR has you standing or sitting around just listening to characters complain at Wade as he unloads a full clip of one-liners, leaving you with nothing to do but awkwardly adjust the Quest 3 strapped to your face. In fairness, Neil Patrick Harris plays a great Deadpool, and other highlights include John Leguizamo as Mojo and Julia Jones’ Spiral. Being stuck in dialogue is boring – and the VR medium might be to blame for that – but it can’t be said that the voice cast don’t do a great job with what they’re given.

When not having your ears chewed off – which is rare – you can double jump and dive kick around stages while using an impressive arsenal of weapons. Wade uses pistols, katanas, and a grapple gun by default, but you can swap your swords out for interesting alternatives – like blades that boomerang back when thrown – or handheld shotguns. Most pistol alternatives just fire more slowly in exchange for more power, but weapons you pick up in stages and from dropped foes are often far more powerful, with limited ammo. 

Removed from the novelty of VR and Wade’s quips, the gameplay feels like a stripped-down version of the modern DOOM series or Shadow Warrior — the latter being a particularly poignant comparison, given Shadow Warrior’s protagonist Lo Wang, and his own brand of cheeky dialogue.

Gameplay in the main missions is sometimes broken up by an on-rails shooting experience – which are always pretty great, honestly – and then between missions is a faux-multiplayer arena mode where you defeat NPCs in a variety of team-based challenges. It’s a very weird inclusion — it fits the theme of Mojo’s intergalactic game show, but it feels like fighting against bots in a multiplayer game, and makes you wonder if the game was, originally, a multiplayer arena game that transformed into this.

It’s a fast-paced, intense VR experience that can’t be recommended to anyone that isn’t resistant to motion sickness and nausea in VR. This is a Meta Quest 3 exclusive, but the frame rate doesn’t hold steady, and the image can often look aliased. These issues can break immersion, or worse, make you feel physically unwell, making it a difficult game to broadly recommend.

If you don’t have any such issues though, Deadpool VR is an enticing experience for big fans of the Merc with a Mouth, and rewards the most dedicated players. After finishing missions you’ll be able to replay them as Lady Deadpool, Kid Deadpool, or even Golden Age Deadpool, and each mission has secret doors that can only be opened by Wade’s multiversal versions. In addition to hidden comic covers to collect, there’s a surprisingly good amount of content to play and replay for hours on end.

Ultimately, Marvel’s Deadpool VR could use a few patches – or perhaps even a release on an entirely different platform – before it plays its best, but even if everything were perfect, it’s just fine. It’s a good game, but it doesn’t feel like the best a VR superhero game can be, and it didn’t make me feel like Deadpool. It’s middle-of-the-road, inoffensive, and contains silly fourth-wall breaking references to everything from Cheers to One Piece. If that sounds like a good time to you, then there’s nothing else quite like Deadpool VR.