Your arms and hands are replaced with baseball bats in What the Bat, and you swing through short but sweet levels while trying to live a normal life. It’s madness, but it works wonderfully. One of the funniest and most appealing launch games on PS2, this curio makes excellent use of the hardware.
Playing is so intuitive; all you have to do is move your arms, sometimes swinging at whatever is nearby. This game requires no button presses, and virtually flawless tracking on the PSVR2 Sense Controllers. We did run into a few collisions, but resetting the game by holding down Options fixed them quickly.
Levels are micro-challenges or puzzles, and you’ll start off smacking baseballs at trophies, but then progress through a pseudo-life story. When you’re a child, you’ll place shapes in matching slots and fire bananas at toast, then when you’re an adult, you’ll brush your teeth and do the laundry. With an elephant companion always nearby, it’s surreal at times but consistently amusing. It’s great to interact with the world with haptic feedback.
Its short runtime keeps the game fresh with new ideas or gameplay mechanics. You’ll hit things into the distance, but also bowl, play fetch with your dog, light a campfire, work at a supermarket, visit a museum, and more. With these bite-sized levels, you’re always intrigued to see where you’ll end up.
Due to all the arm-swinging, you’ll need a roomscale environment to play. As you won’t have to move, the floorspace requirement feels a touch restrictive, but What the Bat is a very silly but entertaining PSVR2 title if you can fit it in. There’s more content coming soon, so there will be more madness.
Pros:
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A unique premise.
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Levels that are bite-sized.
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Easy to pick up and play.
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Great haptic feedback..
Cons:
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Collisions sometimes occur.
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Size of room.
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The short version (more to come).
My score will be seven over ten.