When you think of 4A Games only one franchise really comes to mind, and that’s Metro 2033. The team took the novel of the same name by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky and built an exciting game world out of it. While Metro forms the DNA of the studio, that’s not everything they have to offer. In fact, 4A Games was an early VR adopter, one of the most high profile to say they were making a VR game. So here’s a little history of Metro developer 4A Games.
A History of VR Works
Currently in development is Metro Awakening VR, an episode in the franchise that’s going to be unique to VR. This is mostly being developed by VR veteran Vertigo Games, with help from publisher Deep Silver and 4A Games. Unlike Vertigo, 4A Games’ VR involvement is far shorter, but still very high quality.
Way back in 2016, the studio made a surprising announcement. One of its teams was working on a VR game called ARKTIKA.1. While many thought – and kind of hoped – that this would be Metro in VR, as it turned out, it wasn’t. Well, kind of.
ARKTIKA.1 had the kind of shooting mechanics and nasty monsters Metro fans loved, but with a far more futuristic twist.
Trying something different
ARKTIKA.1 was a far more action-packed FPS than Metro’s atmospheric horror. “Nearly a century in the future, the world has fallen into a new ice age in the aftermath of a silent apocalypse. Only the equatorial regions remain habitable, yet pockets of humanity survive in small numbers all over the planet, hanging onto existence in the resource-rich territories to the north and south–resources that everyone wants to control…” Sound familiar, so okay, there were some similarities between the two franchises.
One of the biggest reasons you may not have heard of ARKTIKA.1 is because it was an Oculus Rift exclusive. Released in 2017, it was funded by Oculus (now Meta), to showcase the new Oculus Touch controllers. Understandable that Rift would need exclusives to draw consumers to the platform, as we now know, that meant a death sentence for ARKTIKA.1. To be forgotten within the bowels of the Rift’s store section.
But what set ARKTIKA.1 out of its peers was its graphical fidelity. A gorgeous game to look at, it was one of the earliest VR games that had the feel of a AAA project. The biggest criticism most had related to the locomotion, point-based teleportation. You couldn’t freely explore the environment, only moving between specific spots. This dampened the gameplay somewhat, but this was a 2017 game after all.
And that was Metro developer 4A Games’ only VR title to date, a bit of a forgotten VR gem. Now we’ve got Metro Awakening to look forward to.
Did you ever play ARKTIKA.1? What were your thoughts on 4A Games’ first foray into VR? Let us know in the comments.