'Landfall' Touches Down On Oculus Rift

Landfall made quite the impression at Oculus Connect 3 in October 2016. Now the VR real-time strategy game has debuted on the Oculus Store to give anyone who didn't attend the conference--or missed out on one of the game's open betas--a chance to experience it for themselves.

Landfall is developer Force Field's attempt to use VR to enrich a genre instead of reimagining it. The game isn't a first-person glimpse into the eyes of a soldier or something--it's a bona fide RTS that would be just as much at home on PC or console as it is the Oculus Rift. Players are expected to survey the battlefield, issue commands, and stomp their enemies into the dirt while using the flexible camera afforded by VR to stay on top of everything.

Force Field even all-but-eschewed the motion-sensitive Touch controllers in favor of an Xbox gamepad. (Don't fret: Landfall does technically support Touch, but it merely treats each controller like half an Xbox controller.) This might seem like a waste of VR's potential--why play a third-person RTS with a game controller with an HMD strapped to your face?--but Landfall was actually one of our favorite game demos we played at Oculus Connect 3.

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Force Field chief creative officer Martin de Ronde told Oculus that all of these decisions served a purpose. "We think VR holds great promise, not only for experiencing new things, but also to experience existing things differently," he said. "With Landfall, we took the classic top-down, third-person action genre people are familiar with and brought it to the world of VR. By focusing on the familiar, we were able to offer a complete gaming experience, since that’s what we think VR as a platform needs more of."

Landfall can be purchased via the Oculus Store for $30. Don't expect it to reach other platforms any time soon, as Oculus Studios published the title itself.