With the world as it is at the time of writing, many readers will be staying inside as much as they can. You may miss going to the tennis court, playing some baseball or even going bowling. Well with virtual reality, you can experience something along those lines from the comfort of your own home with Sports Scramble – a sports game for the Oculus Quest. I’m quite sure that the outside versions don’t include quite so many exploding balls and fish though…
Scrambled Sports
Sports Scramble has a rather interesting concept. There are quite a lot of changes in each game from the original sport. The ‘balls’, equipment, and courts never stay the same for too long – you might be using a tennis racket to hit a golf ball in a baseball match or bowling down some space invaders. Each of the balls acts differently too, having different physics to them. Some aren’t even balls – they throw in things like frisbees and fish.
This scrambling can keep things constantly exciting and it makes matches unpredictable. You never know how things will change. I really like the concept and I feel like it worked well in most ways.
There are three scrambled sports included, each of which works differently. It is worth noting that each of these also has more ‘traditional’ settings, where you can play without the craziness. I’ll be speaking primarily about the scrambled mode though. These all have standard matches versus AI, online multiplayer, and seven challenges each to complete such as getting a certain score or beating an AI.
Bowling
Bowling was my favorite, so I’ll start with that. Unlike traditional bowling, you don’t take turns or throw for a certain amount of frames. It’s all about how many points you can score within a time limit. This means throw fast and throw often.
The balls were very varied. Aside from standard bowling balls, some examples were baseballs, rolling pins, and cheese wheels. You could also get special balls as a reward for strikes and spares, with my favorite being the turkey egg for three strikes in a row – it launches three exploding turkeys down the lane. Most of the other types of ‘balls’ just appear for you though without any requirement.
Lanes switched often too. There were standard lanes, lanes with giant pins all across them, incredibly thin lanes with a drop off the edge, lanes with loops, and more. Many lanes came with extra ways to score or lose bonus points too like bumpers or extra targets to hit.
Scrambled bowling felt the most different of the games from the sport it was based on. It felt the most exciting as there was a constant rush to score points and non-stop change.
Baseball
Baseball in Sports Scramble has you take turns batting and pitching. This was a nice surprise as quite a few virtual reality games only seem to include the batting aspect.
Pitching is quite simple. You use the analog stick to aim your reticule and throw. Icons appear near the pitcher and throwing the ball through one of the squares triggers changes to the ball and sometimes to bats that the ball hits. There is a bit of strategy here, as changing the batter’s baseball bat into a fish doesn’t exactly help him hit the next ball.
After striking the batter out, you switch over to take your turn. You have to try and hit the ball so your team can run. A successful hit can upgrade your bat to a metal and golden bat too, each which can hit the ball further. A standard bat likely won’t get you that home run.
Some of the more odd bats felt almost unfair at times. Using a floppy pool noodle as a bat was difficult but fair. Using a table tennis bat or a foam glove made it feel impossible to hit balls outside of arms-length since they were so short. A ball would come within range for at least one throw though.
Tennis
Tennis is fairly standard in Sports Scramble as far as the rules go. The scramble aspect isn’t as prominent either.
You can hit the balls into icons over the court. Depending on the icon hit the ball, bat and court will change. Court changes seem quite minor, unlike the bowling. Rather than unusual courts including things like loops, it’s more along the lines of a raised net. Court changes are also quite rare, only appearing once or twice a match and being easy to miss.
Balls and bats change and act differently, but there didn’t seem to be much to it like in baseball where you are trying to change the opponent’s bat to disadvantage them. Occasional chances to match the current ball and your bat did come up though, which granted a power advantage. There was also a ‘slicing’ technique to add some spin.
I didn’t really enjoy this one as much. There wasn’t anything wrong with it per se but it didn’t stand out as special and it was slow-paced.
Issues
As fun as Sports Scramble can be at times, I did find a few issues that lower my opinion of it. The first of these I imagine is related to the somewhat high price of the game.
Multiplayer is essentially only by arrangement. This isn’t unusual with virtual reality games sadly, but I could never find anyone online at the same time by chance. Having friends who own the game or joining communities to arrange online play would likely be the only way to play this online.
The startup is extremely tutorial heavy too which doesn’t suit the pickup and play nature of virtual reality on the Quest or many similar sports games. It is quite difficult to just jump in and understand. You are expected to go through more than five tutorials for each sport. This is understandable considering that it is more complex than many similar games, but it would have been nice to see this explained in a more interesting manner than just being told to go through tutorials where it explains an action and then has you repeat it several times.
I did come across occasional technical issues too. The game froze a few times during tutorials and I had to reload. I was playing this on the Oculus Quest 2 rather than the Oculus Rift, so I can’t attribute this to a PC issue.
Verdict
I did enjoy playing Sports Scramble. All of the games were more interesting than the standard sports in virtual reality. The bowling was particularly fun and I’m sure I’ll pick that up again. Having to slog through the tutorials was worth it.
The lack of people on multiplayer and the technical issues do put a damper on things, as does the price. That’s why while I still suggest you play Sports Scramble, I give it the following rating.
WAIT FOR SALE ON SPORTS SCRAMBLE
Looking for more Virtual Reality games? How about checking out Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky Newsflash?
Many thanks go to Oculus for an Oculus Quest review code for this title.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
