Altair Breaker is a multiplayer sword-fighting game from Swords of Gargantua developer, Thirdverse. It’s set on the floating island of Vastus Isle, once a magical workshop but now turned to ruins by LAWS (Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems). As a sword-fighter, you’re tasked with helping Stella, a humanoid AI, in clearing the various environments of deadly robots.
The entirety of Altair Breaker revolves around playing the same single level repeatedly. This level has you play through four samey, barren areas, clearing a couple of waves of enemies in each before moving onto the next. These waves consist of just three enemy types; a sword-fighting robot, a shooting robot, and a slightly bigger unit that combines the abilities of the other two.
The entire level takes about 10-15 minutes to clear and is the only content available, other than a very empty hub area for managing your loadout and meeting with other players. You must grind up to level 20 — roughly 20 unrewarding runs through the one level — at which point you’ll unlock a special sword, which is considered the end of the game.
Although in the hub area there is a pedestal for a second level, The Depths, after four hours of playing to reach level 20 it was still locked. The game gives you no indication of how to unlock it, and after speaking to multiple other players and researching the issue, we were unable to find any way to access the stage. It’s possible this is simply a bug, but if so, it’s a pretty bad one.
Speaking of which, the entire multiplayer experience is littered with bugs and glitches. Enemies leap backwards off platforms, only to respawn and do the same again, stuck in a continuous loop making it difficult to attack them. The hit detection on enemies is also completely off, making all the enemies frustrating to take down — even though they’re relatively harmless as they miss most of their attacks.
The few redeeming features in the vibrant visuals, accurate hand tracking, and the somewhat enjoyable traversal when using the glider are just not enough to resurrect this unfinished title. Altair Breaker can barely even be classified as a fully-fledged game; it proves the VR software stereotype correct by just being a glorified tech demo.
