"Trover Saves the Universe" Review - Schwifty Simulator

Available for: Playstation 4, Playstation VR, Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Playstation VR

This game is by one of the creators of Rick & Morty.
That probably tells you everything you need to know, or at the very least it should tell you whether or not you'll like Trover Saves the Universe. If you find Rick & Morty insufferable, then for the love of everything good in this world, don't buy this game! If you enjoy Rick & Morty, then this game will be right up your alley! As for me, I fall into the camp of understanding that it's a well put-together show, but being absolutely unable to tolerate its fans. The kind of people who really latch on to Rick & Morty are the same people who wouldn't stop screaming "SCIENCEEEEE" after Portal came out, despite the fact that literally all of them flunked out of every science class they ever took. When I think of the fanbase, I think of that video of the guy standing on the McDonald's counter, screaming at the top of his lungs about that stupid Mulan sauce and about being Pickle Rick like some kind of giant pseudo-intellectual tool. But I digress. Welcome back to the broken leg review saga! I've progressed in physical therapy enough to be walking with a cane now, but I'm not back to normal yet, so the saga continues. Trover Saves the Universe was first revealed at Sony's E3 press conference last year, and I was far from impressed with what I saw. A VR game from one of the minds behind Rick & Morty would've normally caught my interest, but what was shown off was basically what I would've come up with if you'd asked me to imagine such a game. In other words, it seemed far too predictable. But, recently the game actually released to a swathe of good reviews, so I was curious. Sure, it was likely that the reviews all came from Rick & Morty fanboys, but the game only cost about $30 and I'm still constantly striving to justify my purchase of the PSVR headset, so I figured, "what the hell?" Well folks, Trover Saves the Universe is significantly better than I was expecting, so let me tell you all about it.

In Trover Saves the Universe, you play as an unnamed Chairorpian, a member of a race that sits in chairs and uses controllers for everything. Off to a pretty meta start. One day, a giant bird monster named Glorkon steals your two dogs and stuff them into his empty eye holes, allowing him untold power. Off to a pretty Rick & Morty start. From there, a purple eye hole monster named Trover shows up at your door with the intent to bring you to his boss so that you can save the Universe from Glorkon's evil plan and get your dogs back. As far as stories go, it isn't exactly Shakespeare, and in true Rick & Morty fashion, I believe most of the plot was just ad-libbed and the game was built around the ad-libbing ("yeah, you're gonna want to go down to...sh-sh-schleemy...w-world!"). So don't go into this expecting anything from an improvised comedy. That being said, the improvised comedy is actually quite effective. For the game's entire short runtime (around 4-5 hours), I was consistently chuckling and actually laughed out loud on quite a few occasions. One segment that sticks out in my mind is a portion of the game in which you're trying to reach two enemies sitting atop a tower so you can kill them. Getting up there can easily take a while to accomplish, but the actor who voices literally every single enemy in the game recorded easily over 10 minutes of back and forth banter between the two enemies. They discuss everything from workout tips to their favorite shows to a secret love rendezvous they had in the forest to how stupid you are for not being able to figure out the puzzle. I found it hard to actually complete the puzzle because I just wanted to hear what they came up with next. This is far from the only instance where seemingly endless dialogue was recorded to allow for player delays, and every time it's amusing to listen to just how long it goes. So, in short, the story is serviceable, but the writing (or lack thereof) is what makes it.

As for gameplay, it isn't much more complex than the story, but like the story, it gets the job done. Much like last year's Astrobot: Rescue Mission, Trover Saves the Universe sports a pseudo Super Mario 64-style platforming style semi-collectathon. All that plus pretty simple sword-based combat. So, basically, you'll be spending all of this game's runtime controlling Trover as he goes about jumping across platforms, using a basic sword attack, dodge-rolling, and collecting hidden green "power babies" that add up to get him more maximum health. There are also some puzzles wherein you use the headset to look at, pick up, and move/throw objects, but those are...shall we say, not good? This is a game that can be played with or without VR, and with VR (which is how I played for the entirety of my time), the puzzles that depend on you using the hardware are poorly-optimized. For instance, there's a puzzle that involves you picking up and throwing an object in order to flip a switch behind some stalactites. This puzzle took me an absurdly long time simply because the projected flight path of the object I was throwing didn't exactly line up with where it actually went. While the projected path showed that it would hit the switch, it hit one of the stalactites without fail every time. So I'm not sure if the projected paths are just not accurate at times or if the simulated depth perception just isn't great, but the VR tends to screw with both those puzzles and some of the platforming as well.
Now, normally this is where I break off into another paragraph to discuss the technical aspects, but...there isn't enough to make that its own paragraph, so here we go. This being a VR game, the framerate is silky smooth throughout the runtime. Like any other VR title, the textures can tend to be a bit blurry, but the cartoony nature of the game's graphics do an excellent job of more or less masking this fact. What's more, I never experienced any texture pop-in, animation/sound/functionality glitches, nor did I experience any crashes of the hard or soft variety. All-in-all, VR games are usually sound technical packages, and Trover Saves the Universe is no exception.

Folks, if this review has seemed shorter than usual, it's because my opening statements pretty much sum it up: Whether or not you'll like Trover Saves the Universe will largely depend on whether or not you like Rick & Morty. There's really not much to say about this game because due to its simplicity, it lives or dies by its humor. I happened to love the humor of the game, so I enjoyed every second of it! But if you're the kind who thinks the show its developer is known for is as terrible as said show's fanbase, then you won't enjoy this. It's really as simple as that.

Let us review:
Poorly-optimized VR integration - 1.0

The final score for Trover Saves the Universe is...


9.0/10 - Fantastic
Great work, Squanch Games, great work.