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Nov 22, 2023

REVIEW: Run a VR checkout counter and a grenade launcher with “Shooty Fruity”

“Shooty Fruity” does exactly what it says: it shoots fruit. This new video game

"Shooty Fruity" does exactly what it says: it shoots fruit. This new video game release brings the simplistic shooting gallery concept into the virtual reality age, but with a tasty twist.

Hired by a grocery store that never updated the mid-century Americana décor, your job is to stand guard against attacking hordes of angry fruit. Using two VR controllers (a pair of PlayStation Move wands in this case), you wield various cartoon weaponry against angry apples, giant watermelons and flying cherries. There's no need to reload; new weapons float by on an overhead clothesline, so when one gun is exhausted you just grab a new one.

The twist is that you are also expected to scan incoming purchases. You see, your station is the Super Mega Mart check-out counter and goofy groceries are piling up on your left. While shooting down the anthropomorphic fruit you must also scan the eggs, cheese and ice cream and toss them to the right where some unseen bagger presumably bundles everything up.

Successfully scanning groceries slowly unlocks better weaponry, so after a certain point grenades and automatic rifles will become available. This gives you much better odds against the fruits’ final assault, so your menial scanning labor becomes critically important. If your check-out station is hit by fruit attacks too many times, you’re fired.

That's the hectic fun of "Shooty Fruity." Each "job" starts out slow, giving you some time to scan products while one or two enemies drop in. But before long you are juggling quickly-depleting weapons while still finding time to scan juice bottles because you’re close to unlocking the next gun. Meanwhile, the bored-sounding announcer character talks over the store intercom, offering snide remarks as well as giving you advance warning on fresh offensives. It's a hoot.

One thing "Shooty Fruity" does well is something that tends to be an under-discussed element of virtual reality games: your ability to do things without looking at them. Since you are always standing in one place, it's easy to scan-and-toss groceries without necessarily staring at them. You do not even have to think about it. You’re convincingly immersed into this three-dimensional cartoon store where your attention is divided, and that sort of persistent physicality just makes natural sense.

Super Mega Mart offers more than just a checkout clerk gig. Some levels require you to assemble meal trays or sort products, but it's the same out-of-control conveyor belt rush. Of course, whether you’re in the warehouse, dining hall or storefront, the fruit armies keep coming.

"Shooty Fruity" suffers from an odd menu structure, owing to a effort to replicate a backstage break room in virtual reality. For whatever reason, you pick levels at a "job postings" board that feels like it is an inch away from your face. The game allows you to tweak the height of your checkout counter (a nice feature that more VR games need to take into consideration) so it's odd that the break room makes you stand so closely to a wall. The fruit themselves are also a less-than-impressive design choice. Their flat-animated faces look more like placeholder graphics than fully-formed video game enemies.

Not that fruit face fidelity matters much when you’re popping them into juice. "Shooty Fruity" is a slick take on shooting gallery games that makes great use of VR.

"Shooty Fruity" is available for PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. This review is based on product supplied by the developer. Images courtesy nDreams.