Paint the Town Red VR Review (Meta Quest)

You know how they say that you should never bring a knife to a gunfight? Well, Paint the Town Red VR adheres to a similar principle, only with fewer knives, and more, shall we say, T-bone steaks and clipboards, weirdly enough. It’s a strange one, I’ll say that much. It’s so strange, even, that I honestly couldn’t tell whether or not I should have been enjoying the idea of dicing up local club rats and fledgling groove masters with a katana, or if should have been deeply concerned with how easily I was able to devise new ways to, well, paint the town red, so to speak. But that was all part of the fun: seeking out new ways to execute an attack — if only to test the boundaries of an ill-advised frame of mind with a habit of wreaking pure and unadulterated pandemonium in the most unlikely of places.

Paint the Town Red has, after several years of making splashes all over the Steam storefront, arrived on Meta Quest, and as a result, ushered in a new era for those in dire need of some good old-fashioned carnage and chaos. Naturally, I thought it best to return to the root of its world, if only to rekindle the burnt-out fuse that was once a feud with a soulless restaurant goer. Of course, I knew he didn’t stand a chance against the wrath of a bar stool, nor the backend of a boat oar, for that matter, but given the fact that I was still relatively new to the virtual reality headspace, he would, however, have a front row seat to the diabolical performance that would be my shameful attempt at fly punching the air and, if bad luck prevailed, the pixels from a leased monitor.

More Paint, Same Old Canvas

I can’t say I’m a stranger to getting into bar fights; Drunk’n Bar Fight was to thank for that weird obsession a few years back. Unsurprisingly, I knew that delving into the Scenarios mode right off the bat would present me with a series of thematic episodes and a treasure trove of time-appropriate weaponry. Likewise, I also knew that the Arena and Beneath modes would also cough up a similar amount of rowdy folks to chomp through and set pieces to obliterate with a flintlock pistol. But what I wasn’t prepared for, however, was the VR aspect of it all—a perspective that, if you do happen to struggle with motion sickness, is a nightmare to deal with in itself. Fortunately for me, I didn’t need to worry about a lot of that, as even the VR port of Paint the Town Red wasn’t that erratic, surprisingly.

Of course, this is still very much the same game, in the fact that the three primary modes are still available to peruse at your own leisure, as is the treasure trove of melee weapons, projectiles, and voxel-based combat systems. I wouldn’t say it’s a 2.0 of Paint the Town Red, or even a bulkier version of it on a vastly larger scale. With that said, I will say this: this is, in all fairness, a game that, albeit unintentional, is one that has the capacity to sport the virtual reality-studded footwear. It makes sense, too, that its creators decided to emulate it, as a lot of the rough and readiness of the combat already translates surprisingly well into general hand gestures and body movements. By that, I mean, you can easily control a battle just by waving your arms about and getting a little creative with your hands.

Make Mine a Mindless Slaughter

I’ll be honest, at no point did I ever have a real plan for whittling down my foes; if anything, I just sort of strolled into each scenario and did whatever felt natural — which was often what led me to have some of the most fun, unsurprisingly. Paint the Town Red is anything but linear, and thus, an excuse to get a little weird with the mechanics and to test the brute strength of numerous inanimate objects. And that, really, is what the game is all about: simulating a ravenous killer who, for better or for worse, has infinite access to a wealth of tools and makeshift weapons, and just going to town on those who fall into their peripherals.

Of course, it isn’t all doom and gloom, as there is, surprisingly, a bit of a story to the game, too. Alright, so it isn’t anything overly fancy, but it does manage to scratch that one itch, in particular, at least. But, if you did happen to miss out on it during its initial debut, then just know this: several beings from the underworld have risen up from the ashes biomes below the surface, and it’s up to you, of all people, to step up to the plate and make pork chops out of their ligaments and what have you. This, of course, means having to take a gradual dive into a whole network of layers, and working to unravel a series of issues en route to the epicenter of the problem. And that, really, is about it. So, like I said, nothing overly fancy.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

While it comes as no major surprise that Paint the Town Red VR adopts a minimalist art style, it does come as a bit of a shock to see that, mechanically, the game does perform incredibly well, even during the sections that require a bit more of a hand-on approach. Thankfully, at no point during my descent into any of the themed levels did I have to tweak any settings or relaunch the game in order to progress deeper into the campaign; every single strand had been fully optimized to take full advantage of the VR’s capabilities, and made all the more accessible thanks to its digestible menus and minimal navigation options. On that note, I can’t really complain; it does what it’s told, and it does it without sacrificing any of the original features, too.

When all’s said and done, South East Games could’ve gone down a different route and removed half of the content in order to make room for a new and slightly less convoluted palette of features, but it didn’t. Mercifully, the devs made the conscious decision to retain just about every aspect of the original version, thus making the VR counterpart the true and definitive way to experience the best of both worlds. And I think I can speak on behalf of most returning fans when I say, if you’re going to make plans to experience Paint the Town Red for the first time, then you’d better save it for Meta Quest.

Verdict

If it’s mindless theatrical action that you’re itching for, then there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll be able to find something to sink your teeth into with Paint the Town Red VR. Granted, it doesn’t quite hold a candle to some of its peers, nor does it provide a captivating storyline that only get riper with age. Having said that, it does serve up a relatively short but equally jam-packed chaos-oriented experience that’s absolutely bursting at the seams with creative ideas and voxel-heavy elements. Is it something that you can come back to time and time again? Probably not, no. But then, I’d also be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy the one-time romp through the motions that it delivered directly to my doorstep, too.

Paint the Town Red VR isn’t about to emerge from the screen and embody one of your sleep paralysis demons, that much is true. It also isn’t likely to be something that you’ll go on to remember in several years’ time, either, what with there being a whole host of worthy substitutes lodged in an identical pipeline that can already be accessed at the flick of a switch. For what it’s worth, though, Paint the Town Red does manage to do the best with what it has in its arsenal, which is, in this case, comprised of a bloody dance floor and a mic stand, to list just a couple of its assets. And even then, that’s barely scratching the surface of the casket of tools and set pieces that flesh out one of its three primary modes.

To answer the all-important question — yes, you should rediscover PtTR, if not for its voxel antics on a VR platter, then for its ludicrous display of action-packed shenanigans.