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0 Imagine being stranded on an island crawling with wild animals and ruthless cartel members under orders to shoot on sight—could you make it out alive? Now’s your chance to find out. Tracked: Shoot to Survive is available now on the Meta Store for Quest 3 and 3S.
Developed by the team behind Green Hell VR & Bulletstorm VR. Incuvo combines exploration, combat and survival into their latest release, TRACKED: Shoot to Survive. You play as Alex and quickly find yourself stranded in the wilderness after your plane is shot down. You’ll need to explore your environment, craft tools and weapons, hunt and protect yourself from the local wildlife, as well as fend off attacks from those who are hunting you.
Gameplay
After your plane is shot down and the pilot is killed, you find yourself stranded on an island you remember from childhood. Your father’s old cabin lies somewhere ahead, and your sister is missing. Setting up base there before heading out to rescue her seems like the best plan. You carry a backpack with limited space, a watch that displays in-game time along with your health, thirst, and hunger levels, and a detailed notepad to record all the information you discover along the way.
The story unfolds through overhearing enemies casually sharing exposition and discovering handwritten letters scattered across the island. Occasionally, you experience memory sequences where moments from your character’s childhood play out before you, along with floating information boxes to explain new mechanics. The game ensures you always know what’s going on and what you’re meant to do.
Your notepad tracks both main and side objectives, keeping the game from feeling too linear. Rather than sticking to the main goal, you can lose yourself in crafting new items or hunting wild game—and believe me, I will!
VR Mechanics
The VR mechanics are fantastic. I really enjoyed the collecting and crafting elements, though there are some inconsistencies in what’s interactive or collectable. For instance, when I needed to start a fire, I had to use sticks I found on the floor, which made sense. But the huge pile of firewood right next to the fire pit wasn’t interactive, so I couldn’t use it, which didn’t make sense.
Another is where I had to craft a head torch so I could see when wandering around at night. Again, this makes perfect sense. Not being able to pick up any of the hand lamps that are scattered around the map doesn’t make sense. These things are obviously not major problems, but slightly take you out of the immersion, in my opinion.
That being said, the weapon reloading and firing are great, and this is when VR really shines. In the midst of a tense battle or just before a wolf is about to pounce, getting the quick shot off after a perfect reload feels epic.
At your father’s cabin is where you can start to craft and repair items. As long as you have the required items, you select an instruction card that you’ve unlocked, and you get to work actually making the items.
Graphics
The graphics leave a lot to be desired, with many low-resolution models and flat textures. The draw distance is short, and texture pop-in was pretty noticeable while moving through the environments. I keep telling myself it could be a Quest hardware limitation, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. They’re not awful, but I’ve come to expect more from modern VR titles. Since this is a Quest 3 exclusive, it can’t even be chalked up to cross-compatibility with the Quest 2.
The world relies heavily on flat 2D textures, which is somewhat understandable, but inconsistent collisions make it frustrating. Some 2D bushes had collision boxes, while others didn’t, which I discovered when trying to take cover behind one that unexpectedly blocked me. Previously, I’d walked straight through similar bushes without issue, so I wasn’t expecting it—and that mistake got me killed. (That sounds dramatic, but you know what I mean)
AI
The AI is another aspect that could use improvement. After being killed several times due to struggling with the bow, I noticed that even though soldiers carry machine guns (which can’t be picked up after defeating them), they fire slowly, one shot at a time. With enough strafing, I could easily close in on an enemy and take him out with my knife.
In another encounter, a soldier wandered around looking for me after I’d taken out his partner. The AI got stuck, endlessly repeating the same two lines while I tried to eliminate it quietly. Eventually, I gave up on stealth, strafed straight toward him, and finished the fight in close combat just to stop hearing the repetitive dialogue.
Longevity
Tracked: Shoot to Survive is a single-player, story-mode-only experience, offering around 10 hours of gameplay.
You can play the game either standing or sitting, but there’s no option for room-scale play. I found the seated mode worked best since crouching is only possible with a button press. When I tried playing standing, physically crouching to pick something up triggered the boundary box and blanked the screen. This was pretty frustrating and made standing play feel pointless. There are the standard options to move between smooth locomotion and teleport, as well as smooth or snap turning. So there are plenty of settings for all VR comfort levels.
Final Thoughts
There’s a good game underneath the issues I had, and plenty of fun to be had. My concern is that the issues with graphics, AI and the in game bugs will unfortunately put a lot of people off.
I award Tracked: Shoot to Survive the Thumb Culture Silver Award.
Just as I submitted my review, Meta store confirmed that Patch 1.1.0 is live and the patch notes show it’s a big one. Hopefully, it will mean some of my concerns have already been addressed, but it does show the devs are taking on the feedback and working through it. Hopefully, we will see this game go from strength to strength with this and future patches, and I’ll be keeping a keen eye on its progress.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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