Giant Cop is the weirdest game I’ve ever played and I loved every second of it. At PAX South, I got a hands-on demo, which I spent giggling like a little kid. At E3 2016, Giant Cop was on my list of games I was most excited for and after 15 more minutes of play time this week, I can say that I’m even more hyped. I still consider virtual reality a gimmick, a mechanic that won’t change gaming forever but will disappear like netbooks and HD DVDs, but with games like Giant Cop out there, I might just change my mind.
This VR experience created by Other Ocean turns you into a, bet you’ll never guess, a giant cop, who’s tasked with keeping his city safe from crime and disorder. You use the Oculus headset to see and its Touch controller to move Giant Cop’s hands. The controllers are super responsive, each button corresponds to a different finger and when comboed can be used to pick up objects and people.
To travel around the map, you flick the Touch’s joystick in a direction of a glowing yellow light. This allows you to traverse the landscape, teleporting all over the city to impose your will as law. When you get bored dominating the lives of everyone around you, you can grab one of the multitude of interactable items just sitting on rooftops. I played with maracas, alphabet blocks and my personal favorite, a dart gun with bullets that suction cupped to everything. Nobody can forget who’s in charge when giant cop is throwing cars and shooting darts.
In my demo, I had to help an old lady get rid of some hooligans who were using “crazy cabbage.” That isn’t a euphemism, these party goers were literally cackling and giggling with a cabbage in their hands. As giant cop, you pick up these hooligans and then hurl them into the jail, which is just a giant, black screen sitting in the middle of the town. I don’t know if it’s sadistic to enjoy chucking a bunch of ragdoll bodies through the air with a flick of your wrist, but god dammit is it enjoyable.
Unlike a lot of the other VR titles I’ve played, I felt like a part of Giant Cop’ s world. Those hooligans I was throwing, and sometimes shaking to make sure they weren't holding cabbage, were lawbreakers and I was the law. Giant Cop is a fun game and I’ll be begging my friends to let me play on their Oculus when the game launches somewhere in 2017.
