As a rhythm game, Thumper is all about the music, but it’s the little reactive noises here and there that make up the bulk of its captivating audio experience. Everything in Thumper has smart sound cues that indicate whether you’ve done something right: a deep, bassy thump when you land beats, a bright creak when you bank a perfect turn, multiple clunks increasing in pitch with each red bar you destroy.
This level of intensity and precision culminates most strongly during Thumper’s many visually stunning and challenging boss fights. Most of the nine levels have one mini-boss and one recurring final boss, a burning red skull who grows gradually more horrifying and malformed with every appearance — and it’s huge in VR. In many ways, Thumper is basically a horror game.
Thumper’s bosses also represent the height of its bizarre imagery, ranging from massive, cosmic geometric shapes that pulse to the beat of the music to sinister aquatic demons. The most frightening boss I went up against was an ethereal being that looked like a sinister cross between a jellyfish and a centipede. Its menacing size and eel-like movements dominated my field of view as it loomed overhead and stretched into the distance, making it one of the more terrifying monstrosities to witness in VR. I also fought a devilish starfish that seemed to be made out of galaxies, and — another favorite — an unsettlingly massive machine that sped along the track in front of me, whipping around curves with an uncanny agility and barreling impossible tunnels into thin air.
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There is a disappointing lack of visual variation to distinguish levels from each other beyond speed and mechanics, and sometimes sights, like the tentacles that surround the track or the interior of a sci-fi looking tunnel disappear too soon into your periphery. Considering how awesome and huge and weird everything looks in VR, it would’ve been nice to have the option to look back and see things disappear into the distance to create the illusion that I was surrounded by the abyss rather than just plummeting straight at it. But I rarely felt the need to scrutinize my surroundings beyond what I could take in during its high-speed action anyway, especially since the sights in front of you are always powerful enough as it is. Each level contains a few much-needed interludes, which provide a temporary respite from the breakneck action and gave me the chance to get a closer look at my unnatural surroundings without risking a crash.