Throw Anything has the capacity to be incredible fun. Hoards of zombies are crawling up the side of your building, and it’s your job to fend them off by flinging anything that you can get your hands on to knock them back and save your skin. And the name “Throw Anything” is entirely accurate. Everything you see in your room can be picked up, smashed apart or unboxed in order to fend off the undead who are surprisingly good at climbing up vertical walls without any climbing gear. Maybe zombies have sticky hands, who knows. Before the level starts a breakdown of your room is provided, showing what can be smashed up, what can be used as a melee weapon (thing like baseball bats and working lightsabers are good for a swipe or two) and anything else that might prove useful.
Then the chaos begins.
There’s a physical element to Throw Anything. You’re facing out the window, so everything is behind you. As such you’ll be doing a lot of turning or twisting to see behind you, grab the various items you want, twisting back and chucking them through the window. If you’ve got a sensitive back or shoulders, they’re going to be sore when you’ve done a couple of levels that’s for sure. But this also brings another issue that regular PSVR owners have probably already encountered before – the tracking on the Move controllers. They’re very reliant on the camera picking them up, and while the headset itself manages fine with it’s array of lights dotted all around the headset, the controllers struggle when you turn round and block the camera’s view. It doesn’t happen anywhere near as much as I thought, but it’s frustrating when you need to chuck something and have to hold your arm at a funky angle to get the aiming beam pointing the right way.
But when it works, Throw Anything is good for bursts of a level or two before you’ll probably turn your attention elsewhere. The kid who starts in the room with you made me laugh a lot; after irritating me by going on about how the zombies were approaching I chucked him out the window. Sorted. Except he popped up behind me again, slightly injured. And again. And again, and every time he came back looking more battered and dishevelled than he did before. There’s also some deliveries that get dropped off by a robot postman throughout the level, leaving boxes that can be opened up for a range of goodies including flamethrowers, guns, pencils (yeah, that was a disappointment) or a range of other throwables. Oh, and you can grab the postman and chuck him out as well. That’s fun.
Without the control frustrations that crop up every now and then I’d have enjoyed Throw Anything far more. It’s still not a bad game, but the constant twisting mixed with the resulting lack of tracking on the Moves certainly puts a dent in things. If the devs added a quick turn button, where a quick jab of Circle on the Move spun you 180 degrees this would be so much more playable, but right now it’s a really weird mix of fun and frustrating. It too often turns into twist-grabanythingyoucansee-twist-drop-repeat with the actual fun of being able to throw anything you like lost amongst the fact you just need to drop something.
So it’s a tricky one to recommend; while there’s a good chance you’ll fun for a while, there’s also a chance you’ll get annoyed. But it by all means, but know and accept the limitations that this game brings with it.
Reviewed on PS4
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