Propagation: Paradise Hotel is a surprisingly good VR horror game with an old-school Resi vibe

A VR horror game that's not set in a mental asylum? What a refreshing change! And it's not just a shonkily put together, cheaply made, unscary and unintelligible jank-fest? Unbelievable!

That's right, on this week's episode of VR Corner I take a look at Propagation: Paradise Hotel, a new VR horror game that released this week on Quest and PC VR that is actually fairly decent!

Now look, I'm sorry if I sounded a bit jaded in those opening sentences there but in all honesty, I am. I've played so many VR horror games in the past and a large portion of them have been utterly underwhelming and just terribly, terribly made. Case in point is the recently released Afterlife VR which I streamed on my personal YouTube channel a few weeks ago. It was probably one of the worst PSVR2 games I've played so far and it featured every negative point that I described at the start of this post.

On the flip side of the coin, Propagation: Paradise Hotel (which you can watch me play in PC VR in the video at the top of this page) is refreshingly well produced, it features some legitimately spooky gameplay and, best of all, it feels like it was made with actual care and attention to detail!

Trapped in a zombie-infested hotel that has some excellent Resident Evil mansion vibes, Propagation: Paradise Hotel is a slow burn horror game that will put the chills up you with its excellent sound design and some brilliantly detailed environments that are painted wall-to-wall with gratuitous amounts of gore.

It's not perfect though, while the puzzles are very reminiscent of old-school Resi games, I did run into one which caused a lot of frustration and tedious backtracking due to a badly signposted solution. For a game about a zombie outbreak the zombies seem to be rather few and far between too, or at least they were in the first half of the game (I've not completed it yet). I feel like it might have been scarier with more enemies to fight but the game would rather rely on a smaller amount of zombies that instead come back to life after a couple of minutes of being downed.

It also doesn't seem to be that long either and there are reports coming in of a 3-4 hour playtime with a cliffhanger ending that points at a second chapter to come. This is offset with a budget pricetag though so you should get your monies worth if you do decide to take the plunge.

Either way, if you're starved for a good VR horror game, I'd say Propagation: Paradise Hotel is well worth a look. It's out right now for Quest 2 and PC VR with a PSVR2 port planned for release at some point in the future.