VR has become a good space for superhero games. What started as simple jaunts swinging through a neighborhood like Spider-Man has turned into full-blown adventures with Iron Man, Batman, and Deadpool, all with varying results as they try to mimic what you'd find in a traditional video game. The Boys: Trigger Warning is the latest comic to enter the VR space, and it's just in time for the final season to hit Amazon Prime. The results likely align with some people's expectations.

You play the role of Lucas, a single father of two who happens to be an employee of Vought International. During a trip to Voughtland, the family misses the chance to see the superhero family the Armstrongs, but Lucas gets the idea to go backstage to meet them instead. After accidentally uncovering a secret, the building he and the Armstrongs are in is destroyed, causing his youngest daughter to get killed by the Armstrongs and himself to be mortally wounded. Lucas gets revived by The Boys through the use of Compound V, turning him into a superhero with telekinetic powers and giving him no choice but to join the group, since his family is being hunted down and framed for the incident at Voughtland.

There is no timeline to indicate when is the game taking place, but one can surmise that it is before the events of the TV show, since some characters, like Hughie Campbell aren't present. From an outsider's perspective, the story is fine but predictable. There's no subtlety, and annoying tropes are often used for drama's sake, such as a moody teenage daughter. One surprising thing about the plot is how the story glosses over the dumb idea of visiting people backstage; it's something that would be frowned upon even in a world without superheroes. This is an unsympathetic character, and it gives non-fans one less reason to care about the game world.

The game is played from a first-person perspective, and free movement is always enabled. This presents you with one of the game's first oddities in that it recommends you play the whole thing sitting down; that's counter to what almost every other VR game has you doing. The title has some safeguards in place to mitigate motion sickness, but because warping is listed as a power rather than an accessibility feature, those who enjoy VR but need help combating motion sickness will be more worn out by the experience — unless they ignore the screen instructions and play standing up instead.

Your telekinetic powers allow you to do a few expected things. You can move a few heavy objects with your mind, and you can pull and push other objects to use as makeshift weapons. You can aim at a spot and teleport yourself, but it isn't a full-on warp, since you can only travel to what's visible. Trying to go through lasers this way will get you killed, since you're technically pulling yourself toward a spot rather than dematerializing and rematerializing. You can also focus your mind on an area to give you a rough layout of your surroundings. You can also make an enemy's heads explode if you sneak up behind them to catch them unawares.

There is no cost to using these permanent powers, so you can use them as many times as you want without penalty. However, each power has limitations. The TK Sense used to map out the level doesn't work very well, as you get some outlines of the level layout but not enough to give you a sense of where you need to go because the range is woefully short. It also doesn't help that you never get a proper tutorial on how to use the power, unlike everything else in your arsenal. The TK Pull is fine, but it takes a while to get used to the controls. Unlike other games that simply let you point the right analog stick to the desired direction, you need to hold down a face button, lock the destination with a trigger, and then pull your hand toward yourself to execute the move. It works after a while, but it can feel cumbersome if you're used to other games. Telekinesis would work fine, since pulling and throwing objects feels natural, but the game only lets you use light objects like drink cans and screwdrivers for the move. The environments don't exactly have these objects in abundance, though. Only the TK Assassination move is the least problematic, as there are no drawbacks to the move except for having to be very close to your enemy.

As limited as you are with powers, you get some limited powers via Temp V injections throughout the game. The first you get is a pair of hand blades to cut people up with. The next thing you get is active camouflage, followed by laser eyes to burn people with. These powers end up being cooler than your telekinesis-related ones, but the limitations are more generic. As the name implies, these are temporary powers that last for a short amount of time, and while you keep the pens, you constantly need to find generic Temp V refills.

The game has you going through seven missions, which is pretty lengthy for a VR game, but that's mitigated by the fact that you're revisiting most places twice, limiting the environmental variety even though the missions are different with each visit. The game encourages you to use both stealth and combat, but the former is more enjoyable if you don't mind that your enemies aren't exactly bright. Hide behind a wall just when they see you, and they won't come after you or make too much of an effort to chase you down. That also applies if they see you warp from one spot to another. They also don't mind seeing corpses or stray body parts, so you'll rarely need to hide the enemies you kill. Those all sound like negatives, but they're not because VR can still be clunky.

By comparison, combat is something you'll want to avoid, since its implementation is greatly lacking due to many different factors. While throwing objects feels natural, there is no way to properly lock on to an enemy, so there are moments when your throws are way off. If you do this near a wall, there's a good chance that your object will break because it's hitting an invisible wall of collision. That becomes problematic, since every object you throw will break. That may make sense for a drink can, but it doesn't make sense for something more solid, like a crowbar. That also means there's less chance for experimentation, so you won't know if a security camera can be broken, since you might want to break something on an enemy instead of using it for its intended purpose.

The biggest issue with the telekinesis system is that you'll never find enough objects to use in a room to fight with. The weakest enemies take at least two hits before they die, unless you get lucky and hit them on the head. The chances are high that you can enter a fight and run out of objects to throw, especially since bodies can't be used as throwable objects. You can't do anything cool like grab weapons from people's hands or use them yourself, and you can't shoot guns yourself. You can't even punch anyone, and while the Temp V powers are meant to mitigate these shortcomings, the time for application means that if you activate the powers, you'll spend time trying to fight while you're on the verge of death. Combined with your overall fragility, you have to plan out your attacks so you don't actively hate the game in a fight. All of those shortcomings really come out in the game's few boss fights. It can be confusing trying to figure out what you need to do to perform any attacks, since the game gives you no hints otherwise; this led to several boss fight restarts for me.

There are a few other quirks in Trigger Warning that range from annoying to silly. The hacking process means you relentlessly bash on the keyboard; it's amusing, but the actions sometimes don't register, so you'll move more than necessary. Warping near a wall can sometimes see you sink lower into the floor and get stuck, but you can warp yourself out to get unstuck. Also, there are moments when it can be difficult for the game to register you reaching for a Temp V pen, no matter how many adjustments you make to your waist settings. None of this happens often, but they occur enough that you'll be thankful for the game having loads of automatic checkpoints and save spots.

The overall presentation is mostly decent. The music is good, as are the effects. While not all of the voices are from the original cast, their performances are quite good at elevating a serviceable script. Graphically, the game animates well and runs at a good frame rate, but the art style may be problematic. Considering how thematically heavy the source material is, the decision to give the game a more cartoony look is baffling, as the game plays the story straight instead of as a parody (as the look implies). It is a juxtaposition that doesn't really work.

In the end, The Boys: Trigger Warning is merely fine provided you can live with its limitations and odd choices. The idea of playing as an original character in The Boys universe is a solid one mostly because he fits at being an unsympathetic character. The idea of using telekinesis as a base is great, but it feels like the game wants to limit how powerful you could feel. If the game stuck strictly to stealth, then things would be fine, but forcing an unrefined combat system into the mix doesn't help things, and neither does having a more cartoony look rather than a serious one. If you're a fan of the comic or series, you can eke out some enjoyment from this title. For everyone else, Trigger Warning should only be an option if you are really running low on VR experiences.

Score: 6.0/10