Taskmaster VR [Meta Quest 3]

I’m a massive fan of the Taskmaster television show. In fact, I think I’ve seen almost every international variation of it, from the awful Spanish version that flopped after one mediocre episode to the fantastic New Zealand edition that successfully managed to forge its own identity due to its great host pairing and unique tasks.

Needless to say then, I was very excited when they announced a VR version for the Quest 3 and PCVR. After all, who wouldn’t want to be a contestant on the show and take part in all those silly little games? And, when they announced that it would include a task creator so that you could channel your inner Little Alex Horne, I realised that this game could be something truly special.

Many thanks to the publisher for the review code.

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YOUR TIME STARTS NOW
After seemingly running out of celebrities, you are picked as the latest contestant for this series of Taskmaster! Over the course of five episodes, you’ll take on a series of ridiculous tasks where the goal is to impress the taskmaster whilst staying within the guidelines of the often arbitrary ruleset. Will you be able to gain enough points to win his shiny golden head?

Stepping into the shoes of a Taskmaster contestant is honestly quite fascinating if you’re a fan of the show. Starting in the dressing room, you’ll head off backstage and undergo a warmup task before entering the main stage. Picking up cardboard cut-outs of the Taskmaster and his assistant is a great way to introduce you to movement, interaction, and the buzzer that tells the assistant when you’ve finished. There are plenty of comfort options in the menu for you to customise your experience, and I’d certainly recommend cranking the movement sensitivity way up to maximum as the default is awfully sluggish.

Once you’re seated on stage, the show is ready to begin. For fans of the show, such as myself, the studio floor looks picture perfect – and even the two hosts’ cartoonish look is quite pleasing too. The developers didn’t opt for realism, but the art style they chose for the game works surprisingly well and I grew to really appreciate it.

However, whilst seated on stage I felt that something didn’t feel quite right, and then it hit me: I was absolutely alone up here with no other contestant, whilst rows of ghoulish eyes are staring at you from the audience. It’s like some twisted horror adaption of Taskmaster where the taskmaster and his assistant have trapped you in their lair and are forcing you to perform tasks for their own twisted amusement. It’s honestly very weird, and I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to have no other participants – even if they were only there for show.

But, apart from this one (admittedly rather major) criticism, the atmosphere of the show feels spot on. The banter between the two is pretty much as good as you’d expect and never drags on for too long either, allowing you to move onto the next task relatively quickly. My only criticism is that on the very rare occasion, the comments didn’t quite match my performance. For example, with one task I was sure I had nailed it, only for the taskmaster to say that it was absolute trash. Whilst I know that a task based around art probably is going to be difficult to judge, I have a feeling that the problem was with the game’s inner logic rather than my artistic prowess.

Speaking of the tasks, there are fifteen in total over the course of the five episodes and they all offer some uniquely absurd activities for you to conquer. One early task has you completing an escape room before trying to find the components needed to fulfil the challenge; whereas another will challenge you to make an egg travel as far as possible into a frying pan. There are some really good ideas here I had a lot of fun with, and they only get better as the episodes progress.

It’s such a shame then that the lack of any perceived competition makes the creativity on show all for naught. Any task that has you working against time is all well and good, but anything that asks you to spend a long time trying to do the best you can just feels pointless. Why waste twenty minutes building a complex mechanism when there’s no target to beat? The lack of other contestants really is a fundamental problem with the main part of the game, and it results in the game not feeling like the show in moments when it absolutely should.

At least it all controls pretty well for the most part, even, if your chubby fingers and the physics system can cause some issues at times. Picking stuff up is fine, but if you want to place several things together with precision, then you may end up having issues. It’s rarely much of a problem though as most of the tasks don’t require you to do anything remotely like that, but it would still be nice if a future update could tighten it up a little bit.

Getting through all five episodes will likely take you around a couple of hours or so, with the tasks being playable apart after beating each episode should you wish to go back for a perfect score. It may not seem like much, but you’ll no doubt be eager to revisit many as you start thinking of more ideas in hindsight. Aside from replaying tasks, there are a couple of extra bonus ‘mini tasks’ that you can attempt, which seem to have been made in the game’s creation tool, but they’re not all that fan. One of them is a rather tedious hunt, and the other is incredibly short and simple. I do like that there’s some kind of repository for extra content though, and I hope that maybe we see some classic tasks from the show’s history as there are many that would work very well in virtual reality.

The main source of replayability, however, is the task creation tool. Currently in a beta state, it’s surprisingly really easy to use, as the assistant’s tablet makes placing objects a breeze. Items are separated into their environments, and categorised by size. Choosing an item will summon a pointer where you can place it in the world, and then you can use your hands to make any further adjustments should you wish to do so. The house is completely empty, meaning that you have a lot of work to do if you want to give potential challengers multiple means of taking on your task. There’s no way to restrict what areas are allowed, unfortunately, as it would be nice to lock out certain areas to prevent the need from having to fill them with garbage and keep the task more focused.

But that’s not the real problem with the creator. In fact, this mode has two fundamental flaws that make it completely and utterly worthless: first of all, there’s no way to share your tasks online with other people; and secondly, you can’t even set a task! Sure, you can place the physical envelope, but there’s no way to actually write anything inside – thus making it impossible for the person playing to know what to do! It’s incredible that they decided to add in a task creator where you can’t actually set a task, since that’s arguably the most important part! Sure, I realise that adding task logic would be a big ask (although I’m sure some basic ones could be added, like the aforementioned boundary restriction) but you should be able to name your task and write what’s inside the envelope. Sure, the mode is in a beta stage, but these should have been in from launch.

As you can probably tell at this point, I’m rather torn over the game. On the one hand, I think the presentation is excellent and they capture the essence of the show rather well, but the lack of other contestants and a – frankly – unusable creator mode really spoils the experience a lot. These are certainly issues that could be addressed in the future, but whether or not they do so remains to be seen. The developers do intend to release a roadmap soon, so I am optimistic at the very least.

As for what I’d personally like to see in the future, I think a lot of it hinges on the creator tool. Being able to make tasks and share them with others around the world could give the game far more replayability and help attract a wider audience. Whilst online leaderboards for those tasks would be out of the question, especially if no logic is implemented, I think local scoreboards recording the time taken would at least be viable – especially if the game owner is allowed to delete any that they deem were not completed according to the given rules. Further to this, I think having a ‘user task episode’ where the show format is used and pulls in three random user tasks would also help give the game infinite replayability. Sure, you’d need to ensure that all the taskmaster and assistant voice lines are generic enough to fit with literally anything, but the random nature of the tasks would make it so people keep coming back to the game again and again.

VERDICT
There’s a solid foundation at the heart of Taskmaster VR that could turn into something special with the right amount of love and care poured into future updates. Whilst I would like some tweaks to the single player experience to make it feel like you’re part of an actual show, the real work needs to go into the task creator. There’s so much potential here for a game that’s great as both a creation tool and a party game, but it needs a little bit more work if it wants to complete that task.