An adventurous – and buggy – take on a classic book series.

Centuries ago, Hari Seldon predicted the fall of the Galactic Empire and was exiled. To ensure the future of humanity, Foundation was created.

Based on the classic sci-fi novel series by Isaac Asimov, Journey to Foundation is a virtual reality (VR) adventure game released Oct. 26 for the PlayStation VR2 (PSVR2) and other headsets.

You are put in the shoes of Ward, an agent with the Commission of Public Safety – a powerful group working for the empire to maintain order within the galaxy. What starts off as a simple mission to find the allegedly kidnapped daughter of the governor, turns into a mission that can change the fate of humanity.

Developer Archiact aimed to create a game that not only told the story within the book series, but also gave players the chance to truly become part of this universe. From choices driving the narrative – more on that later – to making the right gestures when the moment requires, players who take the journey are given more chance to be enveloped into this world than in most other VR games.

It’s too bad that bugs, poor control setup, and a potential lack of forethought, keeps this game from truly being great.

Firstly let’s talk some highlights.

Like in any good roleplaying game, what you do and the choices you make, can affect the final outcome. From your conversational choices to the people you shoot, everything has consequences, and you can end up seeing the repercussions at some point through your playthrough.

The same can be said for not completing a gesture when you’re prompted. You get to feel like you’re part of the game even more – despite it looking like a space cartoon – when someone tells you to do something and you have to do so, not by pushing a button, but by a direct action.

Don’t raise your hands when you’re told to freeze, or miss making one of the many secret handshakes, and it could end up spelling disaster for you. The problem here is the controls are so finicky that even if you’re quick enough – and remember how the gesture goes – you could make a costly mistake simply because the controller doesn’t pick up what you did.

This problem persists for other actions like hacking puzzles, grabbing your gun, and more.

For some reason, simply touching the R1 button – not pressing it – makes you able to grab your gun, mod chips from your arm and other necessary items from the environment. While convenient, it can end up causing you grab something at an inopportune moment.

It also becomes a problem for those who want to use both hands to grab onto your gun. You can’t do that here – and that becomes apparent very quickly when you try to stabilize your shots with both hands and end up switching your blaster from rifle to shotgun because you accidentally change the firing mode.

While there may be some issues with the controls, the idea behind most of them is very intuitive. Want to use your hacking tool or welding pen to cut through grates? Grab it from the chips on your left arm. Do you want your gun to go into sniper or shotgun mode? The chips on your right arm allow you to change the mode at will.

In addition to your gun, you are armed with the power of your mind. Called mentalics in the game, you are able to not only see how people are feeling, but can use your mind to enter their thoughts and even change the way they feel. This comes in handy when you need to calm someone down – or an early example, when you need to anger someone into shooting another in the face.

Your powers also allow you to hold off some enemies – if you’re close enough to reach them – and even kill them if you hold on long enough. When using mentalics, you’ll see the drain on your right arm as an orange line, and will have to wait for them to recharge. To note, your health does the same thing with a green line.

While the powers seem fun in theory, they don’t actually add much to the game. These are not the psychic powers you get in a game like Synapse, which make you feel like you have the power to move people, places and things. More often than not, you may forget you have them, especially during intense firefights where you’re more likely to worry about dodging surprisingly accurate enemy fire. Mostly, you’ll use these during interrogations and other chances to further the story.

Now let’s talk issues.

Glitches appear basically from the start of the game, with early enemies getting stuck in the wall or items you’re trying to grab being stuck inside lockers – or randomly defying physics and phasing through a rock so you can’t grab it.

While not major issues, it’s an annoyance a game costing $53.49 should not have.

As mentioned earlier, the game looks like a cartoon. While it’s not bad to have larger scale games looking this way – Saints & Sinners for instance, has a very animated look – this seems to take it one step further with a look akin to some 3D styled cartoons.

Looks aside, because it’s not a huge deal, graphically the game does look a bit blurry at times throughout your playthrough. Mostly, this happens when you’re trying to shoot enemies who are further away. This is a sizable deal, because who wants to feel like they need glasses while trying to save the universe?

Hacking puzzles, while neat in theory, are not carried out very well here. Once you activate the hacking tool, a puzzle appears before you – no real explanation for how it works – and tasks you with connecting the coloured nodes. The issue, if you remember the gripe earlier regarding randomly grabbing things without actually pushing the grab button, carries over to this. Trying to connect the nodes not only gets glitchy, but touching the R1 or L1 buttons even slightly can end with you grabbing the puzzle rather than furthering the hack.

As a whole these puzzles get sorta challenging as the game goes on, but they’re not very engaging.

Same can be said for the story – at least in the first few hours.

You may find yourself wondering why you’re doing this, what’s the point? Sure the story is there and prompts you to engage – and all the characters are voiced very well by actors who do their best to bring them to life – but you just don’t feel engaged at the start.

A story about saving the universe – and humanities fate resting on YOUR shoulders – should not make you yawn and disconnect, opting to move to other VR games until the mood strikes for you to come back.

It’s not forever though, the story eventually ropes you back in. But as a whole, it doesn’t do justice to what Asimov wrote.

Overall the game has it’s ups – certainly more than some games that have released on the PSVR2 of late. The story is slow, but does get you sucked in later on, and mechanics can falter but are certainly not game breaking.

If you have money and want to embark on a sci-fi adventure, definitely take the journey. But if you can only get one game right now, better wait for The Foglands or Vampire the Masquerade: Justice, to release in the coming days.

Remember, it’s almost Christmas and that means this will be on sale at some point soon.

Journey to Foundation was reviewed after purchasing from the PlayStation store at full price.