Taskmaster VR Review – Challenge Accepted

Taskmaster VR Review for Meta Quest 3

Taskmaster is easily one of the most watchable shows on TV. Each 40-minute episode melts by like candy floss on your tongue, a dizzying succession of one wacky task after another. For a lazy Sunday spent sitting on the sofa or a breezy laugh after a long day, nothing does it quite like Taskmaster.

Incredibly, Taskmaster VR manages to perfectly capture that improvisational magic and fully immerse you in it. Even the most hardened skeptics will be left feeling like they’re part of the show thanks to its wacky tasks, hugely engaging gameplay, and unfalteringly faithful recreation of the show’s locales. It’s a staggering feat and the best VR game I’ve played.

Taskmaster VR follows the show’s structure of five episodes, each comprising of three ‘tasks’ in each one. The first two are always more physically or mentally minded, ranging from making a sandwich with a spatula in each hand to recreating paintings on a rotating pedestal using only Post-it notes. The last one is much shorter and takes place in the studio, often as a fun climax after more taxing challenges.

As with the show, your imagination is practically the only limitation to completing each task. The AI behind the digital renditions of Greg Davies and Alex Horne is remarkably adept at analyzing your effort for a task and giving you a points score accordingly, which is impressive given how open-ended the brief is for many tasks. The game also perfectly harnesses VR to keep you immersed, with a virtual wristwatch counting down the time you have remaining for a task.

Put simply, Taskmaster VR taps into some kind of carnal, kid-in-a-candy-shop instinct when you’re let loose on a task. There’s an unbridled thrill of putting down your task card, hearing the timer start, and racing around the Taskmaster mansion and its accompanying buildings. Each task absolutely flies by and it’s impossible not to find yourself utterly engrossed, and there’s more than enough variety that no two tasks ever feel the same.

If you, like me, are concerned about the replayability of Taskmaster VR, that’s a perfectly valid consideration. After all, some of the tasks are fairly linear in how to reach an outcome, such as one where you have to find specific safe combinations to unlock the garage in an escape-room format.

Unfortunately, there is nothing new to play after you complete the first five episodes, aside from some mini-tasks accessible on a separate menu or replaying existing tasks. There’s also a task creation mode for players to create their own tasks and upload them for others to download, which should elongate your time with the game significantly – but there was nothing there during the review period. As such, it was a bit disappointing to finish the first five episodes and then have no ‘main’ episodes left to play.

From a gameplay perspective, not everything is entirely seamless. Little Alex Horne’s lines of dialogue throughout a task were occasionally repeated ad nauseam during longer levels, which breaks the immersion when everything else feels so polished. The game could also use slightly more streamlined in-studio cutscenes between tasks, which feel restrictive and slow down the pace when you’re just desperate to get back into the silliness.

But those are minor quibbles for a game that wildly surpassed my expectations. If you thought Taskmaster was fun to watch, you won’t believe how much better it is when you get to become a contestant yourself. Taskmaster VR is exactly what I want from a VR game: it’s immersive, harnesses the nuances of virtual reality perfectly, and accomplishes something you simply cannot get from other platforms. From now on, if anyone asks me what game I’d recommend for a VR newcomer, I’d sing the praises of Taskmaster VR in a heartbeat.