Ghosts of Tabor Review - What Do Players Think? (2024)

Ghosts of Tabor is a VR first-person shooter with PvP and PvE elements that implements hardcore survival aspects similar to DayZ along with everything we love from Escape from Tarkov in a way that only VR can manage.

Since its release in March of 2023, Ghosts of Tabor has risen to the top of the VR gaming space and has become a staple in the library of many veteran VR gamers as well as a highly recommended pick-up for anyone getting into VR gaming for the first time.

Our review will focus on the key elements that make Ghosts of Tabor a unique game and an even better VR title.

Try Our Exclusive Ghosts Of Tabor Flavor “Skill Issue” Click Here!

Gameplay and Controls

Ghosts of Tabor is an extraction shooter. You create your own loadout of gear, load into a raid, search for loot, and make it to an extract point to safely bring your loot back to your bunker to sell in exchange for higher-tier gear. The catch is that you will be competing with up to 12 other players, as well as AI enemies, that have every incentive to keep you from extracting.

This gameplay loop was popularized by Escape from Tarkov, with many variations being released in the following years. Ghosts of Tabor is the first to bring this genre to VR and shows that it is a match made in heaven. Getting to interact with all of your weapons and gear in 3D, as opposed to managing your inventory with menus on a flatscreen, gives Ghosts of Tabor a deeper sense of immersion that just isn’t possible without VR.

Speaking of weapons, you may have noticed that some of the most popular and successful VR games are shooters. Take Pavlov, Half-Life: Alyx, and Population: ONE, for example. This genre is a perfect fit for VR as all of your controls for handling your weapons and equipment transfer over flawlessly to motion controls, grips, and trigger buttons. The same is true for Ghosts of Tabor.

The gunplay in Ghosts of Tabor is one of the best, with just about every interactable feature you can imagine with your gun being implemented. Manual reloading, fire-mode toggling, and a fleshed-out attachment system that lets you precisely place your sights, grips, and lasers on any weapon rails. The guns have an ample amount of kick to them, requiring players to pace their shots if they want to be accurate.

As far as controls go, the game uses as few button inputs as possible, which is a good thing in a VR title. This adds to the immersion and makes your moment-to-moment gameplay feel seamless. Control panels, shops, and map selection are all done with a touchscreen display.

Graphics and Sound Design

VR games struggle to maintain a balance between high-fidelity graphics and optimized game performance. Ghosts of Tabor is no exception.

While the game attempts to appear as realistic as possible, with above-average graphics and textures, it is limited by the need to heavily optimize for Meta Quest performance. While this may lead to a reduced amount of environmental aspects, such as less dense trees and bushes, Ghosts of Tabor luckily uses separate builds for the PC and Meta Quest versions of the game. This means you will still maintain enhanced graphical fidelity when playing on PC, unlike games such as Onward that downgrade the graphics of their PC counterparts in order to simplify the update process for the Quest edition.

The UI design for Ghosts of Tabor is implemented in a way that more VR titles should follow. Rather than fill your screen with a distracting HUD that attempts to follow your head movements, all essential information is kept on your watch, which you can glance at to see your vitals, raid timer, and extraction locations. This frees up your view and adds to the immersion of the game.

Sound design for first-person shooters, especially extraction shooters where stealth is key, is a very important aspect of the genre. Ghosts of Tabor already has a great sound design system, with distinct weapon noises that are discernable from far away, clear footsteps for the AI enemy that let you know exactly where they are coming from, and audio feedback for every action you take.

An area that the player base wishes could be improved upon is the audio of enemy players. With audio cues being such an important part of the game and other players being far more dangerous than AI enemies, being able to clearly hear the movements of other players is a must. The game has struggled to find a balance, with early updates proudly declaring your location to all with a single footstep, while previous updates seem to have made players literal ghosts, with encounters ending before you even hear them coming.

It is only a matter of time until the sound designers find a goldy-locks zone for this issue, as it is one of the most vocal complaints with the game currently.

Access and Future Updates

Every update continues to lessen the amount of bugs and improve the already-decent stability of the game.

The upside to this is that the game is constantly receiving extra content along with the frequent updates in the form of new maps, weapons, and highly requested features. A roadmap can be found on the official Ghosts of Tabor website detailing many of the features and fixes that are currently in development.

Is Ghosts of Tabor Worth It?

We think much of the VR gaming community would agree that the answer is a resounding yes. Combat Waffle Studios has already laid the groundwork for an amazing game and continues to deliver on its potential with every update over the past year. It is a great FPS game and provides something fresh to the genre that can’t be found anywhere else. To top it off, the game is only $25.

At that price, you won’t find a more complete gaming experience in such a unique genre with as healthy of a community as Ghosts of Tabor.