So I Tried… The American Dream

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never tried before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for the Meta Quest version of The American Dream.

What I thought it was

The game appeared to be full of mini-games showing what life would have been like if Americans had even more guns. Use guns to carve the roast, wash the car, give high fives, all of the good old American pastimes. The game released in 2018 on Steam, but more recently was ported to the Quest, and since it was on a daily deal I picked it up. I prefer to play games natively as Steam VR can be a bit fiddly.

What it actually is

You’re on an American theme park ride, being shown American life through the eyes of a natural born American of American ethnicity in the good old American days of, like, the 1950s? In my half hour I experienced life as a baby, a child, a teenager, and had recently finished a shift flipping burgers at my first job! Also, my hands were guns that I could not put down. Need to pick up books? Shoot them. Those aforementioned burgers starting to burn? Shoot them. On a date with your sweetheart and they want candyfloss? Feed it to them using the barrel of your single-shot rifle!

Will I keep playing

This game is nuts, I’ve really been enjoying it. I like shooting things in VR, but I also don’t like being shot at in VR, so this low stakes kind of thing really is my jam. Each scene gives you money and that seems to increase the better you do, but so far I’ve only had to buy one gun to progress the ride, and I don’t think it was possible to not make the $12.99 it required. It’s a theme park ride, I’m pretty sure there isn’t a fail state in this game. When you run out of ammo you literally just hit a button on your chair and it ejects a magazine into the air for you to slam your gun onto! And if you miss it, just hit the button again! I’m definitely continuing with this.