Plastic Battlegrounds VR Review – Plastic Warfare
Developers Simulated Minds are quite literally bringing your childhood to life, as their newest VR title, Plastic Battlegrounds, puts you in the role of a little green plastic soldier, as you face off against other factions in what can only be described as perhaps one of the most chaotic sandbox experience I’ve played yet.
Join me, and the hundreds of other plastic soldiers as we venture off into the battlefield, and have our plastic bodies blown to smithereens.
It’s a Dangerous World Out There…for a Toy
The first thing I want to get out of the way in this review is the visuals. You’ll see a few screenshots sprinkled throughout this review and probably think, “This isn’t the prettiest-looking game out there.” I can agree with that, as the graphics are pretty rough, and I don’t expect them to improve much after early access, outside of possibly the Steam release. That’s actually fine, as not every game out there needs to be cutting edge when it comes to graphics. In fact, some of my favorite games, such as the Earth Defense Force franchise, hardly look like games of this era, and yet they still manage to be incredibly fun because of their gameplay and charm. The same principle applies here. While the visuals might not win any awards, they serve their purpose: effectively conveying the chaotic, action-packed nature of the game. Once you’re in the thick of it—an all-out warfare with bullets and bombs dropping everywhere, and plastic soldiers dying before your eyes—the graphical fidelity quickly becomes a non-issue. What matters more is how the game feels, and in that regard, it delivers where it counts.
So, what is Plastic Battlegrounds? Well, it’s essentially a game based on your childhood of playing with small plastic army men and imagining they were all fighting each other. Only in this game the plastic toy soldiers are alive. So, it’s a bit like Toy Story and Small Soldiers, only with plastic army men. At the moment, the game features conquest mode, where you’re tasked with capturing and holding capture points, and sandbox. Since this is still in early access, Conquest Mode was still a work-in-progress, though honestly, the bulk of your time is going to be spent in Sandbox. Sandbox allows you to set up these custom battles, allowing you to pit factions of soldiers against each other and set up all kinds of props around the battlefield for them to use.
On the gameplay front, it’s split into two kinds of games. The first is your traditional VR first-person experience, where you can play from a soldier’s perspective and watch whatever crazy scenario you set up unfold. The gunplay feels pretty solid overall, as does the movement, and you can pull off some pretty crazy maneuvers even while on foot, as you’re given a grappling gun to swing around the battlefield—a useful tool to gain height advantage over the enemy soldiers.
You can use vehicles like tanks or helicopters. A recent update even added the ability to call in air support, which summons a flock of jets to bomb designated locations.
The game has a ton of physics-based mechanics, too, that players can play around with, like blowing up an enemy soldier and picking up their head and chucking it across enemy lines. Or using the grappling gun to hook yourself to a flying helicopter and using the momentum to swing around to dodge bullets and such. There are lots of fun little things to play around with.
Playing from the soldier’s perspective can be pretty fun, though, as seeing all the mechanics in the game come together from ground level really sells the fantasy. There’s something genuinely entertaining about ducking behind a Rubik’s Cube for cover, peeking over the edge, and watching a chaotic battle unfold in a living room-turned-warzone. Explosions send plastic limbs flying, helicopters buzz overhead, and the exaggerated physics keep everything feeling playful and over-the-top. It’s a perspective that reinforces the game’s core charm—this isn’t meant to be a gritty war sim, it’s your childhood imagination brought to life in VR, complete with all the absurdity and spectacle. There’s something immersive about how it unfolds because it plays so well into your imagination. It’s just pure fun.
The other kind of game plays out before and during these epic battles. As I mentioned, this is a sandbox mode where you get to set the battlefield anyway you want. This is done from your own, human-sized perspective. You get access to many different props and game logics that you can place practically anywhere within the map to build your dream scenarios. Once you’ve done that, you can start the match up, and witness it all from your perspective, or spawn in as a soldier too. Alternatively, if the war isn’t going the way you want it, you could go back into your human-sized mode and basically walk around the warzone as if you’re Godzilla or something. It’s dumb, but I love the fact that it’s included just for the fun of it. Like the studio could have kept the mode strictly to editing, but they didn’t, and some of my favorite moments have come from stomping around the battlefield, swatting helicopters out of the sky, or picking up tanks and chucking them across the room. It adds this layer of chaotic fun and creativity. It’s not about balance or fairness—it’s about giving players the tools to mess around and make their own fun. Whether you’re carefully crafting a tense, tactical skirmish or just causing mayhem like a kid in a toy store, the game supports both equally well. It’s that freedom that makes the sandbox mode such a standout.
Now, with this still being early access, there will be a lot of bugs and work in progress. Even so, in its current state, it’s easy to see just how much potential Plastic Battlegrounds has. With the developer frequently updating the game, adding new content, quality of life improvements, and general bug fixes, I think Plastic Battlegrounds has a bright future. The foundation is solid—fun mechanics, a unique premise, and a strong sense of identity. What it needs now is time, polish, and continued community feedback to shine. If the current pace of development keeps up, I can easily see this becoming a cult favorite among VR players looking for something a little different, a little chaotic, and a lot of fun. It may be rough around the edges, but it’s bursting with creativity and heart, and that’s more than enough to keep me excited for what’s to come.
Plastic Battlegrounds is now available on the Meta Horizon store in early access for $9.99. A Steam release is slated to come later.
Score: 8.5/10
Pros
- A fun and cool idea that plays really well into the sandbox fantasy.
- The combat feels solid overall, with lots of physics-based things to play around with.
- When you aren’t shooting at other plastic soldiers, you can grow big and play as if your a giant kaiju.
- Lots of props to use and place around to help build your ultimate warzone.
- There’s lore if you look around, with text notes scattered around. Some good humor behind it.
- The developers seem pretty active, with constant updates dropping. Good indicator of long-term support.
Cons
- Visuals are rough to look at.
- Performance on the Quest 3 can get really low with the amount of units you spawn in. Hoping the Steam release fixes most of that.
Plastic Battlkeground review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.
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