Nock Review (PS5 / PSVR2)

Nock is a bow-and-arrow football title from developer Normal VR. Equipped with skates, a high jump, and a bow-and-arrow, you must shoot the ball into your online opponent’s net across the three available game modes: 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3.

Nock focuses heavily on exhilarating traversal with big empty arenas being the perfect space for it. With a slide available on the left PSVR2 Sense Controller and a high jump equipped to the right PSVR2 Sense Controller, you’ll be flailing your arms around in skiing like motions. It’s physically draining but super satisfying when pulling off a long slide that chains into a high jump, with a long shot from your bow landing perfectly to send the ball tumbling into your rival’s net. Although moving around quickly we never felt any discomfort while playing and were always itching to get into the next five minute bout with another opponent.

Who’s used a bow-and-arrow before? Everyone, right? That’s what makes Nock so addictively easy to pick up and play, however it is also equally hard to master its more advanced mechanics. You have block arrows available that allow you to switch arrows into blocks mid-flight; these can be very useful if you’re caught out of position. However, these blocks aren’t very big and so it’ll take some very accurate shooting to pull off a successful save.

There are incredibly realistic ball physics, with the ball bouncing precisely where you’d expect after shooting an arrow into it. The hand tracking also has pin-point precision allowing you to pull off some amazing shots. Lastly, Nock comes with an optional Season Pass with both a paid and free track offering customisable blocks, bows, and skins.

Visually is where Nock appears to be lacking, with basic arenas that don’t have any background environments and consist of just a single texture. This does seem to help with keeping track of the ball but even some simplistic visuals to fill the void would be a great help in differentiating the various arenas and giving the entire game a bit more personality.

Nock is a super addictive bow-and-arrow soccer title with accurate physics, on-point hand tracking, and impressively satisfying traversal that’s almost impossible to put down. The few niggles here — similar arenas and lack of visual environments — aren’t enough to detract from the core gameplay. Nock virtually hits the bullseye, and we’d recommend you give it a shot.