Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Hand Grenades (PC) Preview

Oh, it is the most wonderful gun of the game (ding dong, ding dong). I think I’ve made it clear once or twice in my many articles here on the site, that I think guns are a big scary thing that can often be treated like play toys. I’m not American, I don’t have this relationship with guns from an early age. The mentality that you need a big one to feel safe, and all the other nonsense that is hammered in with fear-mongering news and constant tragic events. However, RUST LTD.’s Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Hand Grenades slightly changed my perspective.

H3VR is a sandbox with half as many guns as some Americans, and there are a lot of guns. The Steam description is quoted as saying “SO MANY GUNS!” As a result, you have several options in terms of what you want to play with. You can be Ocelot with his single-action Army Revolver, you can heavily modify the MK23 to be just like Solid Snake, or you can be a weirdo like me and mod the M4A1 Block 2 CQBR with a short EOTECH sight and a grip on the barrel for steadiness. Don’t worry, I also find it a little scary that I’m this enthusiastic about guns now too.

I’m also partial to the Glock 19 because it is nice and easy, while Heckler & Koch’s VP9 was the closest I could get to John Wick’s standard pistol of choice. This is something I’ve become vastly more aware of after playing for so long: The choice of guns for each person matters in how they are used and how they are respected. In improper hands they are not only deadly, they are dangerous to a fault. However, if someone is skilled, they can properly use those weapons without inadvertent damage. Non-VR games, and some VR for that matter, use guns as a tool, H3VR lets you play with them and learn.

Don’t worry, I’ve not given myself brain damage and am about to shout that everyone needs a weapon. However, I will say a lot of people need to learn that respect for guns. That doesn’t mean you need to like them. Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Hand Grenades has a lot of game-focused aspects alongside the firing ranges and skeet-like modes, one of which is the breaching house (“Breaching Proto”). A two-story house akin to the fire-fighting demo houses you’ll sometimes see used for training: Empty windows and doors, typical rooms, a rough outlay of a typical house.

This is where I think I need to talk about the movement modes. There are a couple of them and motion sickness is a mighty big thing to talk about. There is no other way you’ll breach the house otherwise, you need to move in and around it either using one of the following options. There is teleport/dash, which instantly (or as close as can be) moves to your desired location, arm-swinger which uses your physical movement and I’ve found trouble with, or my preference in the touchpad/joystick movement. I’ve preferred the latter as it would offer better acclimatization to motion sickness in other titles that use similar locomotion.

To get back to the Breaching Proto, it offers a more precise movement than the teleport. If you are just starting with VR I’d suggest the teleport first before progressing on to using the joystick movement. I say this as someone who was violently sick when on a boat in the ocean, that motion sickness is something you need to trick your brain into forgetting. There are only two instances in my life when I’ve had heavy motion sickness, on a small catamaran off the coast and using VR locomotion similar to how Blade and Sorcery does it.

Thankfully Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Hand Grenades allows you to speed up or slow down that sort of locomotion if you need to. In fact, there are a lot of options that H3VR gives you, not only for performance but also depending on your headset and overall preferences. You can have different gun belts, different gravity, and different steadiness when holding guns. There is a malleability to just about everything, offering the ability to play how you want and tailor your experience to get the most out of it while also having fun. Though I have made it sound like a lesson in a classroom so far.

Getting back to the Breaching Proto and other levels, this one also offers handrails to aid your motion throughout the house if you’re still using teleportation. You have a couple of options here on what you do on the level, but it seems self-explanatory: Breach the house and use your weaponry to down whatever is in the house at the time. To start you can use simple targets on stands either in fixed positions or in random positions. You can use wooden standees if you want something less human-shaped, and of course, you can use H3VR’s standard enemies, a whole bunch of wieners.

Oh, it is a real sausage party up in that house as these erect weenies roam, ready to fire their loads everywhere. I also believe my editor is now on the floor. The title says it all, your main adversary in the more action-focused levels are actual hot dogs in Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Hand Grenades. As much as there is a serious point to the guns, there is a whole lot of “silliness.” That is a word I hate using but there is nothing else to explain the depressed tippy toys, the hot dogs sounding like insecure teenagers in a COD game, and lots more.

There are a whole number of levels with your 6-foot-tall weenie counterparts. Some have guns, some have the typical broad American late-teen early 20-something sounding voice, usually muttering something benign. One such level is the Meatmas Snowglobe, a snowglobe (obviously) with a town inside that you roam around and find gifts as weenies talk about their Meatmas cheer moments before you mockingly say “We’ll get together, have a few laughs.” All probably while using an M92Fs or the Bereeta92F – the guns everyone loves to see around Nakatomi Plaza.

I’m not really a fan of these levels. Not because they are bad, but because I feel nothing from them. A lot of the levels that are AI-focused are centered around the same concepts of multiplayer shooters, which I rarely enjoy in the first place. I’m more here for the guns anyway. They are fine and function well enough, but after a few minutes of exploring, I’m out of reasons to keep playing those levels, Meatmas included. I return to Breaching Proto simply because I like testing myself against the targets and times.

Wurstworld, A Westworld town filled with bandits and games to play, is the only one outside of those that tickled my fancy. It also locks you into using period-appropriate guns, and you’ve never found loading a gun to be more frustrating than having to put every single bullet into a revolver. I stand corrected, if there is a future update with a pirate level, flintlock weapons will be the worst. I wouldn’t mind playing sheriff for the day if I could have an automatic weapon. For now though the answer to “who shot the sheriff?” was Bandit 43 as I reloaded behind a crate for 5 minutes.

What I tend to stick to is the skill-based options: Your firing ranges, point-based target practices, and on the odd occasion the Arizona Range. Above all of that is The GUNnasium, a massive room that wouldn’t look out of place in Croft Manor, with lots of climbing rails to hold on to and several blue cubes to shoot/smash. You attach some guns to your belt, hit the green start marker, and 10-20 minutes later you’ve hit all 20 buzzers and broken all 60 cubes.

It sounds simple, but tell your arms that once you’ve flailed them about for 15 minutes gripping on to handle 60 feet in the air. The only option here is room scale, as you’ll hit everything within a 3-foot diameter around you. The number of swear words I’ve muttered at 3 AM while attempting to swing at a cube and getting nothing but a karate chop to the top of my chair, I’d have my name in the Guinness World Record book. Nonetheless, it is one of the modes I’ve found the most joy in as I have acclimatized to holding and firing these weapons.

Acclimatized might be the wrong word, especially as I became a ridiculously good shot rather quickly. The actual gun isn’t available, which is understandable given its place in history, but the cousin to the Carcano M38 certainly is there and so is the rifle range. Match that with a whole lot of knowledge of the JFK assassination (call it an obsession) and I’ve spent a good amount of time firing rounds (without a scope) at the human-shaped target 265 feet away, sometimes even hitting the head and shoulders. It is “interesting” to be able to do such a thing, even in VR.

Do I like guns now? No, I still think they are horrible things, but do I respect them more now? I’d be hard-pressed to say no. I don’t think it is a common thing to have that sort of respect for an inanimate object, especially after just playing a VR game with enough meat to rival another American institution (Arby’s) but I’ve learned from it. You can understand them, know them, and you can even use them, but you don’t have to love them and cling to them more so than children.

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Hand Grenades isn’t that philosophically deep. It is just a fun first-person VR shooter that places its focus on representing real-life weaponry with the silly circumstances of blowing up sausages. Nevertheless, what it does with its realistic depiction of everything from heavy weaponry to little pistols is let you “play” with them like they were toys without too much danger. Flailing your arms about into the TV and vomiting to motion sickness aside. It is a fun little world of play, with something actually dangerous.

Ultimately, Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, & Hand Grenades is not only fun and a little educational to those of us who aren’t birthed with an AR15 in hand, but is the sort of thing VR is supposed to be: an experience. Is it perfect? No, I think the tactical fighting with sausages can be quite intimidating before you get used to VR movement as well as guns, and on the Quest 2, some of the “tutorials” from the range aren’t helpful. None of that detracts wholly from what is one of the premier titles for VR to date.