Penn & Teller’s first foray into VR is this comedic piece that teleports you to a virtual stage where they are performing their famous, or infamous depending on who you ask, “Freedumb” show. The premise of the show is that Penn & Teller are tired of being censored and want to do whatever types of shows they like for free. The premise sounds like it would be a disappointment, but the show that is put on here is actually very fun and entertaining; much better than I had expected when I first heard about the show’s premise.
As you teleport onto their virtual stage Penn & Teller begin to insult either you or someone online since this is a multiplayer show, or so I assume. The insults are funny and Penn & Teller look great in VR. Once the stage show starts you have two options: either watch the show front row or stand by their desk, which is just a bunch of stuff attached to a stick that might be a flamethrower but probably isn’t.The show itself may not be a laugh riot, but it is interesting and unique.
It reminds me a bit of the Youtube “Urban Dictionary” videos where they go through definitions of various words in alphabetical order from A-Z with funny skits between each word. Penn & Teller do almost the same thing except they make fun of various words and censor them throughout the show. For instance, they censored the word “H1” by making it a reference to a popular rap song at the time while also acting like it was a drug reference because of the “h” sounding like heroin. They did stuff similar to this for a lot of words including bleeping out swearing which oftentimes revealed exactly what word was being censored when Penn & Teller could no longer hold in their laughter.
The rest of the show is just goofy fun that includes two people from their crew putting on costumes and talking about how much they don’t want to do this while someone off-camera yells at them. Then Penn & Teller goes into various back-and-forths with a hand puppet. Throughout all of this, they use their flamethrower stick to do things from roast hot dogs to light the one guy up who doesn’t want to be there. Eventually Penn & Teller gets tired and goes home, leaving you alone on the stage with no idea what to do next other than teleport back home.
Overall I really like “Penn & Teller VR: F U, U, U, & U”, even though it’s not your typical game or anything. While I wouldn’t play through it again anytime soon, I would definitely recommend checking it out if you ever happen upon it in your library since it’s free and you probably won’t regret spending half an hour of your time playing it.