Last week on Saturday, Jan. 20th millions of people around the United States marched in solidarity to advocate for the protection and promotion of women’s rights. Organizers estimated that over 500,000 people were in attendance at Washington D.C., the nation’s capital. Embedded above is a 360-degree video following that march in Washington.
The marches occurred the day after the inauguration of President Trump, the 45th president of the United States. The peaceful protest saw people marching for a variety of causes from reproductive rights and equality to racism and discrimination. The official website for the movement also features a Women’s March Global section, encouraging “individuals and organizations committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion and those who understand women’s rights as human rights to join our local coalitions of marchers in representing the rights and voices of progressive people around the world.”
The video was created by Content, an Immersive Media Production company that appears to specialize in 360 videos. Their past work was focused on various U.S. National Park locations in a series known as Anywhere That is Wild.
“We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families – recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country,” reads the Women’s March Mission Statement. “Women’s rights are human rights, regardless of a woman’s race, ethnicity, religion, immigration status, sexual identity, gender expression, economic status, age or disability. We practice empathy with the intent to learn about the intersecting identities of each other. We will suspend our first judgement and do our best to lead without ego.”
More information about the march is available at the official Women’s March organization website here.
Adding limited VR support to a game that would appear to be a good fit for comprehensive support seems to be a trend lately in the games industry. Perhaps it’s a way for developers to experiment without sinking too many funds into VR development, or perhaps it’s symptomatic of a larger issue with adoption numbers. Either way, more and more developers are opting for small slices of their games in VR rather than the entire experiences.
Joining the ranks of Gran Turismo Sport, the recently released Moto Racer 4 also only supports VR for a small handful of race types, although they claim that won’t always be the case. The game is published by Microïds and developed by Artefacts Studio.
The full game (which the above trailer incorrectly states is already fully playable in VR) features 15 different game modes between single and multiplayer with up to 10 total racers in local and online multiplayer. Additionally, you can race in both asphalt (high-speed racing bikes) and Dirt modes (stunt-filled Motocross).
But unfortunately only the single player Time Attack and Hot Lap modes are supported as of this time. Luckily, according to an official press release, “Microïds and Artefact Studios will progressively and freely make all game modes and races, already available in Moto Racer 4, compatible in VR,” but there is no time frame on the rest of the game’s content.
I tried Moto Racer 4 with the PS VR headset and while it was disappointing that I couldn’t play the entire compliment of game modes, such as with Driveclub VR [Review: 7/10] for example, the sense of speed was unmatched inside Sony’s HMD. There aren’t many racing games to choose from yet with support for the PlayStation headset, so Moto Racer 4 was a bit liberating in a way. Driveclub VR provides an excellent outlet for cockpit-based racing, but sitting atop a bike in Moto Racer added a more visceral nature to the speed and made me feel more vulnerable.
That being said, it doesn’t look too great visually. Playing the game inside the headset’s downgraded resolution transforms a game that was already only average into something visually sub-par by modern racing game standards. The framerate is reportedly improved on the PS4 Pro version, both inside and outside of the headset, which lets it run smoothly, but still leaves a bit to be desired in terms of graphical fidelity.
Strangely, even though Moto Racer 4 is also available for PC via Steam, there doesn’t appear to be any support for the Vive, Rift, or OSVR headsets at this time, but maybe that can be incorporated later on like the rest of the game modes.
“It was the first time we’ve worked on this feature, and we known that it would be a challenge to make it comfortable for a moto racing game, certainly more difficult than a car race,” said Production Director at Artefacts Studio, Olivier Gaudino during an interview. “During production, we have been faced with motion sickness, and we had to work particularly on camera settings in regards to the bike and the locations. We tried several adjustments in order to reduce motion sickness, VR tests were interesting since each person had a different sickness reaction. Finally, we found a way to reduce the motion sickness, and the immersive experience is really strong during the races, in GP mode and Dirt mode as well.”
At this time with such a limited VR offering, it’s hard to recommend Moto Racer 4 as a racing game if you’re intrigued by the VR support. Additional game modes will be added to Sony’s headset at this time, but right now there just isn’t enough to do. If you’re a fan of the franchise in general and would like to try it outside of the headset however, you’ll find a capable arcade racing game with plenty to do and lots of bikes to ride.
Moto Racer 4 is now available on PlayStation 4 with limited PS VR support as well as on Xbox One and PC.
Of all the game franchises that are currently active, few take place in worlds that feel as appropriate for VR experiences as Deus Ex. The latest entry, Mankind Divided, released in 2016 for PC, Xbox One, and PS4 platforms without VR support and takes place in a dystopian cyberpunk version of the year 2029. Players take on the role of Adam Jensen, an augmented human with cybernetic powers.
Although none of the games in the franchise have supported official VR integration, Square Enix and Eidos today quietly and surprisingly released a tiny, free VR Experience for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on Steam. It only features a handful of environments, but you can freely move around and explore them, taking it a step above passive VR experiences that don’t allow you to explore anything at all.
The Deus Ex: Mankind Divided VR Experience supports both gamepad and motion controller inputs. I tried it with an Xbox One gamepad and the Vive’s wands. For the gamepad, I could move with the left thumbstick using full locomotion (not teleporting) as well as rotate my view with the right stick, or use the bumpers to snap rotate in predefined degrees in either direction laterally. I could also recenter the camera by pressing Y. Each room has a point you touch to advance to the next area and a point you touch to quit.
Similarly, the wands allowed full locomotion with the left touch pad, smooth rotation with the right touchpad, snap rotation with each wand’s triggers, and recentering with the right menu button. So while you can technically control yourself with the Vive wands, they’re not actually displayed in the world and you can’t interact with anything.
That all sounds like pretty basic stuff, but it is particularly interesting that they opted for full locomotion instead of teleportation, which seemed to be the prevailing default control scheme for these sorts of casual exploration VR experiences.
In the experience there are currently four environments to explore, including the city of Dubai. There isn’t much to it, it is not interactive, and it’s a far cry from being a real game, but it is easily one of the most visually impressive VR tour modes we’ve seen thus far. If this is a sample of what Square Enix and Eidos are capable of doing in VR, then we hope to see them create something fully immersive and playable next.
Last week we reported on the news that Resident Evil 7: Biohazard [Review: 9/10] would be receiving paid DLC packs and a Season Pass. Today, Sony revealed the details on those DLC packs known as Banned Footage Vol. 1 and Banned Footage Vol. 2. Later on this Spring, a narrative-based DLC will also release for free by the name of Not a Hero, but that isn’t detailed at this time.
In the announcement Sony outlined what each of the Banned Footage volumes will include, but it’s a bit of a mixed bag for PS VR fans since neither of the new game modes will support PS VR play. Banned Footage Vol. 1 will release next week on January 31st for $9.99 if purchased separately and includes two VHS tapes that you watch with the in-game VCRs, as well as a brand new game mode:
Bedroom: Figure out how to escape from a locked room — but don’t let Marguerite Baker know you’ve been out of bed.
Nightmare: Fend off waves of enemies and survive until morning while crafting useful items and traps to stay alive.
Extra Mode: Ethan Must Die: A tough-as-nails mode separate from the tapes and story of the main game. (Does not support PS VR).
Banned Footage Vol. 2 will release a couple of weeks later on February 14th for $14.99 if purchased separately and will also include two new tapes and one new mode:
21: Gamble life and limb in a deadly game run by Lucas Baker.
Daughters: See what the Baker family was like before the tragic events of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.
Extra Mode: Jack’s 55th Birthday: Race against the clock and feed Jack tons of food in this comical extra game mode separate from the tapes and story of the main game. (Does not support PS VR)
It’s disappointing that the new game modes will not feature PS VR support, but hopefully that will be added later. This raises the question we’ve been wondering for a few weeks now following the closure of Guerilla Cambridge: Is Sony pulling away from the PS VR?
Four new tapes of content sounds great, especially considering both Nightmare and 21 seem to feature more replayability than the game’s existing content based on these descriptions, but VR players are missing out on the meatiest portions of each DLC pack, the new game modes, which does hinder the value of the volumes for those players.
However if those sound good to you and you don’t mind playing the new game modes outside of VR, then we’d recommend buying the bundled Season Pass which will grant access to both Banned Footage volumes for the price of $29.99. At that price, you should theoretically also get more paid content later down the line as well included, overall saving you a bit of money in the long run. The DLC will be first available on PS4 and PS VR one the dates listed above, with Xbox One and PC releases coming later.
Today is the day that Resident Evil 7: Biohazard finally releases to the world. If you haven’t read or watched our review [we gave it a 9 out of 10] then you should definitely do that for more information on the game as a whole. Make no mistake though, Resident Evil 7 is an extremely scary game. It features a richly detailed world full of dangerous creatures that always put you in a constant state of fear no matter where you go. Playing in VR is even more terrifying and immersive, cranking the unnerving settings all the way up to 11. It’s not for the faint of heart and may not be a game you can stomach, which is sort of the point.
But if you are brave enough to venture into the deep, dark unknown of the Baker family’s estate in an effort to save your wife Mia, then consider this your primer on all things Resident Evil 7. It’s not a detailed walkthrough with answers for every puzzle and there aren’t any story spoilers; this is just a core list of tips that will help you get started.
Take Your Time
Patience is the name of the game in Resident Evil 7, especially early on. Near the start of the game it’s all one massive hide and seek experience as you tip toe around the Baker house and surrounding properties. Duck behind things, peek around corners, and carefully plan your moves around where Jack and his family patrol.
It’s worth noting that you cannot “defeat” Jack or Marguerite outside of dedicated boss fights. This means if they catch site of you, any bullets you spend on them are essentially wasted. It’s in your best interest to stay out of sight and plan your routes accordingly.
Don’t Be Afraid To Run
But if you do get spotted, or if you get overwhelmed by several enemies at any point, then you should consider running away as one of your viable options. Ethan Winters does not have special forces training like most protagonists in the series and will be outmatched if more than a couple of enemies appear at one time.
Turning and running will help you catch your breath and calm down, but will also likely cause the enemies to disappear or meld back into the walls and floors for the time being. This is effective to let you pick them off one at a time, turn to run, then come back reloaded and ready to go. Shoot out legs to give yourself more time to escape. Make sure you keep in mind where the closest safe room is located as well to save your progress.
Conserve Ammo
Perhaps the most important piece of advice on this entire list is the need to carefully conserve your ammo. Aim for head shots to take down enemies more quickly and make sure you check every nook and cranny in each room. Items are semi-randomly generated, meaning that if you reload your save file and explored a room a second time, you’d find different ammo and items than you did before.
If you can sneak past someone without using ammo, do that. If you can run past them and book it to a safe room because you’re low on bullets, do that. Ammo is very hard to come by in the world of Resident Evil 7, especially on higher difficulties, so the more you can stockpile the better.
Inventory Management is Like Tetris
Making sure you’ve got room in your inventory for all of your weapons, ammo, healing items, and key puzzle solutions is a difficult balance. In most cases it’s like playing a meta-game of Tetris as you move and adjust things in your inventory. At the start of the game your space is very limited, but this will increase over time as you find backpacks.
Whenever possible, drop off extra items at your safe box in the safe room — don’t destroy an item to make room in your inventory. Chances are later on in the game you’ll discover that you could have used that extra ammo or that Chem-Fluid that you trashed to make room for something comparatively less useful in the long run.
Remember What You’ve Seen and Where You’ve Been
Resident Evil 7 is a classically designed old-school exploration game with a new coat of paint. Despite the fancy graphics, first-person view, and VR support, this game has more in common with the original three Resident Evil games than any in the series since then. That means lots of backtracking and obscure puzzles with vague hints.
That key you just found may only be for a specific door that you haven’t came across in the past two hours. Keeping a mental map — or checking the in-game map if you found it for this area — is more important than you might think. Remembering the location of hidden items, locked doors, and more will go a long way towards avoiding those frustrating moments of getting stuck.
Think Outside The Box
If I had heeded those words more wisely and paid closer attention the first time around then I probably wouldn’t have gotten stuck as many times as I did. Each puzzle in the game is relatively simplistic, but a few will require you to think outside the box a bit. One instance in particular, the Happy Birthday VHS tape, is full of small puzzles that all feed into one overarching ‘Escape the Room’ style experience.
There are a few other scenarios that will have you scratching your head a bit at first but keep in mind that the more you think of this as a living world that you’re inside of and less like a simple game that you’re playing, the easier some of these puzzles will be. Try not to limit your solutions just to what you think the game designers want you to do.
Carefully Observe Your Surroundings
The final tip that feeds into all other points of advice on this list is that you should carefully observe your surroundings at all times. Note where each exit is. Pay attention to likely enemy spawn points (often the black gunk on the floor, walls, and ceiling), and note any crates or drawers that may contain valuable items. In fact, several key bits of the story are only found in the files scattered around environments.
In many cases, key puzzle items were found in seemingly mundane locations, so you should expect to comb over each and every area as carefully as possible. My general rhythm consisted of sweeping a room for enemies, closing all doors, then picking through boxes and cabinets looking for supplies.
These are just a few of the tips to help you survive playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. If you’ve already started playing, what do you think of the game so far? If you’re wondering if you should play it in VR or not, then we’ve got answers.
Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below!
Sitting in the audience of the Sony press conference at E3 2016 was a special moment in the VR industry for me. It was the last major event before the launch of the PlayStation VR headset and the stage featured footage and announcements for several VR games over the course of the evening. During that show is also where Sony revealed Capcom’s Resident Evil 7 for the very first time and announced that the entire game would be playable in VR.
Now the wait is finally over. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard [Review: 9/10] releases tomorrow, January 24th, for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC with optional PS VR support on PS4.
If you’ve got a Rift or Vive, it won’t support those platforms at launch, but that could change sometime next year. But if you’re playing it on PS4, then VR is an option on the table immediately. While seeing it through your own eyes in a virtual reality headset is an incredibly intense way of experiencing the world of Resident Evil 7, it isn’t for everyone.
You can read our full review for the final verdict on the game as a whole, but this article aims to answer one big question: Should you play RE7 in VR?
If You Get Motion Sick Easily, Then No
Motion sickness is, thankfully, not something I have to grapple with. I’ve played all manner of seated, standing, room-scale, motion controller, gamepad, and other types of VR games and I’ve only ever felt a bit dizzy once, which was primarily due to the fact that I was intentionally pushing myself in testing an app. During standard play, it’s never bothered me. Following E3, reports started coming out that motion sickness was a major concern for Resident Evil 7, as it affected lots of different people.
In the wake of that news, Capcom instituted several measures to try and combat those issues. While playing the game in VR, you can adjust your movement speed, you can set rotations to degree turns instead of smooth movement, and you can even toggle on and off FOV dimming, similar to the tactic seen in Eagle Flight.
However, despite all of that, if you’re sensitive to motion sickness issues, this game may still bother you. Luckily, you can reload your save file and switch between VR and non-VR at essentially any time, making it easy to swap in and out of the headset and take frequent breaks. But consider yourself warned that it may not feel great if you don’t have well-established VR legs.
If You Love Being Scared, Then Yes
After playing the entire game in VR and replaying several bits outside of VR, I can confirm that it is absolutely more terrifying inside of Sony’s headset. The 3D spatial audio will have you checking over your shoulder at all times while the immersive 3D visuals surround you in darkness. I found myself slowly creeping forward and peeking around corners much more than I did outside of the headset.
It’s also a great way to play the game if you’ve got other people around. If they don’t care for horror games, they can watch something else on TV while you play, but if they enjoy these types of games, it’s so much more entertaining to watch someone jump inside a headset.
If You Are Easily Frightened, Then No
A good litmus test for whether or not Resident Evil 7 in VR would be too much for you is to give Until Dawn: Rush of Blood [Review: 7/10] a try. That’s a PS VR-exclusive on-rails shooter. It’s full of action and lots of shooting with a handful of creepy moments and solid jump-scares to keep you on your toes.
If that game is too much, then you probably can’t handled Resident Evil 7 in VR. With RE7, you’ll spend more time ripping the headset off, hands shaking, than you will actually playing the game. It’s slow, deliberate pace is a far cry from the fast-paced intensity of Rush of Blood. If you’re determined though, then give our Coward’s Guide a look for some advice on how to get through the nightmare.
If You Have Trouble Aiming a Gun With a Gamepad, Then Yes
This revelation wasn’t expected on my end, but it shouldn’t have came as such a surprise. I’ve never been good at aiming in shooters while playing with a gamepad. My right thumb just doesn’t seem to possess the subtle dexterity needed to excel in those sorts of games and I’ve found that I always perform better with a mouse in my hand for that type of precision. As it turns out, my head is a capable replacement.
When playing RE7 in VR, the right thumbstick can be used to control your horizontal movement, but not vertical (this is to help avoid motion sickness). While holding down L2, an aiming icon appears on-screen and you can move it with the right analog stick. But when the headset’s on your face, you can also tweak the aiming with your actual head movement too. This lets you fine-tune your aiming and make small, but impactful adjustments to alter your aiming ever so slightly. It helped me land many more head shots than I would have otherwise.
If You Want The Best Graphics, Then No
While Resident Evil 7 is more immersive in VR due to the simple fact that you feel like you’re part of the game world instead of just looking at it on a screen, the actual visual fidelity is a bit lower. Resolution is noticeably decreased with a minor screen door effect and some textures suffer from obvious pop-in issues. Shadows were hit-or-miss in some areas as well.
Outside of VR is a different story. Visuals were crisp and detailed with well-balanced light and shadows. It’s reminiscent of P.T., the cryptic teaser released by Hideo Kojima and Konami for the now-canceled Silent Hills. Any way you look at it though, outside of VR provides the better visual experience in terms of graphical power.
If You Want To Be Immersed, Then Yes
Despite that fact, VR still feels like a more immersive way of enjoying the same game. When you’re hiding around the corner from a big bad guy stalking you, it feels incredibly realistic to poke your head out by physically leaning over in the real world. I still get goosebumps thinking about the way this game made me feel.
When an enemy picks you up off the ground and gets in your face while you’re wearing a VR headset, it’s as if you can really feel yourself being lifted off of the ground. The creaking doors, disgusting growls, and creepy slithering sounds around you are certainly enough to shake even the hardest of gamers.
Do you plan on playing Resident Evil 7 in VR? Are you going to wait until next year to hopefully try it out on the Vive or Rift? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments below!
I can no longer tell if the heavy breathing I hear is coming from my own mouth, or from the mouth of Ethan, the main protagonist I’m controlling in Resident Evil 7 on PS4 using a PS VR headset. Using my actual body, I lean forward on my couch, craning my neck around the in-game corner to my left, trying to see if Jack, the hulking mass of seemingly invincible mutated flesh, has passed by yet. Just before I take my step around the corner, much to my horror, Jack grabs me from behind and for a moment it’s as if I can feel his breath and spit on my face. He throws me to the ground, cursing at me, and raises his shovel high above his head. With a loud thud, he slams it down into my shin, slicing my leg in half. For a split second there’s the illusion of pain — a sudden twitch of realism — before Ethan bleeds out and dies not just before my eyes, but within myself, as I sit there stunned inside the immersive power of virtual reality.
Honestly, I don’t know if the world is ready for a game like Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in VR and that’s exactly what makes it so exhilarating.
For years, the survival horror genre was synonymous with Resident Evil, until things started to change. The first few games did their part to popularize the entire concept of horror games as a whole, but ever since the universally acclaimed Resident Evil 4 Capcom has struggled to recapture that magic. In an effort to rediscover what made the franchise so special to begin with, Capcom chose to mix things up once again by shifting to a first-person perspective and for the first time ever, offering full VR support. It’s a glorious return to form that shakes up the formula just enough to feel both fresh and familiar.
I played the entirety of Resident Evil 7’s 12+ hour story from start to finish inside of the PS VR headset and it was absolutely incredible. This is the first game that I’ve seen that features a fully developed and realized single player story that lasts longer than a couple of hours and can be played entirely inside of a headset from the first-person perspective. There’s full locomotion movement with the Dualshock 4 gamepad (no Move controller support) with a suite of customizable comfort options to adjust rotation speed, FOV dimming, and several other options. Capcom listened and has crafted a game with choices to alleviate sickness concerns for most that would be impacted. However, it is worth noting that I don’t personally and have never suffered from motion sickness in VR. Your mileage may vary and I’d recommend mixing VR and non-VR modes during your playthrough with frequent breaks.
The narrative begins with the game’s main character, Ethan Winters, on the hunt for his missing wife, Mia. His search takes him to the derelict and disturbing Louisiana swamp property of the Baker family. Things quickly unravel once you’re on the scene and all manner of horrors reel their grotesque heads in your battle to survive and escape.
If you’ve ever played a Resident Evil game, then you know they’ve always been from the third-person, which makes Resident Evil 7 a major departure from the series’ roots mechanically. However, despite that shift, its tone, pacing, and gameplay elements feel much more like Resident Evil than anything Capcom has released since the late 90s. And by the end of the story, it all ties back into the core mythology of the franchise very nicely.
The story is told through a mixture of first-hand accounts taking place in real-time and video tapes found that recount past events. Ethan and Mia are the focus of the story, but you’ll play as a handful of characters throughout the haunting adventure.
Significant portions of the first half of the game revolve around you participating in a deranged series of hide and seek chases with various members of the Baker family. Hearing Jack whisper and yell things like “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” never ceases to make my skin crawl. Above all else though, where Resident Evil 7 truly excels most, is in its ability to craft a believably desperate and overwhelming sense of danger.
No matter how many times I’ve traversed a particular hallway, I felt the urge to walk — not run — and take my time just in case. And it wasn’t arbitrary fear, because new dangers were literally lurking around every corner. Taking a note from the original Resident Evil’s playbook, you won’t find massive hordes of zombies in this game. The most enemies I ever did battle with at one time when playing on the Normal difficulty setting was around four or five, but that’s not to say it wasn’t difficult; every single enemy is dangerous enough to kill you. There are no filler creatures in Resident Evil 7 becauseevery encounter is a life or death situation.
Plenty of other genre staples are featured front and center in this installment as well. I found green herbs scattered throughout the game for healing, managed my inventory in a pseudo sub-game of Tetris, and searched high and low for keys and other necessary items. My loadout included pistols, machine guns, a shotgun, flamethrower, and more — complete with tons of enemies and entirely unique boss fights to test out my weapon skills. There were also a litany of dastardly designed puzzles. Some of them involved simply decoding small riddles or flipping paintings around in the right order, while others are full-on “Escape the Room” dungeons with multiple layered problems to solve.
After playing for long stretches of time in VR, it became physically difficult for me to continue. My body was sore from tensing up so much and I wasn’t sure how I could press forward due to the sheer number of ways the game was designed to scare me. There are all manner of jump scares sprinkled in for good measure, along with slow-building moments of tension, a wonderfully haunting soundtrack, horrendously disgusting creatures designed to make you sick, and the ever-present anxiety of running out of ammo or supplies — it’s all here. Pick your poison.
While plenty of VR games have already captured the elusive sense of immersive realism — and presence — they seldom wrap you up in the emotions of the world around you, only to saw off your hand, stab you in the eye, and kick you through a wall at the height of your mental sensitivity. If nothing else, Resident Evil 7 is relentless in its pursuit of your fear.
Playing Resident Evil 7 outside of VR yields a better visual experience due to the increased resolution and higher fidelity, but it’s overall less immersive. Flicking a thumbstick is a poor substitute for physically moving my head in the world. I also realized a noticeable improvement in my aiming while in VR due to the subtle head tracking movements I could make when looking down the barrel. However, there were distracting technical hiccups like pop-in textures inside VR that weren’t apparent outside of the headset. The menus could also have used some work as they didn’t always display properly.
If you want to switch between VR and non-VR mode, you have to exit all the way to the main menu. And for whatever reason the game only displays each hand and wrist in VR for most scenes — not the entire arms or the character’s whole body, but everything is fully animated outside of VR. Some of the enemies were more frustrating than they were scary in certain areas as well. Dealing with small and fast flying enemies like moths and swarms of bugs is just never fun. They’re tough to kill and serve no purpose other than annoying you.
All that being said though, I’m hard pressed to levy any serious criticism. Horror icon H. P. Lovecraft once wrote that “the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” — while that certainly may be true, fear has a new name now in 2017, and it goes by Resident Evil 7.
Final Score:9/10 – Amazing
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard sets a new bar for survival horror games and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best games in the franchise’s long history. By uniting elements from the past, such as the slow pacing, focus on exploration, mind-bending puzzles, and desperation for survival, with the pulse-pounding first-person gameplay of the recent era of horror games, Capcom has crafted a veritable modern classic. Resident Evil 7 embraces virtual reality as a medium and proves that you don’t have to cut corners or make sacrifices to create a compelling VR experience.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard releases on January 24th, 2017, for PlayStation 4 with optional PS VR support, as well as Xbox One, and PC. It may come to other VR headsets in 2018. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.
Playing Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition using AltspaceVR was one of my first multi-hour VR experiences. It combined something that I was familiar with and brought it to new life with new capabilities using the power of virtual reality. Whereas Dungeons & Dragons in VR brings anyone from around the world to the same location as you to relish in the joy of tabletop roleplaying in a digital setting, AR would bring digital augmentations into the physical world to enhance a physical game. The prospect is equally as exciting, but for very different reasons.
In a recent blog post on the official Wizards of the Coast website, company President Chris Cocks elaborated on the company’s forthcoming ‘moves’ in the digital space. Chief among the announcements is the founding of a new internal Digital Games Studio at Wizards of the Coast.
Playing D&D in AltspaceVR
Jeffrey Steefel leads the team, which is made up of game industry veterans with experience at studios such as Bioware, Activision, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Valve, and more. The existing Magic Online team (a digital version of the immensely popular Magic: The Gathering card game) is now included under the new Digital Games Studio banner, in addition to several other existing digital art and design teams.
The big news as it pertains to the world of AR though, is this nugget of information: “We will bring our characters and worlds to other games and experiences,” Cocks writes. “What would it be like to throw fireballs as a Planeswalker in an MMO, or quest for treasure with your friends in a D&D augmented-reality game?” This is clearly nothing more than generalized ideas, but it has more legs than just a random statement normally would.
At the GamesBeat 2016 conference, Dungeons & Dragons Director Nathan Stewart spoke on a panel about how to revitalize old franchises. In an interview with VentureBeat after the panel, Stewart elaborated on some of the ideas as they pertain to WotC properties.
“The dream, the dream for me, on AR—when I first saw the HoloLens demo I thought, oh my god, yes,” Stewart said. “Did you see the one where it’s the electrician helping him? When I saw that, I said, yes, that’s D&D. That’s amazing. I totally want to do that..I would like to take Fantasy Grounds or Roll 20, take the virtual tabletop, and play it with an augmented reality-type thing. It’s basically like Kingsmen Table, with the people at the table, whether they’re there or not, with the DM in front, and the DM really being the key to — their version of AR being a little different from other people’s.”
In that interview, Stewart also goes on to elaborate how physical gestures and movements at the table could reveal information that most players otherwise have to ask about, such as where their characters can see or what they’d like to do. You can within the roleplaying mindset and let AR transform stats and mechanics into overlays that are easily accessible and understandable. Not to mention how much easier it would be to create digital art and objects to display on a table through AR glasses, such as 3D map, instead of physically creating all of the props and resources by hand.
Official Wizards of the Coast Artwork
There are no announcements at this time, but based on the words of Cocks and Stewart, it’s clear that WotC is cooking something up for the AR world as it relates to the long-running Dungeons & Dragons franchise. Hopefully something similar is in the works for Magic: The Gathering as well.
Valve co-founder and president Gabe Newell was live on Reddit today participating in an official AMA (Ask Me Anything) that was hosted to focus on a wide variety of topics. The AMA was announced earlier this week and confirmed yesterday, but it looks like it got started a bit earlier than originally planned.
“There are a bunch of other Valve people here so ask them, too,” Newell begins. “I’m in a conference room with VR, Dota, Steam, and other people happy to answer your questions,” he writes in a follow-up comment. When the AMA was announced, VR was certainly expected to be a huge topic of conversation, as are continued rumors and speculation about Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and Half-Life 3.
Newell has been passionate about VR as a whole for years and was one of the featured voices in Oculus’ original Kickstarter pitch video. As the head of Valve, he is now one of the core forces behind the HTC Vive and the Steam’s position as one of the leading destinations for VR content on the internet.
Last year Newell stated that he had been spending a lot of his time with the VR team at the company, alluding to potential hardware and software developments. As it stands, The Lab is the company’s only real VR release, with Destinations and a DOTA 2 viewing mode also included.
The first VR-specific answer we got from Newell in the thread is in regards to Valve’s plans to work on a large VR-specific title at some point. It sounds like something they’re interested in pursuing. Reddit user GoodCrossing asked, “Is Valve interested in making a full game experience for the Vive? The Lab was great but we’d all love to get a full Valve game.” Somewhat cryptically Newell responded, “Yes. We think VR is pretty important as a tool for interesting games.”
We’ll continue to update this story as news comes out of the AMA. Tune in to follow the thread on your own as well!
Update: When asked by Reddit user Air_chandler how the team looked at the future outlook and trajectory of Valve as a company, Newell responded, “The big thing right now is broadening the range of options we have in creating experiences. We think investing in hardware will give us those options. The knuckles controller is being designed at the same time as we’redesigning our own VR games.“
When playing a VR game, there are currently three fundamental styles of play. Users can play games in a seated position, which is ideal for cockpit-based piloting or driving games, as well as many gamepad games. Then there’s the standing position, which has you standing in one place as you interact with the virtual world. Movement is accomplished by pointing and teleporting or artificially moving the character in some way. Finally, there’s room-scale movement. Games that utilize room-scale (such as letting you physically move around the room as it translates to inside the game world) are restricted by physical play spaces, so players are often forced to utilize other forms of movement, or locomotion mechanics, to supplement their experiences.
Solutions on how to solve the VR locomotion conundrum are a dime a dozen these days, but none of them have really stuck like developers and consumers are wanting. Some developers have doubled down on the teleportation mechanic that’s become popular as of late as an easy work around, but it’s far from ideal. On the other end of the spectrum some developers are eschewing the premise of adapted VR movement all together in favor of traditional thumbstick or track pad movement, like in Onward, for a more intense, albeit familiar, approach.
Freedom Locomotion VR is a recent demo showcase released on itch.io by George Kong, Director of Huge Robot. Kong describes his mechanics as what he hopes to see become a “game-changing VR locomotion system.”
“The solution is incredibly immersive,” Kong elaborates. “To be sure, it’s not all entirely brand new, but it hasn’t been done like this before. The key component is a novel approach to the walking in place locomotion method. You can walk, jog, run, and even sprint with it…Once you try it, it’s really difficult to go back.”
There are three fundamental modes of movement: CAOTS (Controller Assisted On The Spot) Movement, Dash Step, and Blink Step. Rather than focusing on one particular type of movement, Freedom Locomotion aims to offer a more comprehensive all-in-one system that can be adapted and applied to essentially any type of first-person VR experience. Dash Step is similar to the movement found in Raw Data, which simulates quickly dashing or sprinting in a direction rather than pure teleportation. Blink Step, however, is the teleportation mechanic most people are familiar with from a wide variety of VR games.
What sets the CAOTS Movement system apart from other running-in place mechanics I’ve tried is that it uses a combination of your controllers and the headset’s bounce to determine your movement accurately without restricting you from using your hands in the game. In other systems you need to swing your hands up and down to move, which prevents you from using items, or attach a controller to your body somewhere. This eliminates that.
All you do is place your thumb on the track pad to correspond to your locomotion direction, then move in place as you would if actually moving. It feels natural and intuitive and worked very well after I got used to it. Increasing my speed was simply a matter of jogging in place more quickly and I never lost access to my hands for shooting guns or interacting with the world while moving. Importantly, I also never lost the ability to turn my head while moving, since my trajectory wasn’t based on where I was looking.
Acceleration is another big pain point when it comes to VR motion sickness. Most smooth movement systems in VR games don’t factor that in and the consistently flat method sliding across the environment as if on ice skates is far from realistic. Since you’re actually moving and bobbing your head in real life with Freedom Locomotion, it feels natural.
We’ve covered a variety of different locomotion systems, such as the PocketStrafe app, 3DRudder footpad, ArmSwinger movement, and various running in place options. Of them all, Freedom Locomotion seems to present the most promise thus far. We’ll be interested in seeing how it evolves as a system over time and if developers are able to incorporate it into their actual projects.
What do you think about Freedom Locomotion? Does this seem like something you’d want to use? Let us know in the comments and check out the free demo right here!
