Sony today announced that PSVR title No Heroes Allowed! VR (aka What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord?), a quirky Japanese real-time strategy game exclusively for PlayStation VR, will be making a Western debut this fall.
First announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2016, this little RTS lets you become a veritable God of Destruction, and together with the wise-cracking Badmen and Badmella you aim for world domination by raising a monster army to face the game’s little pint-sized heroes.
No Heroes Allowed! VR is created by Sony’s Japan Studio and game developer Aquire, and continues the tounge-in-cheek franchise following numerous No Heroes Allowed made available across a wide gamut of Sony devices.
According to Silicon Era, No Heroes Allowed! VR was first slated for a spring 2017 release, but was later pushed back to fall. No firm release date has been established for either Japanese or Western release at this time.
Sony’s E3 press conference saw a rush of reveals coming to the company’s PlayStation 4 headset PSVR, including a full release of Skyrim VR coming in November and a list of VR exclusives soon to follow.Among them is the stylized and the ever so cool Superhot VR (2016) finally coming to PSVR.
Update 07/18: updated exact release date.
While currently only available on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive since its initial release back in December, Superhot VR is officially coming to PlayStation VR on 19th July in Europe, and on 21st July in North America, launching alongside Superhot for PS4. Both PS4 game and PSVR-only Superhot VR will cost $24.99 separately, or together in a ‘Mind is Software’ bundle for $39.99.
Reviewing on Oculus Rift with Touch, we rated Superhot VRa solid 9.1/10. It’s a seriously fun title that gives you a bullet-time mechanic that translates phenomenally well to VR. Like a living puzzle, each bullet/punch/explosion is an opportunity to feel like the action hero-badass you always wished you were. While there isn’t much of a story to follow, it’s certainly an unabashedly unique and heart-pumping game currently out for VR headsets. Despite only clocking in at a little over 2 hours of gameplay, it’s one of those games you’ll pick up again and again, if only to show your friends just how cool you can feel while grabbing a pistol out of a bad guy’s hand, shattering another guy with a punch and shooting down a row of the offending crystalline red guys from across the room.
After playing the Oculus version of Superhot VR, Road to VR Executive Editor Ben Lang had this to say:
Every movement matters. Every pull of the trigger counts. My body is anchored inside the virtual world because I have to dodge punches, knives, and bullets—it’s interacting with me in a significant way. Enemies aim well, and you have to dodge better to stay alive. Like Neo stopping the bullets for the first time at the end of The Matrix, I wanted to be able to hold up my hand and say “No,” to what I knew in an instant was the end of the game that had come a bit too soon. But, despite my training, I was not The One.
We haven’t seen pre-order up for the PSVR version of Superhot VR yet, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled and update as more info comes in.
At Sony’s E3 2017 presentation the company announced a slew of brand new titles heading to PSVR. The range of games is diverse, from shooter to puzzle, to horror, and more.
Though Skyrim is coming to PSVR, Sony’s E3 presentation also featured a section dedicated to brand new PSVR games not seen anywhere else yet. Here’s a quick look:
Star Child
Star Child is a new title from VR developer Playful, the studio that made Lucky’s Tale (2016). The new game appears to be a platformer like Lucky’s Tale but has a vastly different setting. It seems the game will play with scale quite significantly as your tiny character eventually meets a huge robot-like life form who wants to help. We’re guessing there may be portions of the way where the character inhabits the robot and interacts with the character as a giant helper.
The Inpatient
The Inpatient is coming from Supermassive Games, the studio behind PSVR title Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, Tumble VR, and other non-VR titles. The game looks to be a first-person horror/thriller which will take place in a medical ward. At first glance it seems reminiscent of the recently released Wilson’s Heart on Oculus.
Final Fantasy: Monsters of the Deep
From Square Enix, this appears to be the evolution of the Final Fantasy VR Experience that Sony had announced alongside Final Fantasy XV at last year’s E3. The gameplay revealed so far shows a VR fishing experience ranging from little fish to giant monsters. It isn’t clear if the game will be DLC for the latest Final Fantasy or a standalone title. The game is due to launch in September.
Bravo Team
Also from Supermassive Games, Bravo Team is a cover-based shooter that looks to be almost guaranteed to support the new PSVR Aim controller that recently debuted with Farpoint (2017).
Moss
Perhaps the most unique looking title announced in the bunch, Moss, from developer Polyarc, features an adorable little sword-wielding mouse as the main character. The player will inhabit a spirit-like avatar who will help guide the mouse (from a third-person vantage point) along its adventures. The game appears to be primarily a puzzle-adventure game with light combat.
It’s official. Sony is bringing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to PlayStation VR. Revealed today during Sony’s E3 conference, the company showed the full physicality of the game in a trailer with the watermark “PlayStation VR Game” to prove it.
While it was theorized that Fallout 4 VR and Doom VFR would be the only Bethesda IPs to come to VR headsets this E3, Sony threw us a curveball with the newly revealed trailer.
Telling from the trailer (posted above) it looks to use motion controllers, allowing you to slash, block, shoot arrows, and cast spells with the PlayStation Move controllers.
Skyrim is officially heading to PlayStation VR this November. Developed by Bethesda Game Studios, Skyrim VR is the full game plus all of the official add-ons: Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn.
Skyrim will be available for pre-order soon from Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. No pricing information is available at this time.
This story is breaking. Check back for updates soon.
E3 2017 is here, and Sony’s conference is kicking off tonight at 6PM PST (local time here) where VR announcements are sure to await. Enjoy our predictions and watch the livestream here linked below.
We’ve long suspectedStar Wars: Battlefront II., a game that took the spotlight at EA Play yesterday, would officially support PSVR in some capacity. Last month we reported on tweets by Alex Mole, CTO of EA’s Criterion, the studio which developed the well regarded Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: X-Wing VR Mission for PSVR which was released as a piece of DLC for the original game. The tweets seemed to suggest—but didn’t confirm—that Criterion is building additional PSVR content to accompany Battlefront II.
At a special pre-GDC 2016 event, Sony announced PSVR’s official launch date and showcased many games at a hands-on sessions after the event. That’s the last we saw of Highwire Games’ Golem, a first-person action adventure game that puts you in control of a stone creature called … well … a golem. Highwire Games is a new development studio formed from ex-Bungie staffers, including Halo composer Marty O’Donnell, and we suspect some news will come out about the game that’s since gone MIA.
E3 2016 saw the unveiling of PlayStation Aim, a PSVR-compatible gun peripheral. While breakout success Farpoint (2017) makes use of the gun, Sony maintains more first-party games using the controller are sure to follow.
Ubisoft today announced a new VR arcade shooter called Space Junkies, billing it as a “jetpack-fueled arcade shooter developed exclusively for virtual reality gaming.”
According to Ubisoft, the game features fast-paced multiplayer competition set in three-dimensional “Orbital Arenas,” letting players have shootouts in a micro-gravity environment. Space Junkies will be available on Oculus Rift (requiring Touch) and HTC Vive in spring 2018.
Developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, the same studio that produced much of the Rayman series, Space Junkies features 1v1 or 2v2 combat inside the “Dirty Bowl,” a collection of Orbital Arenas that Ubisoft says “dynamically respond to players’ actions and allow them to navigate and attack from any direction.” Weapons are customizable and have the ability to be combined, the emphasis being on the player’s ability to change up their assault tactics.
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image courtesy Ubisoft
image courtesy Ubisoft
image courtesy Ubisoft
To drive the experience, Ubisoft Montpellier created a new VR-capable engine called Brigitte, which the company says is designed to “evolve and adapt to the way worlds can now be created for VR, as well as including the new VR interfaces in the development process and map creations.”
“Space Junkies is for VR players who are looking for something new and insane and that will get their competitive juices flowing,” said Adrian Lacey, Producer, Ubisoft Montpellier. “We are creating a multiplayer, competitive, adrenaline-filled shooter that’s out of this Galaxy, and gives players freedom to take full advantage of the evolution of player to machine interfaces that only virtual reality can offer.”
Doom VFR, the VR-compatible game following Id Software’s recent Doom (2016), is now available for pre-order for $29.99 on PSVR and HTC Vive, a far cry from the non-VR game’s original launch price of $59.99 just last year. You might be wondering why.
While the non-VR Doom has since gone down in price (now $29.99), it comes to us from the same parent studio, Bethesda, that just priced the upcoming Fallout 4 VR at a full price tag of $59.99. Bethesda confidently writes this in the first line of the Fallout 4 VR description:
“Fallout 4 […] finally comes in its entirety to VR. Fallout 4 VR includes the complete core game with all-new combat, crafting, and building systems fully reimagined for virtual reality. The freedom of exploring the wasteland comes alive like never before.”
Unlike Fallout 4 VR, what we’ve read in the product descriptions across the various digital marketplaces about Doom VFR’s doesn’t make it clear whether the VR game is going to be the full base game or another entirely separate experience all together. Only in a recent blog post does Bethesda call Doom VFR a “standalone VR game.”
Doom VFR Product Description
Experience DOOM combat and its iconic weapons and demons from an entirely new perspective
Physically interact with the DOOM universe as you seamlessly traverse across the UAC facility and Hell using tele-portation and jet-strafe movement
Explore all-new UAC Martian research facility areas and discover the unique abilities of a cybernetic UAC security operative
Set shortly after the demonic invasion on the UAC’s Martian research facility, you are the last known human survivor – until your death. Under a top-secret UAC operational contingency protocol, your consciousness is transferred to an artificial brain matrix. Your designated purpose: restore operational stability and use any means necessary to stop the on-slaught of demons.
Id Software CTO Robert Duffy says its “a DOOM game specifically for virtual reality [which] has provided an exciting opportunity to not only surround players with the world of DOOM like never before, but also let them experience and explore the UAC and Hell in new ways, playing as new characters with totally unique tools and abilities.”
The game is currently available for pre-order now through the PlayStation Store, Steam and Amazon. Published release dates appear to be placeholders, as Bethesda’s only mentioned a Q4 2017 launch window.
We’re currently reporting from E3 in Los Angeles, so check back for more news surrounding new VR games and experiences.
Starting off today’s E3 fun, Intel announced that not only will upcoming VR title Lone Echo have a free multiplayer mode for all Oculus Rift owners, but that Linkin Park is releasing a VR experience next month.
With the help of AR/VR production studio Spatialand, Linkin Park’s VR experience will feature music, special contests, Linkin Park merchandise, and the ability to unlock secret fan experiences and events created by the band.The experience will be available for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive starting July 27th, a date in line with Linkin Park’s first concert in their One More Light World Tour.
The Linkin Park VR Destination will be published on the Spatialand app.
image courtesy Linkin Park
Spatialand was created by the founders of Prologue Films (Rogue One, Iron Man 2, X-Men, Tron, Prometheus and Destiny) and Prologue Immersive (Memos from Hell and GearVR’s Science360). The company has created a VR platform and toolset for enterprise, brands and consumers to create immersive content ‘destinations’ like Linkin Park’s upcoming experience.
Bethesda’s E3 keynote has seen a number of announcements including a new Fallout 4 VR trailer that gives the first public glimpse of VR gameplay in the Wasteland. The company has also revealed that the game will launch in October.
When we tried out an early version of Fallout 4 VR at last year’s E3, it wasn’t apparent just how the studio would retrofit the open world game to VR headsets. There were still plenty of questions about final locomotion style, inventory management and simple things like placing the game’s crafting items. Critically, there was also no ‘V.A.T.S.’ a satisfying slow-motion combat mechanic that has defined the Fallout franchise in recent years.
While only a quick glimpse, the trailer (heading this article) seems to show that the devs have scraped the previous teleportation mechanic in favor of a smooth, forward movement, though this could perhaps be one of several locomotion options. Inventory hasn’t been entirely revealed, but since the game’s ‘Pipboy’ wrist-mounted computer also acts as an inventory management device in the previous non-VR version, it stands to reason the VR Pipboy will too.
The trailer makes heavy emphasis of the crafting/base building mechanic for which Fallout 4 has become so well known, letting you select items by browsing through a hand-mounted UI, and place them easily through natural hand motions.
There’s still no info on how Fallout 4 VR’s V.A.T.S. will work, though Bethesda teases on Twitter that “VATS = another level,” suggesting a complete redesign of the stylized slow-motion targeting system for VR.
Bethesda has confirmed that Fallout 4 VR will launch on the HTC Vive in October 2017. While most Vive games are built on Valve’s OpenVR and technically support the Rift too, it’s unclear if the game will actively block Rift support via OpenVR due to Bethesda parent company Zenimax’s unpleasant history with Oculus.
E3 is here, and Bethesda, the makers of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, may be announcing updates to their first ever public VR offerings at tonight’s E3 keynote. Watch the livestream right here.
Since VR versions of both Fallout 4 (2015) and Doom (2016) were revealed at last year’s E3, we haven’t seen or heard much about specifics surrounding the ‘Bethesda VR’ initiatives. Bethesda has however said that Fallout 4 VR for the HTC Vive will be the entire game and not just a demo or vertical slice, and put the speculative release date “within 12 months” from last year’s E3. That mean’s this month, folks.
I had my hands on both Fallout 4 and Doom VRadaptations at last year’s E3, and while a little rough around the edges at the time (Doom was little more than a tech demo with no actual gameplay), the ability to see the familiar worlds in VR seemed to breathe life into the games not only by making a Wasteland Raider or a Cacodemon that much more intimidating, but by showing you the true scale of the worlds set before you.
The livestream starts at 9PM PST (click here for local time). What do you think Bethesda will show at this year’s E3? Comment below!
