Alien: Isolation is a great game. Like many survival horror titles it seems to have gotten better as time goes on as the subtle intricacies of its design are slowly uncovered and appreciated. Some people even regard it as the best-ever game based on the popular Alien series of films. I tend to agree with those people.
Back when the game first came out there was a way to play it by modding the game files and unlocking an “experimental” VR mode, but that didn’t work on consumer headsets like the Oculus Rift CV1 until very recently and didn’t work on the HTC Vive at all until just last week. With the latest patch to a mod created by a developer that goes by Nibre, you can finally play Alien: Isolation in VR through direct SteamVR support. Here’s a video of me playing it with a Xbox One gamepad, seated, in an HTC Vive VR headset:
Having played plenty of VR horror titles such as Resident Evil 7 on PSVR, which is also seated, as well as standing motion controller games like Killing Floor: Incursion, and full-blown roomscale experiences like A Chair in a Room: Greenwater, I can honestly say that Alien: Isolation is still a top-tier VR survival horror title. The simple fact you can look around inside of lockers while hiding makes it so much more terrifying.
Granted, it was not designed exclusively for VR or officially ported directly so there are still some rough edges. Text and numbers from menus and interactive objects are very tough to read, some of the camera placement is wobbly and wonky, and it’s definitely going to make some people sick. But I’d assume if you’re a VR consumer you’re used to a bit of experimentation.
Installation
So if you want to play Alien: Isolation in VR on your Rift or Vive right now, you need this mod. Installation is dead simple as even I (someone that is typically terrified of tinkering with game files) easily got it to work. All you do is download the mod files and drag the one named “dxgi.dll” into your Alien: Isolation game folder. If you also want SteamVR support for a Steam copy of the game then drag over “openvr_api.dll” into the game folder and ad “-steamvr” to the Launch Options in Steam too.
That Launch Options setting took me a few minutes to find. Just right click on the game’s title in your Steam library and then left click on “Properties” down at the bottom of the drop down menu. Under the default “General” tab click on the “Set Launch Options” button, type “-steamvr” into the field, and click “Ok.” Now when you launch Alien: Isolation (and have your VR headset plugged in with SteamVR running) it should automatically open up in VR. All you have to do is hit play!
You can see some more gameplay in another video embedded above. For more detail on why we’re so obsessed with playing this game in VR, don’t forget to read this detailed analysis of why it’s so immersive and terrifying. Nibre is planning to eventually add motion controller support, but it’s just keyboard + mouse or gamepad for now.
Have you tried Alien: Isolation in VR? You can buy it on Steam for $39.99 (or $49.99 with all DLC) or in this currently active Spooky Horror Humble Bundle for less than $10 until 9/4/17. Did you try this latest mod? Let us know down in the comments below!
Alien: Isolation, arguably the first AAA virtual reality experience, is making a comeback in VR thanks to a modder porting over the old Oculus SDK to the contemporary one, making it playable on a Rift once again.
Videogame modders can do remarkable things, as VRFocus previously reported with the Half-Life 2 VR mod. A modder on Reddit has released an Alpha build of a mod that allows horror title Alien: Isolation to be played in virtual reality (VR).
A poster on Reddit going by the name Nibre has released an early Alpha build of a mod on to Github that allows users who own Alien: Isolation on Steam to be able to play the title in VR using an Oculus Rift headset.
The mod is currently only available for the Oculus Rift and is recommended for Seated play only, since there is no Snap Turning or teleportation movement, only free movement and slow turning. Motion control has not yet been implemented, and can currently only be played with an Xbox controller or a keyboard and mouse combination, though keyboard and mouse lacks a re-centering option. The developer is working on introducing HTC Vive compatibility, and hopes to introduce some basic HTC Vive function ‘soon’. Room scale play is also planned for a later date.
Since the mod is an Alpha build, there are some known issues, such as the monitor screen remaining black and not showing gameplay, though the Headset is functioning. Using the Oculus Mirror function is a workaround for this. The Menu can also sometimes appear off-screen, though the menu still functions and some objects can sometimes spawn too ‘close’ to the player to be properly focussed on. The developer is aware of these problems and is working to correct them.
Reception to this mod on Reddit has largely been positive, and a slew of requests to reward the modder for their hard work has prompted them to open their Paypal account to donations.
Further information can be found on the Github page.
VRFocus will continue to bring you news on VR videogame mods.
Der VR-Mod MotherVR für Alien: Isolation geht in die nächste Phase. Der Entwickler Nibre veröffentlichte die Beta 0.8.0 mit integriertem Support für Oculus Touch und Vive Controller, Mirror View und zusätzlichen In-Game-Eintellungen auf GitHub. Der Originaltitel ist für 36,99 Euro auf Steam erhältlich.
[Originalartikel vom 28. August 2017]:
Alien: Isolation lehrt PC-Spielern das Fürchten. Als Sega den Horror-Titel 2014 veröffentlichte, enthielt es bereits einen experimentellen VR-Modus, den die Entwickler allerdings nie freischalteten. Hier schafft nun Zack Fannon Abhilfe, mit einem einfach zu installierendem Mod lässt sich der VR-Modus aktivieren, um das Spiel auf der Oculus Rift in der virtuellen Welt zu genießen. Ein Mod für die HTC Vive soll folgen, außerdem verspricht Fannon weitere Anpassungen. [Update] Der Mod unterstützt jetzt SteamVR und damit jetzt auch die HTC Vive.
Mod machts möglich: Alien: Isolation in VR für Oculus Rift
Bevor der Titel Alien: Isolation das Licht der Welt erblickte, gab es bereits eine Demo des VR-Modus für die damals aktuelle zweite Entwicklerversion der Oculus Rift. Sega lieferte dann das Spiel aus und deaktivierte den VR-Modus, der Code dafür blieb aber im Programm. Trotz Petitionen mit immerhin bis zu 3000 Unterzeichnern regte sich Sega nicht, der inzwischen veraltete Code blieb inaktiv.
Nun hat Nun hat sich Zack Fannon der Situation angenommen und den Mod MotherVR auf Github veröffentlicht, mit dem das Spiel in VR auf der aktuellen Oculus Rift läuft. Fannon, der auch mit dem Nick Nibre unterwegs ist, wollte den Hack so früh wie möglich veröffentlichen, weshalb noch viele Baustellen offen sind. So kann man derzeit lediglich mit einem Xbox-Controller, Maus und Tastatur spielen, die damals noch nicht erhältlichen Touch Controller von Oculus unterstützt Alien: Isolation nicht. Fannon verspricht aber, daran zu arbeiten. Auch eine Anpassung an die HTC Vive will der Modder irgendwann nachliefern.
Es gibt noch andere Probleme mit der VR-Umsetzung, aber für das Jahr 2014 hätten die Entwickler einen guten Job gemacht, erklärt Fannon gegenüber RoadToVR. Eine technische Hürde war zudem, dass das SDK keine externen Dateien verwendet und der Code statisch im Spiel verankert ist. Um die Limitierungen zu umgehen, musste er beim Start des Spiels jeden SDK-Aufruf abfangen und auf seinen eigenen Fake-SDK-Code umleiten. Wer über die Weiterentwicklung informiert sein will, abonniert den Twitter-Kanal des Entwicklers, außerdem kann man seine Arbeit via PayPal nicht nur ideell, sondern auch finanziell unterstützen. Alien: Isolation ist über Steam für knapp 37 Euro erhältlich, bei Keyshops kann man den Titel unter Umständen aber günstiger bekommen.
Alien: Isolation (2014) is a survival horror game that’s rich detail, atmosphere, and tense moments make it a great candidate for terrifying VR experience. A new mod has been released which adds VR support to the game for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Update (8/27/17): Version 0.3.0 of the MotherVR mod has added SteamVR support, allowing Vive users to play Alien: Isolation in VR; you can find the latest version of the mod here. The article below has been updated to reflect this.
For those interested in playing the game who don’t already own it, the developer of the mod notes that you can get it for less than $10 right now via the Humble Spooky Horror Bundle, as long as you pay more than the average bundle price (currently $7.53), and the money goes to charity. That’s a steep discount compared to the current $40 asking price on Steam.
Original Article (7/30/17): Prior to its 2014 launch, Alien: Isolation was briefly demoed with a VR mode running on the second Rift development kit (DK2). It proved to be a terrifying experience, though with only tens of thousands of Rift DK2s out in the wild, the developers of the game didn’t bother to implement VR mode for the launch of the game. It turns out though that the game’s files shipped with the VR mode hidden, and some intrepid folks figured out how to activate it so they could play the game on the DK2.
But between the DK2 and the launch of the consumer Rift in 2016, the Oculus SDK (which interfaces with the game to make it work inside the headset) changed drastically, meaning that the hidden Alien: Isolation VR mode wasn’t compatible with the consumer Rift.
But that didn’t stop people from clamoring to play the game in VR. Their desire spawned multiple petitions to try to get publisher Sega to update the game with modern VR support. Despite one petition with nearly 3,000 signatures, the game’s VR mode has remained outdated and unplayable with the consumer Rift headset. But one fan decided to take action into their own hands.
An alpha version of the so-called ‘MotherVR’ mod has been released, adding Rift support to Alien: Isolation. The creator, Zack Fannon, who goes by the alias Nibre, plans to continue developing the mod to add additional features (including Vive support Vive support has been added), but says he wanted to launch the mod in its early state so that people could start playing sooner rather than later.
For now he warns the game is designed for seated play only, and works with an Xbox gamepad or keyboard and mouse. In the future, Fannon tells me that he hopes to add support for VR controllers like Touch.
Fannon is not only making the game’s old VR mode compatible with the latest version of the Rift SDK, he also plans to improve upon the original VR implementation, bringing it in line with more modern understandings of VR comfort design.
“Mandatory smooth turning, head-locked aiming, broken re-centering that doesn’t correctly align the game horizon with the real world horizon (that was terrible before I fixed it), body positioning in VR (objects way too close), forced head animation etc.,” are all issues in Alien: Isolation which VR developers today steer clear of, Fannon said. “To be fair to the developers though, in 2014 we really didn’t know as much regarding VR methodologies as we do now. So with that in mind, their VR support was actually pretty good for the time.”
He explained that the game’s use of a (now) old Oculus SDK is the reason why it doesn’t support the consumer version of the Rift without the MotherVR mod.
“[The SDK is] so old in fact, that it doesn’t even use any external files at all, all of the SDK gets statically compiled directly into the game itself. It’s locked in there, and can’t be easily changed. This limitation, is the main reason why support has been restricted to the DK2 and older legacy runtimes for so long,” Fannon told me. “How I’ve been able to circumvent that is by patching every SDK call in the game when it launches, to redirect it to my own ‘fake’ SDK code. I then take these requests from the game, and reinterpret them to the current Oculus SDK, translating and fixing things along the way.”
Because Fannon doesn’t have access to the game’s source code, he can’t peer directly into the game’s makeup, meaning that some of the tweaks need to be done at a much lower level.
“[…] the rest of what I’m fixing is accomplished at an assembly level, hooking from non-SDK game code and reading raw memory, making small patches to fix what I can.”
You can download and try the alpha version of the MotherVR mod yourself (of course you’ll need a copy of Alien: Isolation). Fannon says that if you’d like to keep abreast of updates, the best place to keep an eye on development is at his twitter account.
If you’d like to support the work he’s doing, you can do so via this PayPal link, but Fannon says he’s gaining much from the development of the mod even without any compensation.
“For the most part, I’m self taught with technology-related things, just learning and figuring out whatever I can when presented with an obstacle or interesting challenge. This project has been a great opportunity to expand my knowledge. Sometimes you just don’t know how well you understand the ins and outs of a concept until you’ve implemented it from scratch yourself,” he said. “Two years ago I would have been the person begging for someone else to release such a mod, so it’s very cool for me to be that person. No needing to wait around, just go see if you can learn something new, and make some progress on accomplishing something cool.”
Making Alien: Isolation work in VR so that a bunch of people to scare the pants off of themselves? I’d call that pretty cool indeed.
SYREN (2017)is a single-player, survival-horror game that will have you sneaking around corners, hiding under virtual desks, and flailing helplessly as you’re mauled to death by the world’s ghastly “Syrens,” a terrifying amalgamation of human/robot/awfulness. Despite some pretty distracting bugs in the game, it’s safe to say that people with high blood pressure or heart conditions need not apply.
SYREN Details:
Developer: Hammerhead VR Available On: Oculus Touch, HTC Vive (Steam and Oculus Home) Reviewed on: HTC Vive and Oculus Rift Release Date: February 15th, 2017
Gameplay
Much like Alien: Isolation (2014), Syren is an absolutely terrifying game of hide and seek, but this time instead of the clostrophobic world of a spaceship and an acid-spiting Xenomorph, you’re in an underwater research facility placed above an ancient lost city once populated by a species of kind-of-sexy, kind-of-horrific mermaids—at least they were supposed to be, as the creatures you meet are genetically engineered copies called Syrens.
Created by a scientist obsessed with eugenics, your job is to escape the now damaged facility that’s become overwhelmed with the free-roaming Syren, going across a number of levels filled with deceased colleagues and all manner of interactive item that can bring you ever closer to the 5-level facility’s next pressurized door.
Each level is essentially a puzzle with a few different solutions, from nabbing a keycard off a desk and sneaking past a lonely Syren, to all-out shoot-em-up chaos with multiple baddies as you learn the mystery of the madman who created the facility.
The game has a very specific idea of how it wants you to proceed, something I found to be slightly frustrating early on. After getting killed multiple times by the same Syren and getting tossed back to the beginning of the level, I found out that when they lunge at your throat, you can’t simply whack the beast to death with an ax that you collected earlier like you naturally would if someone was coming at you and you had a melee weapon in hand. Rather, the game wants you to physically throw the ax, thereby losing it in the thing’s face so the game can leave you without a weapon for the next trial. The only way you can figure this out is either by having the original thought to toss the ax, or by failing your way to the solution like I did.
1 of 4
Although there’s a steep learning curve to how you interact with the Syren (mostly by staying far away from them, running and hiding for your life), eventually the game becomes a little more intuitive as you learn the rules that the AI Syren abide by. For example, if a Syren gets close enough to you, it initiates an uninterruptible attack that you have to stomach—a wailing monster screaming in your face and biting your neck—so you learn to avoid these pants-shitting moments as best you can, otherwise you’ll be sent back to the beginning of the level.
You can get away from Syrens by hiding stealthy, teleporting quickly to find cover, or by distracting them by throwing items far away from you to take them off your track. Since the monsters react to noise (and strangely enough not your microphone), they will scream over to where the object landed, only to find no one there, giving you some time to dodge around them. There are however multiple Syrens per level, so this is where it gets tricky.
Several times I found myself hiding under a desk, or behind a dead body for cover, all the while hearing the banshee screams and heavy breathing of the genetically engineered monster coming my way. And if it weren’t enough of a fright, no matter where they find you, cowering in a corner or halfway outside of a locker, they always grab you by the face and scream a horrifying noise into your ears.
Immersion
The Syrens make a lot of noise, which should be a good thing on principle so you can avoid them efficiently, but the noise wasn’t at all muffled by objects like walls or barriers like in real life. If you find yourself sandwiched in a side room with two Syrens slinking around and breathing all scary-like, you won’t have a good idea of realistically where they are. Instead, a Syren will sound like they’re right on top of you even though you have a concrete wall between you.
Whether you’re using Oculus Touch or the Vive’s Lighthouse controllers, hands simply aren’t 1:1, making them seem a full three inches away from where your hands naturally rest on the controllers. While it’s not game-breaking, it certainly hampers immersion. In the end, this isn’t something dramatic to fix, but how such a critical error got through on launch, I’m just not sure.
On the note of controllers, Oculus Touch support could be a lot better. The game requires you to push down and click on the joystick to teleport, which proves to be just about as awkward as can be. Teleporting is much more intuitive on the Vive, requiring you to simply rest your thumb on the touchpad and engage a quick click, but Rift users beware.
Firing guns in the game unfortunately never felt natural on either Touch or Vive controller, as your trigger is used to pick up and hold items and a regular button press is used to activate or fire it. This made it feel more like changing the channel on a remote control than firing a gun.
And this is the part of the article where I make my biggest confession. I am a dirty, no good, wall-hacking cheater.
Because the game is room-scale, it means you can teleport close to walls and actually walk through them. Some games like Budget Cuts or Onward (2016) don’t allow you to do this, either by making it impossible to see or leaving your body behind to be ravaged by enemies, but not so with Syren. When a screaming water-banshee is running you down, and you can walk straight through a wall and escape, the natural choice is to flee anyway the game will let you. While I know I’m a weak and shameful person for using this cheat to get away, it really shouldn’t even be an option in the first place.
There, I feel better now.
Comfort
While you’ll never be truly comfortable with genetically modified mermaid-beasts skulking around, nuts and bolts-wise Syren is a supremely comfortable experience because it lets you explore the world using teleportation and 45 degree snap-turning—two common locomotion schemes that most everyone shouldn’t have a problem in the nausea department.
Even though at times I honestly wish I could sit down and mash a joystick forward on a gamepad instead of frantically selecting teleport sites—because it’s not only faster, but easier—the standing room-scale aspect of the game lends to overall comfort and immersion. And somehow it’s always scarier that way, as you’re on your hands and knees hoping the monster doesn’t see you.
Welcome to another edition of VR vs. The weekly VRFocus column where the ‘other one’ from the site talks about most anything and everything to do with virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) or some crazed combination of the three. Today we’re continuing a thread begun last week in the final part of my three-week feature into what may lie ahead in 2017. There I mooted the idea that of all the studios currently involved within VR, certainly from a gaming perspective there is one that is conspicuous by its absence. SEGA. Yes, yes, I know there are Hatsune Miku games but as I pointed out at the time Hatsune Miku and the vocaloid bunch ultimately aren’t SEGA property and aren’t a traditional franchise. They aren’t one recognised within their All-Stars series for instance – and whilst that isn’t a qualifying marker for this list considering how big the Project Diva series is and how iconic a figure Miku is in Japanese culture certainly, you’d have thought SEGA would make more of a deal out of things than they have were she theirs. So on that basis, scrub those out PSVR games off your mental tally.
Updated total? Zero.
This is unusual for SEGA. Historically SEGA (at least in the third-party era) have rushed in to support whatever new technology comes along. Do you by any chance remember the EyeToy, Sony’s camera accessory for the PlayStation 2? Yes? No? There weren’t exactly a whole heap of games for it. But SEGA were there with the original SEGA Superstars to fly the flag. They supported the Kinect they fell into bed with Wii U pretty quickly, etc, etc. For SEGA to not have had one of its more noted franchises in the West ready to rock and roll when VR came to retail, certainly the PSVR, was pretty unusual. (Again, discounting the leek-swinging singer lady.)
But that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of opportunities for SEGA to embrace VR and thrown a bone to its more beloved franchises. It’s one of the sad truths about SEGA that their most iconic of series, with the exception of the fast spiky one, have never exactly been humongous successes financially. Still, why not use some of them and maybe give them a new lease of life outside of a new racing game? (No, really SEGA. It’s time for Transformed 2. Throw some money at SUMO Digital, will ya?) It’s also not like we don’t know SEGA aren’t messing around with VR either. Both SEGA Europe (SOE) and SEGA America (SOA) revealed their ownership of VR headsets (HTC Vive and PlayStation VR for SOE and Hololens for SOA) thanks to community videos. Never reveal you’ve got any kit you’ve not announced you’re working with as you’re either giving something away or starting unnecessary rumour. So yeah, way to keep that under wraps chaps. A+ work.
So let’s get things underway. As before I must point out that I used to work for SEGA for several years and worked on a number of the franchises listed that I’ll be bringing up. It was some time ago now, but I’m reliably informed that if I don’t do that the world will apparently end. We begin first with an honourable mention which will upset you by not being on the list proper.
Honourable Mention: Alien Isolation
It’s just not going to happen folks. Many have said the masterfully creepy atmosphere of “SEGA’s Good Alien Game” – tho everyone forgets they also did an Alien game on the DS in that discussion – was a perfect match for a full and proper adaption into a VR experience. The scare factor would be immense, obviously. As it’s bad enough being stalked by a Xenomorph without actually looking down at your chest as its tail pushes through it to kill you. As much as we’d all like it to, the economic factors involved just mean Alien Isolation is a non-starter for Creative Assembly to even get involved in really. Boo-urns.
However, speaking of Creative Assembly…
Total War
It’s one of gaming’s little quirks that one of console gaming’s most well known names is the publisher that is in actuality one of PC Gaming’s powerhouses. Between Sports Interactive’s Football Manager series and Creative Assembly’s Total War franchise SEGA have an commanding grip of the PC chart, one would go far to say dominance at some points in the year. If you have lived in a hole for the past couple of decades, Total War is a series of real-time strategy games that takes keen players take on the role of General in various eras of time. Replaying notable battles and playing tactical hardball with history. Whether it’s the Medieval period, the time of Rome, the rise of Napoleon or the era of the samurai there’s plenty to do. Heck, you can even throw history right out the window now and enjoy some Warhammer in your Total War.
Total War has always been about getting stuck in to battles. The planning, the preparation, the implementation and the execution. The buck stops with you, and as the series has developed the control system has allowed you to get ever deeper into the action. You can even follow individual soldiers. It’s such a well developed system that there’s even been a BBC game show (essentially) based on playing the series. One that’s recently had something of a comeback.
So with this in mind how would VR make Total War better? Control.
Now, considering what I’ve just written you might be wondering what I’ve been talking about since I’ve just been praising the system. But you can always improve and everyone and anyone who has played Total War has always had periods where the game just won’t place units right or you can’t get the camera in jussssst the right position. Now imagine you are in the map as opposed to looking at a 2D surface. Imagine you were, with your motion controllers able to to manipulate your units and your surroundings just so. How much easier and dynamic and engaging an experience that would bee if you brought a touch of Minority Report to proceedings.
Heck, can you imagine a Hololens version of Total War? With you waging battles from your sofa over your coffee table, and manoeuvring your archers onto the high ground of the TV unit? That’d be amazing.
Samba de Amigo
Break out the Bellini boys and girls!
When I first saw the HTC Vive controllers my first thought, partly because of how they were being held and moved at the time, was that they kind of looked like maracas. And there’s only one game that invites you, without a hint of suggestiveness, to get your maracas out. Samba de Amigo first burst onto the scene on SEGA’s much loved Dreamcast and was actually developed by Sonic Team if you didn’t realise it. It also came out as an arcade experience before next surfacing on the Nintendo Wii. The game plays with you in amongst a vibrantly coloured carnival, armed with your maracas you control Amigo, one of SEGA’s two monkey mascots (the other being Super Monkey Ball‘s AiAi, strangely the two have never been seen as rivals in the Superstars/All-Stars titles. Which has always puzzled me.) You move and dance along to a selection of upbeat tracks, shaking your controllers in time to the beat and occasionally having to strike a pose. It’s a simple enough title, and well and truly puts the party into party game.
VR needs more games like that I think. More games that are just full on fun and colours. It’s why Balloon Chair Death Match got people excited, it was a simple premise and it looked fun. Job Simulator is the same. Bright colours and positively oozes fun. Yes, we can all enjoy a nice serious game with high stakes, but in dammit we all just want to be silly sometimes. Samba allows you to do exactly that. Now, what I’m essentially asking you is to imagine this in VR. Please watch the video below as in this instance it is important to what I’m writing about.
A warning before you dohowever; if you are wearing headphones please turn them down. There’s some loud audio distortion on the video from the outset.
Just look at this man. Look how bloody happy he is. He doesn’t care he’s in the middle of an arcade, he doesn’t care he has a crowd. He’s just going for it: a master at work. Nevermind your beloved Salt Bae (a reference I realise will date this article terribly), in your heart of hearts you wish that were you. You wish you were as cool as the Samba Bae.
Now I’m waving any potential wire-based issues here. Forget ’em. Let’s lay it out. You put on the headset and you step into a party; a “Carnaval de VR”. Everyone around you is interacting with you. The movement is infectious. You are the centre of a mass celebration with bouncing creatures and an equally bouncing musical beat. You have motion tracking controls. You wave them about in time to the music. It’s escapement, elation, exercise and fun. Now we bring things up to date with the new technology and throw in a dash of evolution to the game as well. Unlike before you can use the sensors or PlayStation camera to fully track your movements. All of a sudden Samba can have a touch of Dance Central in it, evolving it into a bit more of a full body game with one stroke. You have greater accuracy than ever before on the controllers, the game can actually see you for the first time and you get one of the most smile inducing experiences on VR. As an added bonus it gets to be a game franchise fully realised on VR, something people are clamoring for.
Yo SEGA. You’ve got my number. Call my people (me) and let’s make this happen. I’m totally open to being Producer on this thing. SAMBA! Du du de-du du-du du de-du…
Condemned
There’s a very good chance you don’t remember Condemned: Criminal Origins. There’s an even better chance you’ve never played it or Condemned 2: Bloodshot. Which is a pity really. Condemned is a first-person experience which puts you in the shoes of Ethan Thomas, a police officer investigating a murder which slowly takes him down a path to discovering secret societies, mysterious entities, encountering nightmarish visions and the city falling into the grip of madness. Both games are a twisted mix of dark menacing settings, genuine scares that mess with play on psychology and improvised combat usually involving whatever Ethan can get his hands on. It’s frantic, up in-your-face stuff and perfect for VR with the combat emphasis on melee.
It’s not just that though. The first Condemned game especially has you dealing, within your role as a police investigator, a number of different crime scenes. These are technical, and involve you hunting for clues, such as finger prints and making deductions. What Condemned is, is what I suggested it could be back at E3 2016. It could be the Batman VR game you’ve always wanted but combined with all the best twisted bits of Resident Evil VII.
We’ll just ignore the bit about shouting people to death from number 2. (Check out my good friend John’s Let’s Play of Condemned 2 to see what I mean.)
That’s all for this week. On next week’s selection of titles we’re embracing freedom in a couple of ways and I use the term “wave shooter”. Which will probably annoy people. Until then…
Nun hat Nun hat sich Zack Fannon der Situation angenommen und den Mod MotherVR auf 
