Nominees for The Game Awards are generally chosen by a jury of gaming-focused media outlets with the winner chosen through a combination jury vote and public fan voting. Voting ends Dec. 11 at 6 pm Pacific and you can vote at the link above.
Concrete Genie from Pixelopus includes a VR mode as well and was nominated in the Games for Impact category.
2019 has been a big year for virtual reality game releases, like a fully realized VR mode for No Man’s Sky and our first 5/5 rated game Asgard’s Wrath, each of which made the cut for nominations. Other impressive titles, though, including our second 5/5 rated game, Pistol Whip, and the impressive shooter Stormland seemed to slide under the jury’s radar. The rules state that Nov. 15 was the cut off for nominations and both games released before then.
Rumors also point to Half-Life: Alyx being part of this year’s edition of The Game Awards in some capacity, though that was before Valve announced it is sharing details this Thursday.
The Game Awards air live for free on Thursday, December 12 at 5:30 pm on major social, streaming and gaming platforms worldwide.
What do you think? Do you agree with the nominations or were there any great VR games from 2019 you felt should have been recognized? Please share in the comments.
After a successful launch in May, Sony London Studio has continued to support its story-driven shooter Blood & Truth with updates and even a demo. Now the studio has released its biggest package of new features, adding a hard mode as well as challenges which support the PlayStation Aim controller.
Sony London Studio has introduced five Skeet challenges to test your shooting abilities, all of which are PlayStation Aim compatible. These are:
Authentic Skeet: Move between eight stations shooting at high and low clays launched as singles or doubles, with 25 being the perfect score.
Extreme Skeet: Set on London’s rooftops, you’ll between eight stations shooting at high and low clays launched as singles or doubles. Extra targets will appear for additional points.
Endurance Skeet: Clays are launched from high towers and you lose a life for every clay missed. You only have three lives but can earn any lost life’s back by scoring three consecutive hits.
Puzzle Skeet: Hit three targets to release a coloured clay. Lights switch on with each hit target tell you which colour clay you need to shoot next. Hit the Clay to move on to the next set of targets, miss and you need to hit the three targets again to relaunch the clay.
Action Skeet: A training challenge, which includes static and launched targets.
For those that have breezed through the campaign and want a real test of skill, there’s the new Hard Mode. As you’d expect Hard mode means you have less health to start with and your recovery is slower, enemies are a lot more accurate, and Precision Mode comes with less time to use it. Hard Mode allows you to replay individual missions or the entire campaign using the New Game+ feature.
Blood & Truth has proven to be one of the best PlayStation VR titles this year, with VRFocus giving the videogame a full five star review, commenting: “While you don’t have the freedom of Borderlands 2 VR for example, with Blood & Truth you have a far more focused videogame that knows what it wants to achieve, and that’s put a smile on your face. From start to finish Blood & Truth is one hell of a ride, a finely choreographed John Woo movie that’s all about sheer entertainment.”
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Blood & Truth and Sony London Studio, reporting back with the latest updates and announcements.
Following an update earlier this summer which added a New Game+ mode, mini-game challenges, and online leaderboards, a new Blood & Truth update today adds a Hard Mode, a handful of new shooting challenges, and some new trophies for completionists to chase.
Blood & Truth, easily one of PSVR’s top games in 2019 (our review here), gets a free update today which will give players reason to dive back in to London’s underground. London Studio detailed the update over at the official PlayStation Blog.
In addition to shooting challenges that were previously added to the game post-launch, this update adds five new skeet shooting challenges that will test your ability to shoot clay pigeons out of the air with your trusty shotgun.
Authentic Skeet In our Authentic Skeet experience, you move between eight stations shooting at high and low clays launched as singles or doubles. 25 is a perfect score but we’ll be timing you to sort the hotshots from the wannabes.
Extreme Skeet Move between eight stations on London’s rooftops, shooting high and low clay launches as singles and doubles. Look out for additional targets between stations for extra points.
Endurance Skeet Here, clays are launched from high towers. Lose a life for every clay you miss. You have three lives but can earn a lost life back with three consecutive hits. Hit as many clays as you can before you run out of lives.
Puzzle Skeet Hit three targets to release a colored clay. Lights switch on with each hit target tell you which color clay you need to shoot next. Hit the Clay to move on to the next set of targets, miss and you need to hit the three targets again to relaunch the clay.
Action Skeet This is our training challenge, which includes static and launched targets. You can polish your skills in here.
There’s also a hidden gnome in each of the modes which will earn you a new trophy when you find all five.
The update also brings Hard Mode to Blood & Truth, and players can choose to play individual missions in Hard Mode or start a full Hard Mode playthrough with New Game+ (which allows players to use their unlocked arsenal from a previous playthrough at the start of a new campaign). A new trophy is awaiting those who tackle the whole campaign in Hard Mode.
Hard Mode is pretty much what it sounds like… London Studio says that enemies are more accurate while the player has less health which is also slower to recover. The game’s ‘Precision Mode’ slow-mo feature is also reduced in Hard Mode, but painted as an invaluable tool because enemies will be less accurate if you use it while moving.
To tackle Hard Mode, the studio reminds players they can use silencers on their weapons to take out enemies quietly, use their off-hand to steady the weapon’s recoil (even on pistols), and equip scopes and laser sights to be more accurate.
The game’s online rankings are also getting a separate Hard Mode leaderboard for those who want to vie for the top score.
If you were skeptical about the $40 price tag on Sony’s latest PSVR exclusive, Blood & Truth (2019), the company has some good news: you can now play a healthy slice of the game for free starting today.
Sony says in a blog post that players will get to infiltrate an enemy compound, engage in an intense rooftop shootout and take part in a car chase—something the studio calls a “gameplay-heavy slice” of the game.
We gave the full game a solid [8.5/10] in our review for its strong gunplay coupled with its thoughtful, high-octane story that truly makes you feel like you’re in action hero ripped from the silver screen.
And while we finished the game in around four hours, Sony’s London Studio is actually getting ready to push out a new update for July 25th that they say includes some “fun post-game extras.”
We aren’t sure what those are yet, but it’s only a few more days away.
One of the biggest PlayStation VR videogame releases in 2019 occurred at the end of May, with the arrival of Blood & Truth. This was the creation of London Studio, part of Sony Worldwide Studios. Today, Sony London Studio has launched a dedicated website for fans to check out what the team is up to.
The studio has a long and illustrious history dating all the way back to its foundation in 2002, with highs and lows along the way. That year saw the launch of The Getaway for PlayStation 2 with the team going onto support the EyeToy digital camera, release the SingStar franchise (2004); begin work on PlayStation Portable content (2005), launch the EyePet franchise (2009) and then augmented reality (AR) book Wonderbook for PlayStation Move and PlayStation Eye.
London Studio has always been at the forefront of PlayStation technology, so it’s no surprise that the team were tasked with creating one of the launch titles for PlayStation VR in 2016, PlayStation VR Worlds. This compilation for five mini-games allowed players to dive beneath the waves in Ocean Descent, take part in illegal street racing in VR Luge, or step into London’s gritty underworld in The London Heist.
It was after the release of PlayStation VR Worlds that the studio hit the gaming headlines, laying off staff as the studio restructured due to the project finishing. But that wasn’t the end of London Studios’ dance with VR as is well known, taking the inspiration behind The London Heist and greatly expanding upon the experience with the rather superb Blood & Truth. A title VRFocus awarded a full five stars to, the review saying: From start to finish Blood & Truth is one hell of a ride, a finely choreographed John Woo movie that’s all about sheer entertainment.
With the new website, fans will be able to connect more directly to the studio, learning about its history, staff, and the behind the scenes work they do. Check out the fancy new video to see the team in action.
There’s nothing juicy on the website at the moment regarding future plans. If there’s no news on there then, of course, don’t forget to return to VRFocus for the latest VR updates.
As the studio behind the excellent PlayStation VR Worlds, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s London Studio has been at the forefront of VR game design since before PSVR even shipped back in 2016. With their latest title, Blood & Truth, the studio sought to deliver its first full-length VR title, and the result is an impressive action-filled journey that delivers the most convincing virtual characters we’ve seen in a VR game to date. To learn from the studio’s approach to VR game design—and to get a glimpse at the artwork that drove and resulted from the game’s development—we spoke with Stuart Whyte, Director of VR Product Development, and Anthony Filice, Art Director, both from Sony’s London Studio.
Editor’s Note: The big, beautiful pictures and exclusive artwork in this article are best viewed on a desktop browser with a large screen, or in landscape orientation on your phone. All images courtesy SIE London Studio.
Although, superficially, making VR games doesn’t seem far removed from making traditional games, truly native VR games aren’t so easily categorized among the non-VR game genres we think of today. You might be tempted to call Blood & Truth a ‘shooter’, but that really wouldn’t do the experience justice.
“I think there are genres and experiences that we have in our minds born out of decades of playing videogames in non-VR scenarios. When you move into VR, you’re effectively creating new genres,” said Stuart Whyte, Director of VR Product Development at Sony’s London studio. “I think we’re closest, in non-VR terms, to the ‘Action Narrative’ genre, but I also think that Blood & Truth, by the nature of the incredible immersiveness you get from PSVR, is much more an experiential game where you get to feel like an Action Hero.”
Image courtesy Sony London Studio
Delivering those action hero moments—like leaping from a collapsing building onto a crane, or paragliding into a restricted area—requires significant planning well before the first geometry of a level even gets modeled. The studio found that storyboarding ideas—creating thumbnail sketches of key moments—for major setpiece was “doubly important” for VR development; the team went so far as to use immersive storyboards which were drawn to be viewed in a VR headset.
“The storyboard allows us to rapidly iterate and test new ideas and angles without burning through lots of time and money. We actually created 360-degree storyboards which helped us place the player in the space and in the headset, and we were able to test things like composition, lighting and colour all in VR,” said Anthony Filice, Art Director at Sony’s London Studio. “Storyboarding [in game development] isn’t anything new, but being able to storyboard in VR is where it’s at. We’re exploring more and more ways to be able to visualize & test our ideas in VR before we actually commit to building. It’s super important to see how things are perceived from the point of view of the player, this way we can see and feel for ourselves what type of senses and emotions are triggered by what we’re creating first hand.”
“Understanding where characters are standing in the scene (rather than in the shot [as would be the case with non-VR]) is super important when the player is the camera,” Whyte said. “Typically, once we had finished the storyboarding stage, we would ‘block out’ using ‘grey box’ (simple basic geometry) the space, level, or scene within our engine so that we could get an early feel as to what the challenges would be and how best to approach.”
In VR, however, the little moments can be just as important as the big moments—interaction drives immersion, but it’s challenging to make a completely interactive world. Blood & Truth uses a node-based locomotion system which lets players move between predetermined points. As well as streamlining player movement, this smartly limits the scope of the objects which the player can potentially interact with. Instead of making every single object in the world interactive, London Studio thus only had to consider interactions of objects within arm’s reach of each node, allowing the studio to pay greater attention to a more tractable number of objects and interactions.
“Setting the visual pillars early on was super important. Those pillars were realism, storytelling and VR immersion. It’s true that the headset will give you some of the VR immersion for free, however to take the immersion to the next level, we had to make some tough calls on where to spend our [development time] for maximum user experience,” said Filice.
As early as the storyboarding phase, London Studio was considering specific object interactions (and how they would drive gameplay moments). | Image courtesy Sony London Studio
“Anything that the player interacts with in a meaningful way—like weapons, ‘box of delights’, and (intractable) clues—all have to be modeled and animated to the highest level. For example, we know the player will scrutinize the guns close up, so we decided to fully articulate and model them down to the screws. In addition to this, we pay particular attention and placed details as easter eggs for the player to find. In one scene, we placed chewing gum under a desk because we know that the player will probably want to look under the desk. There are lots of desks in the game, so I challenge you to find it!”
Weapons in Blood & Truth are finely detailed, right down to custom two-handed grip poses when the player brings both hands together to grip smaller weapons like pistols. Some weapons have easter eggs to discover too, like how the revolver can be ‘fan-fired’ by using a second hand held against the weapon’s hammer. | Image courtesy Sony London Studio
A VR game just hit the top spot in the UK physical game sales charts for the first time. As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Blood & Truth was at number 1 for the week ending June 1st.
The game beat out FIFA 19, Team Sonic Racing, and Days Gone. It’s important to note however that these charts are for physical sales only. It does not include games downloaded from the PlayStation Store.
Blood & Truth is a big budget PlayStation VR exclusive released last week. It was developed by Sony’s own London studio, the same team behind the London Heist experience, which was the flagship demo for Sony’s VR system all the way back when it was still under development as ‘Project Morpheus’.
Despite the sometimes frustrating movement system and occasional pacing issues, Blood & Truth is a tour de force for PSVR. Sony’s London Studio should be proud of what they’ve accomplished here by turning the brief London Heist demo from PlayStation VR Worlds into a fully-fledged narrative that features some of the best performances we’ve seen in VR yet. The action is pulse-pounding and so bombastic it rivals even the biggest summer blockbusters. This one is easily recommended to any PSVR owner that likes to shoot bad guys and watch stuff blow up.
In March, Sony announced that it had now sold 4.2 million PlayStation VR headsets worldwide. This makes it the most popular 6DoF VR platform by far. Sales milestones like Blood & Truth show that Sony is slowly bringing VR into the mainstream gaming scene.
Generally, when it comes to virtual reality (VR) titles featuring on normal videogame charts, the occurrences are few and far between. When it does happen it tends to be thanks to PlayStation VR, with Farpoint doing extremely well back in 2017 with a number two spot in the UK listings. Today, that has now been beaten, with Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) London Studio taking the number one spot on the UK charts with Blood & Truth.
The charts showcase the best selling videogames up to 1st June at UK retail locations, so only physical copies are counted. Only two new titles made it into the top ten, the other being Cricket 19: Offical Game of the Ashes achieving the No.6.
Blood & Truth managed to outperform multiplatform videogames like FIFA 19 (only by 400 copies reports GameIndustry.biz), Team Sonic Racing and Days Gone. Overall it was a tight race for chart supremacy this week, with No.40 and No.1 only separated by a little over 6,000 copies.
While it is surprising the title has done so well given the niche nature of VR in comparison to the other videogame platforms, Blood & Truth has proven itself to be a highly commendable experience, mixing high action gameplay with a tightly interwoven storyline and cinematic cutscenes. VRFocus gave it a full five-star review, saying: “From start to finish Blood & Truth is one hell of a ride, a finely choreographed John Woo movie that’s all about sheer entertainment.”
Hopefully, with achievements such as this, it’ll not only show that VR is financially viable when done correctly but also attract more gamers to the technology as well as developers interested in exploring new markets and creative potential.
Blood & Truth isn’t the only PlayStation VR title to arrive recently, with Squanch Games’ Trover Saves the Universe, Steel Wool Games’ rather scary Five Night’s at Freddy’s VR: Help Wantedand Everybody’s Golf VR all now available.
There are going to be plenty more on the way in 2019, with the likes of fairy tale puzzler Luna scheduled for this month, No Man’s Sky: Beyond arriving this summer and of course, Iron Man VR. VRFocus will continue its coverage of PlayStation VR, reporting back with the latest updates.
Two really big new PSVR games released today with Blood & Truth and Trover Saves the Universe. One is Guy Ritchie-style action thriller full of guns, explosions, and epic set piece moments, while Trover on the other hand is ridiculously hilarious and bizarre action platformer from the mind of Justin Roiland. These games could not be more different but both are very good in their own ways.
For the stream I will be playing both games on PSVR (Blood & Truth with two PS Move controllers and Trover with a DualShock 4) on a standard PS4.
The stream is planned to start around 2:30 PM PT and we’ll aim to last for about an hour or two. We’ll be livestreaming to the UploadVR YouTube directly. You can see the full stream embedded right here down below once it’s up:
You can see our most recent past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe! You can also now Join our YouTube Community as a member to get special perks like in-video shout outs, custom emojis and badges in chat, and the ability to vote on future video content.
And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely.
Sony’s next big PSVR exclusive, Blood & Truth is finally here. This action adventure aims to make players feel like the lead character in an action movie, and brings strong gunplay and big set pieces to the table. But its biggest contribution might just be the performances and visuals of the game’s virtual characters which are the best we’ve ever seen in VR.
Developer: SIE London Studio Available On: PSVR [Exclusive] (digital, physical) Reviewed On: PS4 Pro Release Date: May 28th, 2019 Price: $40
Gameplay
Though Blood & Truth features plenty of shooting, I’d classify it as an ‘action adventure’ more than a pure ‘shooter’ because of the way it guides you through a purposeful narrative. The gameplay is largely defined by its locomotion, which (for Sony’s first-party studios) is relatively ambitions. It uses node-based smooth locomotion, meaning there are predefined places you can go, but instead of teleporting, you slide smoothly from one node to the next. It isn’t entirely on-rails, but it feels pretty close because there isn’t that much variety in where you can go (even though it opens up slightly later in the game).
And while some might assume that this movement system was a necessary concession due to the lack of thumbstick on the Move controllers, I would argue that even if the controllers had thumbsticks, it’s an effective and smart design choice for the kind of game that London Studio set out to build. Not needing to worry so much about controlling your large-scale movement frees you up to focus on shooting and doing other things when moving between points, as well as focusing on your small-scale movements (leaning around corners and boxes). In the end, it works in service of a game that’s all about setting up action and set piece moments.
Gunplay and handling is also suitably refined. Instead of a complex inventory system, Blood & Truth gives you two handgun holsters at your hips and two heavy weapon holsters over your shoulders. Ammo is drawn from a satchel at your chest; a fresh magazine for whichever gun your holding is always there ready and waiting to be pulled out and stuck into your weapon. It’s an effective system, which—like the game’s locomotion—cuts out complexity in favor of focus.
Shooting feels good pretty much across the board thanks to a combination of good effects and sounds, though which weapon you choose doesn’t often significantly change your playstyle. You can aim down sights for precision, but ammo is plentiful enough, that unless you’re going for stealth headshots or long-range kills, you’re usually fine just roughly eyeing things up and spraying down range. There’s not a huge array of weapons, and even though you get access to some bigger guns later in the game, all of the weapons continue to feel valid throughout.
The game also includes some light weapon customization; you’ll be able to visit a safehouse where you can decide which weapons you want to carry into the next level. You can add a few attachments to each gun, and apply different paint jobs, all of which are unlocked with ‘star’ points collected across the levels by shooting hidden targets or finding other collectibles. The attachments—like scopes and silencers—don’t feel very consequential to the gameplay, but configuring your loadout and weapons is a smart bit of interactive downtime between all of the shooting.
Unfortunately enemies aren’t particularly varied, and rarely require prioritization or unique tactics. Most enemies are taken down most effectively the same way: just put plenty of bullets into them, preferably in the head region. The only exception is the relatively rare ‘heavy’ enemies that have riot shields; they can be most easily dispatched by activating the game’s slow-motion function (by pressing both Move buttons) that then shows little white targets on the enemy, which can be hit in succession for a quick takedown.
It feels like the VR equivalent of a quick-time event, and is generally pretty fun to do, but it also feels somewhat out of place with the rest of the gunplay. You can activate slow motion at any time actually, and while it can lead to some cool visual moments (as bullets, particles, and bodies go flying in slow-mo), it’s ultimately ancillary to the overall gameplay.
Luckily, Blood & Truth’s gunplay doesn’t overstay its welcome, thanks to it being spaced out by more intricate activities (like lock picking and climbing), action set pieces, and narrative sequences.
The action set pieces are fun, and essential to preventing Blood & Truth from inching toward wave shooter land, although few of them felt particularly memorable, which is probably because most are highly scripted, and don’t leave much room for the player to influence the outcome.
Image courtesy SIE London Studio
Actually, one of the more memorable set pieces in the game wasn’t driven by action (and, indeed, gave the player more agency)—part of the game sees the player sneaking into a modern art museum, which London Studio used as a genius way to pepper the game with some quite cool VR moments that otherwise wouldn’t have made much sense in the context of Blood & Truth.
Image courtesy SIE London Studio
But beyond the set pieces are the game’s truly unmatched virtual characters which deliver the game’s narrative and provide some reason behind the action. With photogrammetry, motion capture, and smart design, London Studio has raised the bar for virtual characters at a scale not seen in any VR game to date. The work they’ve done in this area is very likely to become a staple of future AAA VR games. Let’s talk about that (and more) in the Immersion section below.
And a quick note on game time: it took me about 4 hours and 20 minutes to complete the Blood & Truth campaign. And while that might seem on paper like a relatively short experience, I have to say that it felt quite a bit longer, probably because the game was very engaging didn’t feel like any of its mechanics overstayed their welcome. I applaud London Studio for not padding game time with more shooting segments, and instead making sure that each hour of gameplay has meaningful fun for the player.
Sony says the game includes some ‘time attack’ challenges, but this mode wasn’t available at the time of our review. In future updates, London Studio plans to add leaderboards (which will rank you based on a score given for each level), a New Game+ option (which will let you play the campaign with all of your unlocked weapons and attachments), Hard Mode (a higher difficulty level), as well as “additional challenge modes […] plus much more.”
Immersion
Image courtesy SIE London Studio
So let’s talk about Blood & Truth’s story and virtual characters. The characters are the primary drivers of the story, which starts out very personal, but wanes later in the game as it eventually relies on a nebulous secret organization as the reason why everything is happening. I found the monolithic ‘evil cabal’ trope a distraction from the much more personal story of two warring crime families.
Still, the characters themselves are really something to behold. Driven by a cast of talented actors (mediated by an excellent technical pipeline for representing faces and motions in VR at high fidelity), they look at sound great. In many of the game’s sequences, characters are acting right in front of the player, often speaking to you directly. They make correct eye contact, and the fidelity of their performance and visuals is just so good that it’s hard to not be interested in what they’re saying. In addition to excellent performance capture, the attention to detail on their varied outfits is top-notch, with convincing textures, folds, and lighting (especially the leather jackets).
Though hampered by a story that isn’t terribly memorable, the characters are used to mostly strong effect, especially in a sequence later in the game where one character doesn’t mind getting in your face. The writing and dialogue are mostly good, though your chummy rapport with most other male characters can be overbearing (par for the ‘action movie’ vibe, I suppose), but at least occasionally feels authentic.
Blood & Truth’s release is a bar setting moment for virtual characters and narrative exposition in a VR game, at least at this scope and scale.
Image courtesy SIE London Studio
London Studio’s efforts here really drive home how (when it comes to immersion) great content is the single most important factor. Even though PSVR’s visuals are quite lagging behind newer PC headsets, and even though PS4 Pro doesn’t have the power of a high-end gaming PC, Blood & Truth’s virtual character’s are so well rendered that it’s easy to forget about all of that and become feel totally engrossed with what’s in front of you.
However, there were a few missed opportunities, mostly involving interactivity with the characters. There’s only one moment I recall where you have an opportunity to make interactive contact with another character (a handshake), but several moments which felt like interactivity was missing. With character performances heavily driven by motion capture, I can certainly appreciate the technical challenge of building real interactivity into narrative sequences, but I hope London Studio can tackle that challenge in future titles.
Immersion levels generally for Blood & Truth are pretty high throughout. Although the narrative moments lack interactivity, there’s a good bit of it peppered elsewhere in the game. The game’s node-based movement system is smart not only for the reasons discussed in the Gameplay section (above) but also because it means that London Studio can put interactive items within arms reach at various nodes without the impossible challenge of making every object and item in the game interactive.
There’s a good range of items to find and grab throughout, from objectives and optional collectibles, to pointless (but still appreciated) objects like beer bottles which can be broken, cookies which can be eaten, and sunglasses which can be worn. It’s usually obvious what can and can’t be grabbed, which helps avoid those immersion-breaking moments where you reach for something and your hand inexplicably slips through it.
There’s also interactive moments and mechanics that are necessary to keep moving forward. For instance, players will often have to pick locks, climb ladders, complete small electric hacking puzzles, or climb through vents.
All are suitably interesting, and smart way to pace combat moments, but not as seamlessly integrated into the broader gameplay as I would have hoped. Lockpicking for instance is just a roadblock. There was never a moment in the game where I had to pick a lock under pressure (like to escape a dangerous situation).
In the gun-handling department, there’s a number of nice immersive touches. Every gun in the game can be two-handed. Even with pistols, if you bring your non-dominant hand close to your main hand, the hands will animate into a two-handed pistol grip, and I often found myself doing this naturally. Larger weapons are gripped by the foregrip, and for some of the larger weapons this seems to decrease recoil. There’s also some fun extras in the handling department: if you hold ‘triangle’ with a pistol, you can spin your gun around your finger like a badass gunslinger; if you’re using the revolver, you can put your off-hand up to the hammer, which lets you shoot faster (as if you’re fanning). Maybe there’s some others I haven’t found?
Comfort
Image courtesy SIE London Studio
I found Blood & Truth to be very comfortable throughout. The node-based smooth movement system seems to work very well, and is much more immersive than if it relied on teleportation instead. An optional Comfort Mode reduces some effects and adds peripheral blinders during movement.
Though it’s comfortable and generally works well, the node-based system does prevent you from backtracking at all (even if you turn completely around, previous nodes will no longer be active), which can be a little annoying. While during most of the time you’ll be looking at the node you want to go to and clicking the Move button, there’s also dedicated staffing buttons which will move you to any nodes that are adjacent. I didn’t find it uncomfortable (from a vestibular standpoint) to move sideways like this, but it did feel a bit awkward at times.
The game’s holster and reload system is generally pretty good, and at the start of the game you can calibrate where your hip holsters and ammo pouch should be, which is a nice touch. Still, it can be fiddly at times. The game is designed to be played seated, and I would sometimes find that my holsters were ‘in’ my couch, causing me to shoot when I tried to holster my weapon with the trigger (because I couldn’t get close enough to the holster). I would have raised them up to abdominal height rather than hip height to avoid this, but calibration only allows a horizontal adjustment. Sitting upright and at the edge of my couch help prevent this, though sitting in an armless chair would likely be the ideal.
You can easily pass guns from one hand to another (by reaching your non-dominant hand to the weapon grip and pulling the trigger) which is really practical, but if you do this accidentally in the heat of the moment (because shooting and swapping guns both use the trigger) it can be a little confusing. This also lends itself to some confusion when it comes to swapping weapons in the middle of missions.
You’ll frequently come across different guns in the midst of a mission, but they instantly replace the weapon that corresponds to whichever hand you pick the weapon up with. For instance, if I pick up a pistol with my left hand, it will automatically become associated with the left pistol holster. Occasionally though, if I want a weapon in my left holster that’s sitting to my right, it can be awkward (if not simply too far away) to try to reach over and grab the gun with my left hand. It might be possible to actually grab the nearby weapon with the most convenient hand and then pass it to your other hand and then holster it that way, but I’m actually not sure—which is the crux of the issue; the way weapons are assigned to hands and holsters isn’t spelled out very clearly, so I was just figuring it out as I went.
A few weapons in the game have scopes that zoom, but they are very small and generally hard to look through; arguably they are more effective without the scope attachment. London Studio could have looked to games like Farpoint for better ideas for how scopes should work in VR. While the non-zoom scopes on weapons like pistols and the SMG were less of a hassle, they too could have been made easier to use (first by making them larger). Furthermore, two-handed weapons (especially the pump shotgun) could be really awkward to use when enemies were far to your off-side because you can’t rotate your torso when seated to face them properly with a two-handed weapon grip. I also found that the pump on the foregrip on the pump shotgun would occasionally pop out of my hand; the game seemed to want me to reach much further forward for the ideal foregrip position than was comfortable for me.
