Something For The Weekend: Mid-April PlayStation VR Savings

It is time once again to explore the PlayStation store to find some of the latest deals on virtual reality (VR) titles. To help you out VRFocus has put together some of the best deals to help you find your next favourite. As always be sure to check back every weekend for even more deals right here on VRFocus.

Accounting+

If you are a fan of Rick & Morty then you are sure to find enjoyment in Accounting+, a VR experience unlike anything you have seen before brought to you by Justin Roilan. Developed by Crows Crows Crows and Squach Games, Accounting+ is a weird title full of humor that invites players to interact with a number of colorful characters and complete numerous tasks and challenges. This includes playing with bombs, cutting characters open, playing the bone xylophone and many other bizarre activities.

Accounting+ is currently on sale for for £6.49 (GBP) down from £9.49 and recently added a new waterpark level.

No Heroes Allowed! VR

Real-time strategy (RTS) title No Heroes Allowed! VR puts players in the shoes of the God of Destruction who must work towards world domination with the help of your sidekicks Badman and Badmella. VRFocus’ Editor Kevin Joyce previewed the title saying “No Heroes Allowed! VR’s story, as may be assumed from the title, sees the player cast as the bad guy. However the aesthetic of the videogame is perfectly designed for family-friendly gameplay” later adding “No Heroes Allowed! VR provides a compelling RTS experience unique to VR.”

No Heroes Allowed! VR is currently on sale for for £19.99 (GBP) down from £24.99 with PlayStation Plus members saving an extra 20%.

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Batman: Arkham VR

Become the Batman in this immersive experience that puts you into the shoes of the Dark Knight himself. Experience Gotham City through the eyes of the World’s Greatest Detective in an all new Arkham mystery. Think like Batman and utilize all the gadgets available to you in order to unravel a plot that could threaten the lives of Batman‘s closest allies.

Batman: Arkham VR is currently the low price of £11.99 (GBP) down from £15.99 with PlayStation Plus members saving an extra 25%.

The Inpatient

“The Inpatient looks set to offer an experience completely different to its predecessor Until Dawn – they’re both set in the same universe – a far more tactile tale, where exploring the story is much more key. It might be because of the hospital theme but playing the demo instantly feels very reminiscent of Wilson’s Heart for Oculus Rift and that’s no bad thing. If Supermassive Games can create an engaging storyline and gameplay to go with the impressive visuals then PlayStation VR might have another hit on its hands.” – Read VRFocus’ Senior Staff Writer Peter Graham’s preview of The Inpatient here.

The Inpatient is currently on sale for £23.39 (GBP) down from £29.99 with PlayStation Plus members saving an extra 20%.

Sports Bar VR

“Bringing the virtual pub experience to your living room. Sports Bar VR is the ultimate social experience available on PlayStation VR, featuring an awesome set of bar games, an incredible pool simulation and an amazingly detailed sports bar overflowing with fun and silly physics props. Join up with 12 of your friends to hangout and play some air hockey, throw a few rounds of darts or build an insane dominoes setup using books, chairs, bottles and whatever else you can find. Play with friends or offline against the AI, earn experience points and unlock a wide array of collectable hats and fun objects to add a bit of swagger to your VR style.”

Sports Bar VR is now only £7.39 (GBP) down from £14.99.

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VRFC Virtual Reality Football Club

“VRFC: Virtual Reality Football Club is a welcome foundation for sports simulations in VR, and with the FIFA franchise now surpassing 25 editions (not including the many spin-offs such as FIFA Street and FIFA World Cup), it’s a wonder to think exactly how much of VRFC: Virtual Reality Football Club will remain in VR football 25 years from now.” – Read VRFocus’ Editor Kevin Joyce’s review of VRFC: Virtual Reality Football Club here.

VRFC: Virtual Reality Football Club is available for only £7.39 (GBP) which is down from £14.99.

Psychonauts In The Rhombus Of Ruin

In this VR title players get to expereince an all-new adventure that takes players back into the mysterious and paranormal world of the Psyhconauts. Take control of Raz and carry on from where the first game finished on a journey to rescure the Grand Head of the Psychonauts. When things go somewhat wrong it is up to the player to not only save the kidnapped prisoner but also the rescue party themselves.

Psychonauts In The Rhombus Of Ruin is on sale for £10.06 (GBP) down from £15.49 with PlayStation Plus members able to save an extra 35%.

Crisis On the Planet of the Apes

“Five years since its outbreak, the “Simian Flu” has wiped out half of humanity and left other primates…changed. You are an ape with advanced intelligence, captured and held prisoner in a heavily guarded scientific facility as mankind desperately searches for a cure. Your mission: Climb, jump and shoot through the chaos of an apocalyptical world to escape with your fellow apes and return home at the crossroads of two species’ destinies.”

Crisis On the Planet of the Apes is currently on sale for PlayStation Plus members for £8.39 (GBP) down from £11.99.

Time Carnage

“Time Carnage is well-made, and is a fine, competent example of its genre, with some excellent music and sound design, though it ultimately fails to stand out amidst many other similar titles that litter VR videogame libraries. Shooting dinosaurs is still lots of fun, though.” – Read VRFocus’ Staff Writer Rebecca Hills-Duty’s review of Time Carnage here.

Time Carnage is currently only £12.79 (GBP) for PlayStation Plus members down from £15.99.

Carnival Games VR

Finally this week is the title all about enjoying the carnival. In Carnival Games VR players are able to take part in 12 different mini-games and earn tickets to win fun virtual prizes or unlock additional activities to complete. Whether it’s scaling a castle in Climbing Wall, rolling for a high score in Alley Ball or shooting basketballs in Swish – there is something for everyone in this title.

Carnival Games VR is available for only £11.19 (GBP) right now on sale from £15.99 with an extra 30% saving for PlayStation Plus members.

That is all for this week but remember that VRFocus gathers all the best deals every week, so check back next weekend at the same time to discover more.

October 28, 2016

Head to the Fun Fair as Carnival Games VR Arrives for HTC Vive and PlayStation VR

Back in August VRFocus reported on 2K Games planning a virtual reality (VR) version of the popular mini-game title Carnival Games, created by Cat Daddy Games. Today Carnival Games VR has arrived for Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) PlayStation VR and HTC Vive.

Carnival Games VR-Alleyball

Set in theme park the title has 12 mini-games available:

Alley Ball – score by rolling nine balls down the lane and into the holes at the end.

Ring Toss – try to toss five rings onto pegs for points.

Golden Arm – try to knock over the golden milk jug(s) with a baseball.

Down The Stretch – be the first to finish the race by rolling the ball into the holes at the end of the ramp.

Pop Darts – pop as many balloons as possible with six darts.

Shooting Gallery – with unlimited shots, hit as many targets as possible against the clock.

Climbing Wall – climb as fast as you can to reach the treasure at the top of the wall.

Shark Tank – try to dunk all three patrons by throwing the ball at the moving target.

Funnel Cake Stacker – catch as many funnel cakes on the tray as possible.

Swish: score as many baskets as possible in 60 seconds.

Haunted House – shoot at the ghosts.

Fast Pitch – catch as many pitches as possible.

“2K is proud to make our debut in the exciting world of VR with an accessible and lighthearted entertainment experience,” said Sarah Anderson, SVP of Marketing at 2K. “Carnival Games VR’s stylized interactive environments and mini-games make it the perfect way to enjoy virtual reality with family and friends.”

Carnival Games VR is available as a digital download for $19.99 USD/£15.99 GBP for both HMDs, and a version for Oculus Rift will be arriving on 6th December, the same date as the Oculus Touch launch.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of 2k Games, reporting back with any further VR news.

October 28, 2016

‘Carnival Games VR’ Review: The Party Game Poster Child Returns

Every owner of a VR headset needs a good, quick, easy to pick-up-and-play party game. When you’re showing off your fancy multi-hundred dollar device, you don’t always have time to sit someone down and explain how to pilot a spaceship, or detail the the intricacies of the most riveting VR adventure titles. Sometimes, you just want to ask people to shoot targets held by flying birds, or to catch flying funnel cakes with serving dishes. And that’s exactly what Carnival Games VR on PlayStation VR and HTC Vive is designed to do.

When you clicked on this review, you likely had an opinion formed in your head about this game even if you hadn’t played it yet. Make no mistake: this isn’t a deep experience and I highly doubt many people will bother playing this by themselves for any significant stretch of time. It’s a party game, through and through — a notion highlighted in the game’s official trailer shown below.

Consider myself sufficiently perplexed then when I realized that, despite this fact, there was a notable lack of actual structural multiplayer support of any kind. You can just pass the headset around of course, but it would have been great to build a local or online multiplayer mode into the game itself, similar to previous entries.

In the original Carnival Games for the Wii (which sold well over a million copies by capitalizing on the gimmick of motion controls) you could create different in-game avatars, complete with relatively robust customization options. This allowed you to easily swap the controllers back and forth and track scores. I’d have really liked to see similar support here — or even a way to choose multiple games to play in a row, as a score attack of sorts.

The only real high score support to speak of in Carnival Games VR is just a local number that tracks your top score at each attraction, as well as a leaderboard that shows the top 3 global performers at each attraction as well. Beyond that, you’re essentially on your own here.

Thankfully the attractions themselves in Carnival Games VR are quite fun for the most part. As explained in my original hands-on preview of the game, the 12 included attractions are as follows:

Alley Ball – Carnival Games VR’s take on classic Skee Ball,
Ring Toss – Just like it sounds, you throw rings at bottles,
Golden Arm – Throw baseballs at milk jugs,
Down the Stretch – Roll balls into holes in a race,
Pop Darts – Throw darts at spinning balloons,
Shark Tank – Dunk people by hitting a target,
Funnel Cake Stacker – Catch raining funnel cakes on serving platters,
Swish – Rapidly toss basketballs into a hoop,
Haunted House – Shoot ghosts and other creatures, like a theme park ride,
Fast Pitch – Catch pitches with a glove,
Shooting Gallery – Hit as many targets as you can,
and Climbing Wall – Climb to the top of the wall as fast as possible.

When you first start the game, you’ll be greeted by the carny — a mustached little man that looks like the long, lost cousin of Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly. Only one of the zones will be available at the start of the game, and in that zone, only a couple of the games are available.

In each zone, you’ll collect tickets by playing games then spend tickets to purchase toys. Some toys are just for show in the Playroom, while others are needed to unlock more games and more zones. That’s the progression system in a nutshell.

Within an hour or so, you can unlock all of the attractions found within the park, leaving you with a scoreboard to tackle and more meaningless toys to collect. As explained before though, Carnival Games VR really shines in a party setting.

While I was reviewing the game, my wife would ask to play too. For someone who can’t typically be bothered to play many games or try VR, the whimsical visuals and simple gameplay was immediately appealing to her. For reference, Job Simulator is one of her only other favorites.

All of this is fine and dandy, until you’re asked to do a task with any degree of precision. A large part of this is the limitation of the PlayStation Move controllers and PS VR’s tracking, but it still leaves a lot to be desired in a game like Carnival Games VR. When I demoed the game on Oculus Rift with Touch at PAX, the accuracy was satisfactory. But on Sony’s device, I consistently ran into issues.

If I pulled my arm back to throw a ball during Golden Arm, it would float away or lose tracking from time to time. If I reached out in front or above me to reach for a new handhold in Climbing Wall, my arms would occlude the headset or my hands would drift in the game occasionally. Sometimes, just aiming at balloons and targets in Pop Darts and Shark Tank is nearly impossible — the accuracy required is often frustrating.

All that being said, it doesn’t really negate the experience too much. This is a game you put on when friends are over or you want to show kids what VR gaming is like. Catching funnel cakes in Funnel Cake Stacker is a blast, Ring Toss is very satisfying, and Haunted House is so fun it deserves an entire theme part of attractions built on that premise. It really reminded me of Disneyland.

Final Score: 6/10 – Decent

Carnival Games VR is exactly what you expect. After you spend an hour or so collecting tickets to unlock all of the attractions, you have little reason to return to this whimsical world unless it’s with your friends or with your kids. There is no structural multiplayer support — a huge missed opportunity — and the PS VR tracking issues hinder an otherwise silly and fun experience. If you’re looking for something to play alone or something to get mileage out of your VR hardware, then this isn’t really the game for you. It fulfills a very singular purpose and that’s it.

Curious about this score? Check out our review guidelines for more information. We were not provided with an HTC Vive build at the time of this review — we only tested the PlayStation VR version of the game. An Oculus Rift with Touch version is planned as well.

October 18, 2016

Pixel Gear, Tethered, Carnival Games and Windlands Are Your Next PlayStation VR Games

Launch day seems to have come and gone without any major hiccups, but now PlayStation VR faces one of the most challenging questions of any new platform; what’s next?

A swarm of games were available on day one, but we don’t doubt some of you have already made your way through most of the pile (not that that’s too hard when you have games as long as Batman: Arkham VR). From here on out we’ll be eagerly looking forward to seeing what’s on the horizon for the platform. Fortunately, the next two weeks of games look pretty good.

Launching on PSN today is Pixel Gear, a simple wave-based shooter in which you take on blocky enemies that look like they marched straight out of Minecraft. It’s a pretty straightforward affair; use the Move controller to aim a gun, aided by a laser sight. You’ll juggle attacks between standard one-shot canon fodder, enemies that can only be hit in the head and hulking behemoths armed with miniguns. It’s not exactly revolutionary, but we’ve gone hands-on with it and had some harmless fun.

If you’re in the US, you’ll also be getting Sports Bar VR this week, which launched in the EU last week. Still no sign of The Brookhaven Experiment for European players, sadly.

Next week things are a little more plentiful. Launching on October 25th are both Tethered and Windlands. The first, from Secret Sorcery, is an intriguing new strategy game in which you guide a cutesy clan of creatures as they gather resources by day in preparation to defend themselves from enemies by night. EU PS4 owners can already pre-order it over on the PlayStation Store. Windlands, meanwhile is Psytec Games’ first-person adventure that’s already available on both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. It’s a great platformer and the PS VR version really holds up, so it’s one to look forward to.

Also arriving next week on October 28th is Carnival Games the VR debut from 2K Games. It’s a refreshed version of a Wii game in which, yes, you use the Move controllers to play carnival games. Again, don’t expect VR’s killer app but we’ve found this to be a pretty charming and whimsical pastime.

There’s a pretty healthy offering of games over the next two weeks, then, and with games like Robinson: The Journey also on the way, PS VR should keep fans happy for a good while.

October 6, 2016

The Best of PlayStation VR Launch: Party Games

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has gone to great lengths to ensure that the launch of PlayStation VR defeats many of the naysayers, no less than in the realms of social experiences. Keen to ensure that virtual reality (VR) can be enjoyed by families and friends as well as the core videogame demographic, every early adopter of the head-mounted display (HMD) will receive multiplayer-centric Playroom VR for free. Bargain, right?

There’s also PlayStation VR Worlds to consider. While it may not be a ‘party game’ per se, the implementation of SIE’s social screen initiative – wherein one player uses the HMD while another assists through a separate view on the television or mobile device – proposes some very interesting potential gameplay mechanics. It’s inherently limited by design at present, though much like VR as a medium is destined to evolve in years to come.

In the meantime, having friends and family round for a spate of couch multiplayer is important for expanding the potential audience of not just PlayStation VR, but the medium as a whole, and the below titles are your best bet for doing just that on day one.

Playroom VR – Sony Interactive Entertainment

As stated above, Playroom VR will be a free download for all PlayStation VR early adopters. So that’s an easy decision. But what exactly will you be doing with this software? Well, in true couch multiplayer style, there’s a selection of mini-games included that have players working both with and against the player wearing the PlayStation VR HMD. Monster Escape places the solo HMD wearing in the position of chasing down one-to-four players sharing the television screen and using DualShock 4 controllers to evade the large green beast towering down upon them, whereas Ghost House has the players working co-operatively to hunt supernatural beings in a cartoon haunted house. Playroom VR is a fantastic way of demonstrating this new technology without the fear of the many complicated implications of VR.

Playroom VR: Monster Escape key art

Carnival Games VR – 2K Games

One of the biggest selling franchises on the hugely successful Nintendo Wii console is coming to PlayStation VR. This should divide audiences into two camps immediately: those open to casual videogames and those who refuse to accept them. Those in the latter camp are best just ignoring its existence, but those looking for a videogame to play with their mother or father, son or daughter, or partner or friend unacquainted with videogames could do far worse. Carnival Games VR promises a palatable experience with extremely low barriers for entry.

Carnival Games key art

Ace Banana – Oasis Games

Not exactly the most high profile launch title for the PlayStation VR, Ace Banana tasks the players with defending a pile of bananas from evil invader monkeys. To do this, you’ll have to put your archery skills to the test using PlayStation Move controllers. What makes Ace Banana stand out as a party videogame is that the levels are keenly designed to increase in difficulty from short bursts to longer endurance tests, and that the entire videogame can be played co-operatively.

Ace Banana screenshot

The Best PlayStation VR Launch Titles
The Best Horror Games for PlayStation VR	The Best Platform Games for PlayStation VR	The Best Racing Games for PlayStation VR
The Best Party Games for PlayStation VR		The Best Shooting Games for PlayStation VR

September 7, 2016

Hands-On: ‘Carnival Games VR’ is Like a Whimsical Trip to a Virtual Fair

August 31, 2016

Carnival Games VR Is 2K’s First Release For Headsets

August 31, 2016

Step right up! ‘Carnival Games VR’ is the first virtual reality title for publisher 2K

Publisher 2K Games will enter the virtual reality marketplace in October with the launch of its fairground-themed minigame compilation Carnival Games VR, which follows up on a series of successful releases for the Nintendo Wii.

The post Step right up! ‘Carnival Games VR’ is the first virtual reality title for publisher 2K appeared first on Digital Trends.

August 31, 2016

2K Games to Bring the Fun to VR This October [UPDATED]

2K Games has been less than committal to the new medium of virtual reality (VR) thus far, with the publisher’s CEO suggesting that the technology is too ‘anti-social’ before stating that the company will be ‘first in line if VR takes off’. However, it seems that there’s more bubbling under the surface, as VRFocus has learned that 2K Games has a VR title set to be ready for the launch of PlayStation VR.

Carnival Games key art

The Carnival Games videogame series is one which has continuously proved commercially successful on motion-control platforms, debuting on the Nintendo Wii and seeing outings for the Xbox 360’s Kinect and PlayStation 3’s PlayStation Move devices, amongst many others. According to sources close to 2K Games, next to join that line-up will be PlayStation VR and HTC Vive.

Carnival Games VR, according to information VRFocus has received, is set to launch on HTC Vive and PlayStation VR this October. An Oculus Touch compatible version has also been discussed, though there is no confirmation that this edition exists at present.

Other details, such as which experiences will be available as part of the package, pricing and whether or not the videogame will see a retail package alongside a digital release, are not yet available. VRFocus has reached out to 2K Games for comment and will update this story with any response received.

Carnival Games VR

Update: Following the publication of this article an official confirmation came via the way of the PlayStation Blog, which confirms the digital-only release date of 28th October 2016, as well as detailing the minigames included: Alley Ball, Ring Toss, Golden Arm, Down The Stretch, Pop Darts, Shooting Gallery, Climbing Wall, Shark Tank, Funnel Cake Stacker, Swish, Haunted House, Fast Pitch.