Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is one of the largest annual gaming events in the world, thrown by the Entertainment Software Association every summer in Los Angeles. Gamers everywhere eagerly await announcements about the following year’s game and hardware releases from major players like Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft and Bethesda, along with countless smaller […]
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It’s been some considerable time since this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as E3. But one of the more curious announcements at the time, and one that caught many (including ourselves) by surprise was that of Final Fantasy XV virtual reality (VR) spin-off title Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV. It wasn’t just that it was a title that was based off of the main videogame’s fishing mechanic – although there was a degree of surprise that fishing of all things would be the focus – but that there had already been a Final Fantasy XV VR experience revealed at E3 in 2016. In fact, that had even been its title, Final Fantasy XV: VR Experience. It was also known as the Episode Prompto.
Final Fantasy XV: VR Experience was more content that stood alongside the main game as opposed to it being a specific title. It also wasn’t the best, as VRFocus Editor Kevin Joyce noted at the time in his preview: “It’s essentially a demo of what Square Enix views as the potential for VR blindly rolled into a product with the hope of success being bred from the attachment of a powerful franchise. A cynical view perhaps, but one which is hard to avoid given the poor quality of the Final Fantasy XV: VR Experience preview build on offer.”
Despite this its absence a year later was both unexpected and unexplained. What had become of the title? It had at one stage been slated to be DLC. Had it been reworked or would we ever even see it again? The answer to the last part of the question is apparently no. With Square Enix issuing an official statement on the matter that first made its way to Gamespot.
“Final Fantasy XV: VR Experience at E3 2016 was a technology demo that we showcased. Since then, we have learned much from the technology and have leveraged our learnings from the Episode Prompto DLC. The result of that is our first PlayStation VR title, Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV.”
With the 2016 project now confirmed dead, focus fully falls on Monster of the Deep, gameplay details of which were revealed just under a month ago. We will of course bring you more details about the videogame as soon as we are able. For everything related to PlayStation VR stay tuned to VRFocus.
I’ve written often about the need to push creative boundaries in order for VR to find its voice. Statik is doing just that, with an undeniably unique puzzle game that takes one of VR’s weaknesses and turns it into a strength.
Update (3/26/17, 11:24PM PT): Statik now has a release date of April 24th. The game will soon be available for pre-order with a 20% discount for PlayStation Plus members. Below continues our hands-on impressions of this unique game at E3 2016, including the latest screenshots showing previously unseen puzzles.
In Statik, by developer Tarsier Studios, a puzzle is literally strapped to your hands. You awake in an unfamiliar lab-like setting with your hands locked inside of a strange box. There’s complicated wires and gizmos all over, and the box moves as you move your own hands. In the real world you’re holding a PS4 controller, which is tracked by the PS Camera, and turns the controller’s movements into those of the box.
In VR you can’t see your real hands, and thus trying to use a controller can be bothersome because you can’t see the buttons and sticks. If you aren’t familiar with the controller or what the buttons do, you’ll have a frustrating time poking and prodding at the invisible controls to find out what purpose they serve.
Statik takes this fact and makes it a central tenet of the gameplay. You can’t see your real hands, nor can you see your virtual hands. They are locked inside the mysterious device. There’s absolutely no telling what button on the controller will control what mechanism on the box. The only way to figure it out is to start pressing every button you can feel and observe what happens.
Because you see a crazy contraption attached to your hands in front of you, instead of the real controller, you don’t gain that same level of hand-eye coordination that you’re used to while playing a traditional game, especially because from one box to the next, the controls completely change. This really makes it feel like you’re reaching inside of some unknown contraption and searching blindly for how it works.
In this way, Statik is almost like an exploration game. You need to first gather information about what you can actually control on the box. After that you need to find out what you’re even supposed to do with the limited abilities at your disposal.
All this makes for a very creative puzzle game that’s uniquely suited to VR. But the developers didn’t stop there. The backdrop of Statik is a mysterious testing facility; while you toil away trying to find out how to solve the puzzle encompassing your hands, a lab technician sits nearby to observe. His face is blurred, and it isn’t clear what exactly he’s looking for.
Once I had completed a segment of the puzzle, which involved arranging several glass disks to create a silhouette that matched a pattern in the room, the observer said, “You’re a machine,” which made me feel proud that I had figured it out so quickly. But that feeling was dashed in an instant when he followed that up saying, “…but so is a tractor,” leaving me feeling like little more than a lab rat from which to gather data.
Finding out exactly who these people are and why they’ve done this to you is a puzzle in itself, one that I’m looking forward to exploring nearly as much as I’m looking forward to seeing what other interesting puzzles I’ll find strapped to my hands in Statik.
The post Launching April 24th: PSVR’s ‘Statik’ is an Undeniably Unique Take on the Puzzle Genre appeared first on Road to VR.