Last year Sony Interactive Entertainment acquired Insomniac Games, the developers of critically-acclaimed and commercially successful games for both VR and non-VR formats.
Some of their standout non-VR games include Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4, the Ratchet & Clank series, and the Spyro the Dragon series on PlayStation 1. All of the studio’s VR work was only for Facebook’s Oculus platform, such as Stormland, The Unspoken, and Edge of Nowhere.
We didn’t know how much the price was, but it was recently revealed in an SEC filing that Sony paid $229 million for the acquisition and most of that was entirely paid in cash. According to the filing, as cited on Twitter by ZhugeEX:
“The consideration for this acquisition of 24,895 million yen (229 million U.S. dollars) was mainly paid in cash. The amount may be adjusted by the end of fiscal year ending March 31, 2020, based on the final closing date financial statements of Insomniac Games. As a result of this acquisition, Insomniac Games has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony.”
The filing goes on to state that Sony has acquired $165 million of goodwill and $62 million of intangible assets.
This is honestly one of the least surprising acquisitions in recent memory given their long history of working with Sony on exclusive titles across various franchises and even more so when considering their more recent VR experience as well. Having a developer like Insomniac is going to be a huge boost for the potential of PSVR going forward.
There’s no news on what Insomniac is working on next, but we’ll report on it as soon as we find out. Let us know what you think of the news down in the comments below!
Oculus Quest is home to a lot of great VR games but, from today, you can play Oculus Rift games on your headset too thanks to Oculus Link.
Now available in beta, Link requires a type 3 cable to connect to a high powered PC (check the specs here). If you have all of those things, then you can access a bunch of PC VR content. But what games and apps should you be sure to check out?
We already have extensive lists of the best Oculus Rift and SteamVR games, but they have a lot of overlap with games that are already on Quest. You’re of course free to check them out with improved fidelity, but for this list we’ve kept it to experiences that aren’t on Quest natively. With that in mind, here’s 10 Oculus Rift games and apps to play on Quest via Oculus Link.
Note: We’ve tested the first 5 – 10 minutes of each of these games in Quest to ensure they work. If anyone encounters any problems, be sure to let us know!
Three and a half years on from PC VR’s launch and The Lab remains one of the best experiences you can have on the platform. Valve’s collection of minigames offer a taste of its signature brand of humor and, more importantly, a template for incredible VR interactions that separate this new technology from its traditional gaming roots. Plus it’s free, and you can’t really argue with that.
Gorn’s physics-driven over the top combat would likely struggle to fit on Quest natively, so we fully recommend picking it up for Oculus Link. In this slapstick gladiator combat game you impale, dismember, and bash enemies with a wide array of weaponry. It is ridiculously gory and utterly hilarious, refined through years of Early Access development. Don’t miss Gorn.
Rockstar holds the keys to some of the best virtual worlds out there. L.A. Noire might not rank up there with GTAV and Red Dead 2, but its dedication to authenticity still makes it an essential setting to explore with a headset. The VR Case Files cherry-picks a handful of cases from the original game to reexperience in VR. It’s one of the most polished experiences you can have on the platform.
No one expected Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice to get a VR adaptation. Better yet, no one expected such an adaptation to work so well. And yet Hellblade VR is a shining example of how to get VR ports right, with fantastic visuals and select moments that work even better inside the headset. If you already own the game this is a free update, so don’t forget to download it.
Turns out the Skyrim of VR is, well, Skyrim! Bethesda did an incredible job porting its legendary role-playing game to PC VR headsets, offering a massive open world to explore with hours worth of quesst to tackle. Plus, when you add in mods, Skyrim VR becomes is own metaverse of possibilities.
There’s tons of amazing VR experiences out there right now that straddle the line between games, films and something entirely new. Star Wars: Vader Immortal shows us that on Quest but, for our money, Wolves in the Walls from Fable Studio is the best example yet. This interactive story has you befriending a young girl. Fable goes to great lengths to make the bond between you as natural as it can be. If you’re looking for something other than gaming, this is a great place to start.
An infinite universe of planets to explore, adventures to go on and friends to work with. That’s the promise No Man’s Sky’s ambitious VR update makes and, though launch was marred by technical hitches, Hello Games delivered. This is the entire original game with native-feeling VR support, giving you an endless amount of content to enjoy.
Insomniac Games makes the list again with its most recent title, Stormland. This is an incredibly slick first-person shooter in which you traverse a series of islands connected by a sea of clouds. A fluid, free movement system makes this one of VR’s most liberating experiences, and the live features and two-player co-op make this worth the jump.
Lone Echo was a pioneer of the now-beloved zero-gravity locomotion system for VR. Not only that but the game delivers incredible visuals, thoughtful pacing and a great story, driven by strong characters and the bonds you grow with them. Plus it’s required playing before the launch of Lone Echo II and you can get in a bit of practice before the release of Echo VR on Quest.
We recently crowned Asgard’s Wrath as VR’s best game and, though only a month has passed, that still remains true in a busy holiday season. This is the massive, VR-native role-playing game that many fans have been waiting for, taking you on a tour of Norse Mythology and adding in biting melee combat and brilliant animal companions.
Insomniac’s VR debut remains one of the best, most thrilling gamepad-based games in VR. You can think of this as a mix between Uncharted and Dead Space; it’s a third-person action horror game in which you travel to the Arctic in search of a lost expedition. Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the game presents a chilling descent into madness you won’t want to miss.
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Do you agree with our list of the best Oculus Link games? Let us know in the comments below!
Insomniac Games is one of the gaming industry’s longest-running, most respected and all-round best developers.
From early hits like Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet and Clank leading all the way up to 2018’s blockbuster Spider-Man game, the studio’s bound to have made something you played and loved.
But did you know Insomniac made a bunch of great VR games too?
In fact, Insomniac was one of the first developers Oculus partnered with under its Studios banner. Since then the developer released a total of four Oculus Rift exclusives in the past three and a half years. That’s no small feat. Take a trip back in time now as we revisit every Insomniac VR game we’ve reviewed so far. The team’s now owned by Sony, but we hope to see more VR from them going forward.
Insomniac’s VR debut was a thrilling third-person action game that mixed elements of the Uncharted series, Dead Space and Lovecraftian horror. Played with a gamepad, you set out on an arctic expedition in search of lost friends. It’s not long before you descend into madness and fight for survival against horrifying monsters.
What we said: ‘Edge of Nowhere is an uncomfortably personal and unnerving horror experience unlike anything else I’ve seen inside of a VR headset. This is an Oculus Rift exclusive that is not to be missed.’
While Edge of Nowhere marked a great start for Insomniac and VR, Feral Rites was a less than successful follow-up. It’s a third-person brawler in which you can transform into monsters and lay a massive beatdown. Sluggish pacing and boring gameplay made for a forgettable experience, though, and the game’s price infamously plummeted upon release.
What we said: ‘Feral Rites isn’t necessarily a bad game, but it’s also well below the usual standard of excellence one expects from Insomniac. Fans of brawlers may want to pick this one up to experience their favorite genre in VR, but everyone else should feel safe giving it a pass.’
Getting back into fighting shape, The Unspoken is Insomniac’s first VR game to utilize the Oculus Touch controllers. It delivers on the spell-binding promise of multiplayer wizard battles, using gesture-based inputs to deliver spectacular showdowns. We loved its multiplayer features but, since then, Insomniac has gone back and added a deeper single-player component too.
What we said: ‘This is a title that could only ever work in a VR headset and it succeeds because of, rather than in spite of, the unique capabilities of its platform. The Unspoken represents everything that is fun about playing games in VR and has all the makings of an iconic title we will still be talking about for years to come.’
Insomniac’s first new VR game in years is easily its biggest and most ambitious to date (and the first to be reviewed on our new 5 Star scoring system). This is an evolving first-person shooter in which you surf the clouds between interconnected islands, gunning down enemies in either single-player or two-player co-op. It’s often breathtaking to play, but not without issue.
What we said: ‘Many of its dizzying strands of design are dreamlike in delivery, from the seamless UI and scaling cliff faces with Olympic proficiency to effortlessly surfing its bed of clouds or unloading a rattling barrage of bullets on enemies. Its stumbles are as obvious as they are numerous, but it picks itself back up again time after time. The seas of VR shooter development are still stormy, but Stormland sails them with aplomb.’
Insomniac Games, developers behind The Unspoken (2017), Edge of Nowhere (2016), and Ratchet & Clank, showed off a sneak peek of their next VR game. While still unnamed, the studio is aiming to break boundaries with what they say is ‘an open world adventure.’
The whole developer spotlight video (below) is pretty tight-lipped about what’s next, although the studio’s Principal Designer Duncan Moore says “[we wanted to] create really beautiful, immersive spaces and apply it to a new palette of open world adventure.”
“In this new project, you’ll be able to go wherever you want,” says Nina Fricker, Insomniac’s Lead Technical Animator. Fricker continues: “To be able to bring that into the VR space is definitely the next evolution of what we’re going for.”
The video’s description has a cryptic line too, saying “Reclaim Your World – June 7, 2018.”
Although target platforms are still unknown, the video was published by Oculus, possibly pointing to a new Rift exclusive in the works. Both The Unspoken and Edge of Nowhere are exclusive to the Oculus platform.
No launch date is set yet, so we’ll just have to wait and see on June 7th for what Insomniac has planned next.
If you didn’t realise already today is the most ominous of days, Friday 13th. If you happen to own an Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR however then there’s no need to fret, in fact you can celebrate as Oculus has decided to mark the occasion by discounting a bunch of scary videogames to immerse yourself in.
There are 15 titles on discount across each platform for one day only featuring some of the best horror available for the platform. From psychological thrillers to all out gun toting action experiences, there’s something for everyone – if you can handle it.
Thanks to ReVive, a hack that lets SteamVR-compatible headsets play Oculus Rift exclusives, anyone with an HTC Vive can enjoy a number of unofficially supported games from the Oculus Store. Here we take a look at 5 of the games you shouldn’t miss—of course with the appended “buyer beware” warning that the Revive hack caries with it.
For non-Rift owners, losing access to a game you bought on the Oculus Store isn’t likely at this point, but it’s not something you should ignore either. Back when Oculus modified their DRM in a way that prevented Revive from functioning, thus blocking Vive users from playing Oculus games in their library, community outcry over the decision eventually led Oculus to reverse that particular stance on DRM, saying that in the future they wouldn’t use headset verification as part of the platform’s security protections. Despite the risk, we still think these Oculus exclusive games are worth playing.
People used to think that fast-paced, high-action games would be too disorienting for new virtual reality users, but in Epic Games’ Robo Recall (2017), you can teleport around at full speed as you blast away at the game’s evil (and hilarious) robot army. If being able to tear your enemies literally limb from limb and beat a robot over the head with their own dismembered arm isn’t astounding enough, the level of detail and polish put into this game will make you reassess what’s possible in VR. This is another Touch freebie you’ll have to pay for as a Vive user, but at $30, you’d be hard-pressed to find something with this level of polish at this price on Steam.
Find out why we gave Robo Recall [8.5/10] in our review.
You can probably burn through this charming, family-friendly 3D platformer in a weekend—providing you’ve got a gamepad on hand—but at exactly zero dollars, Playful’s Lucky’s Tale (2016) is an easy sell. As one of the first third-person games for Rift, Lucky’s Tale helped define the Xbone Gamepad-era of VR gaming that Oculus is leaving behind now that the controller is no longer being bundled. Whether you’re racing with Lucky through lush trees, dodging swamp pits, battling menacing bosses, or mastering mini-games, youʼll feel like you’ve truly gone inside the world of a video game thanks to the magic of VR.
With a fantasy-meets-WW2 setting, this collectible card game takes place on a 4×4 grid battlefield featuring rampaging giants, intimidating war-machines, and soaring projectiles. As a freemium game from High Voltage, there’s still plenty of opportunity to play an exciting single-player campaign if collecting (and buying) card packs in multiplayer isn’t really your thing.
There’s plenty of gun slinging fun in this Western-inspired multiplayer shooter. Darned tootin’ if you can rob a runaway train, defend from zombie hordes, or battle it out in an old saloon—of course with your trusty six-shooters by your side (and a stick of dynamite for good measure). While this is free to Touch owners upon activation, if you’re looking for a well-rounded little shooter with a cowboy flair, the $40 sticker price may fit the bill.
Esper: The Collection gives you access to Esper (2016) and Esper 2(2017)—two finely-crafted and ultimately intriguing puzzlers that give you psychic abilities to solve increasingly challenging tests. As an agent of ESPR, an organization set up to deal with the outbreak of telekinetic powers, you travel to exotic locations (not just your desk); solve puzzles, discover secrets, stop villainous plots, and fall unconscious multiple times. Interact with an array of characters, voiced by notable actors, Nick Frost, Lara Pulver, and Sean Pertwee, and Eric Meyers. Since you’re using your telekenetic powers, this isn’t a game that’ll use Vive controllers to their fullest, but it’s still a great options if you’re looking for a more passive, seated experience.
Two of the most well-received Oculus-funded games—both the campaign mode Lone Echo (2017) selling for $40 and the free multiplayer mode Echo Arena (2017)—are easy for Vive users to play thanks to the games’ native 360-degree setup. If you’re skeptical of the zero-g locomotion scheme, we suggest grabbing Echo Arena first,which doesn’t require Touch activation to nab for free. Either way, you’ll be amazed at how comfortable and immersive flying through space can really be in the first-person (i.e. not Adr1ft).
Find out why we gave Lone Echo [9/10] in our review.
Wilson’s Heart is a gritty first-person thriller from Twisted Pixel that jaunts through gads of sci-fi tropes ripped directly from the silver screen. As one of the most beautiful and visually cohesive VR games out for Touch, the game takes you through a black-and-white universe as experienced by Wilson, a hospital patient recovering from a curious surgery that has replaced his live-beating heart with a strange machine. Ripping it from your chest, you find it gives you a growing number of abilities to help you not only fight against your personal demons, but also some very real ones that have passed into the world thanks to experiments done by the brilliant, but clearly insane Dr. Harcourt
While falling into some overly campy territory, garnering it Wilson’s Heart a [7/10] in our review, the game is definitelty worth a play-through if you can find it for cheaper than its $40 sticker price.
Don’t say we didn’t tell you *not* to button-mash your gamepad before stepping into Chronos (2016), a third-person adventure by Gunfire Games. Slashing at enemies with the long-trained penchant for beat-em-ups will get you exactly nowhere in this Zelda-inspired, Dark Souls-ish-level of difficulty game where dying in the game physically ages your character. Starting out with either an axe or a sword, you leap through a multi-dimensional transport crystal to hunt down a dragon that has ruined your world. As an interesting mix of high-fantasy and a retro post-apocalyptic world, Chronos gives you plenty to gawk at, and even more to worry about as you hack and slash your way through dimensions.
Sitting at 4.5/5 stars on the Oculus Store, it’s a score we can easily get behind.
Edge of Nowhere (2016) is a third-person VR survival horror game created by Insomniac Games that strands you in the icy wasteland of Antarctica, leaving you with only a pick-axe, a shotgun, and some rocks to defend yourself against a bloodthirsty ancient species that lurk inside the snowy caverns. The lack of supplies makes for tense gameplay and forces the players to be creative and conserve resources, creating tense moments when you’re forced to decide whether you should use that last shotgun shell and blow the head off the horrible beast lurking nearby or just try the more risky route and sneak past. As a gamepad game
Find out why we gave Edge of Nowhere one of our highest ratings at [9.5/10] in our review.
So, you’ve either got your hands on an Oculus Rift or an Oculus Quest with the help of Link, and now you want to know what to download first (besides the free stuff). Here’s our breakdown of the top 10 Rift platform games that you should definitely play. Like right now.
Before we start, don’t forget that your Rift (and Quest with Link) also works with compatible games purchased through Steam. Thanks to Valve’s open SteamVR platform and OpenVR APIs, Steam supports HTC Vive, Windows VR, Valve Index, and Oculus Rift equally, so you can shop around for even more titles that aren’t published on the Oculus Store provided the developer enabled support.
HTC Vive owners can play all of these too with the help of Revive, a software hack that hooks Vive into Oculus Store exclusives. Without further ado, these are our top 10 Rift games in no particular order.
The 10 Best Oculus Rift Games
Stormland
From Insomniac Games comes the open-world adventure Stormland, a real study in good shooting mechanics, excellent locomotion schemes, and not to mention a two-player co-op mode so you and a Rift/Quest-owning buddy can battle all the evil robots the cloud-filled world has to offer. Half of the fun is picking your combat tactics; are you a silent killer, ripping out an unsuspecting enemy’s heath pack and skitter away to safety, or are you the ‘jump from a 200-foot tower like Deadpool’ kind of person with reckless abandon? It’s up to you!
Check out why we gave Stormlanda [9/10] in our review.
Asgard’s Wrath
I don’t know about you, but being a Viking god was always on my list of things to do before leaving this world for Valhalla. It just so happens that Sanzaru Games has produced one of the best VR games to date, as this melee combat adventure has so much story, combat, dungeon crawling, and looting that you’ll easily invest 20 hours on the low side, but come back for at least 40 to get everything out of what has turned out to be one of the funnest and most well-realized VR titles to date
Here we have two halves of the same zero-G coin: first-person action-adventure game Lone Echo (2017) and it’s multiplayer counterpart Echo Arena (2017). As impressive feats of engineering in their own rights, both games feature an undoubtedly comfortable zero-G locomotion system that lets you fly through the air without the slightest hint of motion sickness.
Lone Echo is the sort of cinematic sci-fi narrative that engages the player with its excellent voice acting, impressive visuals, and a deep and memorable story. Combined with its innovative locomotion system, it’s truly a gem of a game worth playing—if only to say you’ve been to the edge of the Universe and back. Check out why we gave Lone Echoa solid [9/10] in our review.
Where Lone Echo isplodding and tactful in its storytelling, Echo VR amps up the speed, throwing you in an online team sport that’s a fun mix of soccer and ultimate Frisbee… in space. The best part? It’s free to own permanently. Echo Combat, the first-person shooter expansion to Echo VR, isn’t here yet, but it’s also shown that the high-flying, zero-G locomotion mechanic is definitely suited to other game genres.
Vader Immortal: A Star Wars Series
This three-part Star Wars cinematic experience arrives from ILMxLabs, Lucas Films’ skunkworks which is known for having churned out some of the highest-quality immersive content to date.
Vader Immortal is more of a VR ‘experience’ than it is a outright game, presenting the user with a 45-minute adventure for each episode, however each comes with its own game area that lets you practice all of your Jedi skills in what’s called the ‘Lightsaber Dojo’. In other, less capable hands, this would be a hokey add-on, but here it actually works and makes sense. All in all, it definitely deserves to be on the list however you slice it.
Beat Saber
Created by Prague-based indie team Beat Studio, Beat Saber(2018) is a funky and incredibly stylish rhythm game that will have you slicing blocks to the beat of high-BPM dance music. While the idea is simple, the execution is magnificent. Beat Saber gives you a mess of songs to play, each with four difficulty levels to master, the highest being expert which will have you feeling like a 21st century techno-Jedi.
If you haven’t played the PC or console version of SUPERHOT (2016) before, get ready for a new take on the FPS genre with its strategy-based shooting missions. Designed from the ground-up for VR headsets, SUPERHOT VR (2016) is an entirely separate game in the same vein as its flatscreen counterpart. The iconic red baddies (and their bullets) move only when you do, so you can line up your shot, punch a guy in the face, dodge a bullet, and toss a bottle across the room, shattering their red-glass heads in what feels intensely immersive and satisfying—because you’re doing it all with your own two hands. That and you’ll feel like a badass no matter whose basement you live in.
People used to think that fast-paced, high-action games would be too disorienting for new virtual reality users, but in Epic Games’ Robo Recall (2017), you can teleport around at full speed as you blast away at the game’s evil (and hilarious) robot army. If being able to tear your enemies literally limb from limb and beat a robot over the head with their own dismembered arm isn’t astounding enough, the level of detail and polish put into this game will make you reassess what’s possible in VR.
Find out why we gave Robo Recall [8.5/10] in our review.
Trover Saves the Universe
From the co-creator of Rick and Morty comes the 3D platformer Trover Saves the Universe. Your dogs have been dognapped by a beaked lunatic who stuffed them into his eye holes and is using their life essence to destroy the universe. You’re partnered with Trover, a little purple eye-hole monster who isn’t a huge fan of working or being put in the position of having to save the universe.
We haven’t had a chance to review Trover Saves the Universe, although it’s currently sitting at a very respectable [4.76/5] on the Oculus Store.
I Expect You to Die
Schell Games has only just pushed out the last DLC installment of the hit spy-themed puzzler I Expect You to Die (2016). It’s on basically every platform now, and for good reason: it’s incredibly clever, well-built, and easy enough to pick up while being hard enough not to want to put down.
I Expect You to Die is currently sitting at a good [4.66/5] on the Oculus Store.
Moss
Once a PSVR exclusive, Moss (2017) has now made its way to PC VR headsets, letting you control your cute little mouse buddy, Quill, on your adventures through a large and dangerous world. Stylistically, Moss hits a home run with its impressive diorama-style visuals and interactive elements that lets you, the player (aka ‘The Reader’) move puzzle pieces around and also take over the minds of enemies as Quill slashes through the world to recover her lost uncle. Puzzles may not be the most difficult, but Moss has effectively set up a universe begging for more sequels to further flesh out the enticing world Polyarc Games has created.
See why we gave it a [7.9/10] in our review on PSVR.
Honorable Mentions
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR: While not an Oculus Store game, Bethesda’s Steam version of Skyrim VR fully supports Oculus Rift, letting you engage in multiple tens of hours of exploring the beautifully realized open world environment. What else is there to say? It’s Skyrim in VR.
No Man’s Sky: Unlike Skyrim VR, this is a free update to the game, which you can grab on Steam. It’s a bit flawed, but it’s an infinite galaxy of opportunities, so it always has that going for it.
Job Simulator: Tongue in cheek madness as you enter a far off future where robots rule the world, and consequently also have no idea how the past actually was. Smash stuff. Silly Robots. Hilarity ensues.
Vacation Simulator: Owlchemy Labs’s followup to Job Simulator. More story, a more open environment to traverse (albeit node teleportation) and a ton of vacation-style activities to explore and play. Arguably better than the first.
Arizona Sunshine: Offering you a chance to explore, collect real-world guns and indiscriminately shoot them at every moving thing (in this case zombies), Arizona Sunshine fills a very special place in many people’s hearts. The story mode does offer some thrills, but isn’t really groundbreaking as such.
Onward – A fan favorite with a hardcore playerbase, the OD green of mil-sim shooters Onward gives you that VR battle you’ve always wanted, including tactical team-based gameplay and plenty of guns.
The Mage’s Tale: Touch – Crafting elemental magic, exploring foreboding dungeons, battling giants and stealing their treasure. There’s all of this and more in The Mage’s Tale. Althoughstory-wise the game comes too close to campy and played out for its own good, it’s still a solid investment for the enterprising young wizard among you.
DiRT Rally: Gamepad/steering wheel – Driving through the forest with a beer in your hand isn’t ok…in reality. But in DiRT Rally you’ll need all the soothing ethanol you can get as you stomach the twists and turns of an exciting car simulator, that while rated ‘intense’ on the Oculus Store, is ultimately a fun and exciting way to burn some time perfecting your Initial D drifting skills. Ok. Better leave out the alcohol anyway.
Edge of Nowhere (2016) Gamepad – A third-person VR survival horror game created by Insomniac Games that strands you in the icy wasteland of Antarctica, Edge of Nowhere leaves you with only a pick-axe, a shotgun, and some rocks to defend yourself against a bloodthirsty ancient species that lurk inside the snowy caverns.
Chronos (2016): Gamepad – A third-person adventure by Gunfire Games, Chronos will have you slashing at enemies with the long-trained penchant for beat-em-ups will get you exactly nowhere in this Zelda-inspired, Dark Souls-ish-level of difficulty game where dying in the game physically ages your character.
If the list doesn’t have the game you’ve been eyeing for months, definitely check out our reviews for some more gaming greats on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PSVR.
Update (November 19th, 2019): We’ve done a long-due overhaul of the list, expanding it from five to 10 games. We’ve also done away with the ranking system. If you’re looking for a more quantified list by user review rankings, check out The Top 20 Best & Most Rated Rift Games & Apps.
The Oculus Rift turns one next Tuesday. This time last year we could hardly believe the age of consumer VR was nearly upon us, and now I’m struggling to come to terms with how quickly it’s moving. It really feels like it hasn’t been any time at all since Rift released, but it’s still hard to keep track of all that’s happened over the past 365 days.
I didn’t actually get my own Rift until September, mainly on the account of wanting to spare myself the madness of waiting for a unit to arrive. I was doubly relieved I’d decided to wait when Oculus started to struggle to meet shipping demands. Honestly, I don’t know how some of you coped with having your pre-orders pushed back weeks and months. I’d have gone crazy. Instead I sat back and decided it was best to let things get ironed out and wait until I could make a few simple clicks and have one show up at my door the next day. By then there would be a healthy slate of games to check out too beyond the already-impressive launch line-up.
Waiting wasn’t that hard; though I longed to be able to pull a Rift (or Vive) over my eyes without the ever so pressured feeling of knowing a developer was watching me, I’ve been an early adopter enough times before to know the caveats that come with the dedication, especially with VR.
Watching the first few weeks of launch was a mixed experience, though. It was wonderful to see so many amazed reactions from people that had kept the faith for multiple years, even if the frustrations of not getting a unit understandably drowned them out.
When I did finally get my unit, I played it cool. I knew Touch was mere months away and would be when I really dived in, but there were some games I had to check out on gamepad.
I’m going to remember Rift’s gamepad-only days fondly, even if I only joined the club towards the end of that era. Roomscale VR with position-tracked controls is undoubtedly the way forward, but there’s something to be said about the sheer simplicity of the gamepad game, free from the nagging concerns of the physical space around you. They may not have been revolutionary, but I appreciated the more traditionally thrills of Edge of Nowhere and Chronos. I think it’s important we remember those types of games as we head further into the age of Oculus Touch.
That said, Superhot was a game changer for me like I’m sure it was for many others. It just made so much sense inside the Rift; a unique blend of puzzle and shooter that captialized on VR’s ability to empower better than anything that’s came before or after. I caught glimpses of that in Robo Recall this month, too, though ultimately I agree with our review in that it’s far too repetitive to really be remembered as one of VR’s greatest triumphs.
Still, VR is an emotive powerhouse and I don’t think we’ve really realised how to unlock that side of it yet. We’re scratching the surface with things like Dear Angelica, sure, but the past year’s content was all about gamey excitement and thrills, the likes of which we can get on consoles and in movie theaters already.
My year in the Rift has been fun, if not as consistently mind-blowing as I might have hoped. I’ve seen a taste of what’s to come, though, and I’m confident the second year will be even more impressive than the first.
The main selling point for any game that aims to be successful in the growing and profitable eSports scene is its competitive nature. Can people play this game, over and over, for hours, days, weeks, and months on end — at the exclusion of all other games — and continue to improve and discover new strategies and wrinkles throughout that time? Will people be able to actually improve their skill, as players, to differentiate their rank in the game, rather than just upgrading stats and unlocking new items?
Those are important questions to ask and, luckily, it seems like Insomniac has thought of answers for their upcoming Oculus Touch launch title, The Unspoken [Review: 9/10]. Not only will the game come packaged for free with all Touch pre-orders, but it also includes enough depth and competitive flair to be well worth the time investment. It’s also the third VR title from the veteran studio, following Edge of Nowhere [Review: 9/10] and Feral Rites [Review: 5/10].
Finding A Competitive Balance
“For us, developing The Unspoken started with making a really good and fun competitive game,” said Chad Dezern, Creative Director of The Unspoken at Insomniac, during a phone interview. “Once we started getting into competitive matches at the office and realized the game needed to be about magic duels with a solid beginning, middle, and end, it really helped us find the core of the experience.”
No matter who you are, you’ve likely fantasized or thought about throwing fireballs at some point in your life. When you put on a VR headset and transport yourself to fantastical worlds of fiction, there’s no more appropriate time to indulge in the fantasies that come from the technology. But beyond the content and setting, the real magic (pun intended) comes when you face off against someone else inside the immersive environment.
“It really started clicking for us when we were able to make a very naturally competitive game,” said Dezern. “And once the mechanics were established, we were starting to realize what the habits of really high level players were. We started there — with competition — because that is the core of it, but we did’t specifically set out to make an eSport game, it wasn’t a game design goal.”
Which is a huge point to pay attention to. eSports isn’t a genre of video games. Even if you try your hardest, you can’t force your game to be accepted and promoted in the eSports community. But instead, the smarter idea, is to craft an inherently fun, well-designed, and balanced game and encourage the community to support and build it up over time. And that’s what Insomniac is doing instead.
“We want to focus on making the individual player experience fun, more so than creating a team game,” said Dezern. “We made it a duel because we wanted to really focus on those dynamics.”
In this way, it’s actually different than most popular competitive gaming experiences. MOBAs like League of Legends,DOTA 2, Paragon, and Heroes of the Storm are all about team dynamics, Counter-Strike and Overwatch are team-based first-person shooters, and other than the fighting game community, most eSports — and physical sports in general — are all team-based. It’s a unique opportunity for a game like The Unspoken.
By focusing on individual players, the core skill-based gameplay is able to shine more clearly. Master your class, memorize the spells, and create strategies for moving around the maps, baiting opponents to open them up to your more powerful abilities, and more. The Unspoken, and other VR titles, become just as much about your physical endurance and coordination as they are your knowledge and ability as a gamer. VR eSports are getting closer to, well, actual sports. We’re approaching Tron-like levels of immersion and competition.
Identity Through Magic
“We have matchmaking features, you can invite friends to matches, and ranked matches,” said Dezern. “For single player content, you can go into a practice mode with all the classes and spells to get the hang of things, as well as battle a very challenging A.I. opponent. It’s great for learning how to play the game.”
There’s a story as well, but it’s just not the focus. “The narrative is there to setup the game, we want everyone to be intrigued, its just the tip of a very big narrative iceberg, said Dezern. “We didn’t go all in on everything because we wanted to do one thing very well instead of sprawling ourselves across several modes. For us, that one thing is competitive 1 vs. 1 multiplayer duels.”
Rather than a traditionally fantastical or mythical world of magical creatures and forbidden lore, like you might find in The Lord of the Rings, or something similar, The Unspoken features a much more grounded “What if?” scenario. This isn’t about a fictional world of witches and wizards, but instead asks a very Harry Potter-esque question: What if the world of magic was hiding just beneath our collective noses?
“Think about that feeling you have when you’re in a new city and you don’t know what’s going on just around the corner,” said Dezern. “How do we work that notion into a spell? We don’t have many straight up D&D spells, for example, except for maybe the Fireball, because come on, it’s a fireball.”
Time will tell whether games like The Unspoken, or even RIGS, are able to find footing in the competitive gaming scene as VR titles. In the meantime, developers should take a note from Insomniac’s book and focus on creating well-designed, fun, and balanced games that can stand on their own. If that’s done well enough, then an eSports scene will form organically.
The Unspoken releases on December 6th with the launch of the Oculus Touch controllers. What is your most anticipated Touch title next week?
Especially in this day and age prices for videogames can seem a bit much, and it often gives the stigma of the higher the price the higher the quality. Insomniac Games may have initially fallen into this trap, but now it has resolved it in a more than agreeable way.
Feral Rites was originally set at a price that most AAA games hold, but after not even a week of being on the Oculus Store there have been complaints, and Insomniac Games has listened, taking the price down from $49.99 (USD) to $29.99. “As we do with all our games, we’ve paid careful attention and responded to player feedback so far.
“We appreciate the support from everyone who has experienced Feral Rites, and we understand the concerns as well — especially about the game’s price. Effective immediately, the price of Feral Rites is $29.99. The game’s original price was largely based on all the work that went into it. We’re proud that Feral Rites is among the largest VR games of its kind available today.”
If you have already bought a copy of Feral Rites for the Oculus Rift, then you may feel a little bamboozled. Oculus will quickly help you get over these feelings with not four, not five, but six free games. These are: AirMech Command, Damaged Core, Defense Grid VR, Chronos, Edge of Nowhere, and The Climb. As you can see by the reports made by VRFocus on these titles, they’re not just fillers, but rather chunky games which will more than fill the hole, one of which is Insomniac Games’ first VR title.
You can expect these games to turn up on your library tomorrow, 18th September.
For more on the latest developments of Oculus Rift titles, as well as all the news, updates, and features in the world of VR, make sure to check back with VRFocus.
