It seems like it’s sale time of the year, because this new Humble VR Sale is running at the same time as the Oculus Summer Sale, and even features some of the same titles too. This Humble sale is only set to last a little while longer though, wrapping up at 10am PST on August 6th, whereas the Oculus Summer Sale runs until the end of August 9.
Perhaps the biggest bargain in the Humble VR Sale is on Skyrim VR, which is 70% off and down to just $17.99. Skyrim VR remains one of the most popular and iconic VR experiences to date, and it’s rare to see it come down in price so heavily. Bethesda’s other VR title, Fallout 4 VR, is discounted down 70% as well, available for $17.99.
If you’re looking something more crime-based (in which case we’re worried about you), L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files is 50% off, bringing it down to just $14.99. Or if sci-fi is your more your jam, then you could check out Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, down 30% for $20.99, or Borderlands 2 VR, down 50% for $24.99.
While all these games are on sale through the Humble Store, you’ll receive a Steam key to redeem the game after purchase. Unlike the Oculus Summer Sale where your purchases can only be used with Oculus hardware, redeeming a game on Steam will let you use the game on any SteamVR-compatible headset.
It’s also worth mentioning that all of these Humble discounts are for PC VR versions of games only, and not for the Oculus Quest. Even if the game supports cross-buy between Rift and Quest, you won’t get that advantage from these games — cross-buy only applies to PC VR games bought on the Oculus Store, and not Steam versions of games.
Fallout 4 (2015), Bethesda’s beloved post-apocalyptic open world RPG, is now in VR, letting you stalk the Wasteland as the sole survivor of Vault 111 from the immersive point of view of the HTC Vive headset. This comes with most of the important trimmings and trappings of the original; a seemingly endless number of interesting and varied quests, multiple causes to join, base building, and plenty of guns and armor to scrounge. Fallout 4 VR successfully provides all these things along with the promise of holding a gun in your own hand, but fractures somewhat as it mutates from its native 16:9 aspect ratio to the new land of VR.
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios Publisher: Bethesda Softworks Available On: HTC Vive (Steam) Reviewed On: HTC Vive, Tested on Rift (see note below) Release Date: December 11th, 2017
Note: I have over 70 hours logged in the PC version of ‘Fallout 4’, but I’m attempting to set aside my personal affection for the non-VR version to put ‘Fallout 4 VR’ on the same plane as any other modern made-for-VR game.
Gameplay
If you’ve already played the PC or console version of the game, you’re probably looking forward to experiencing the world you know so well in the most immersive format available. If you haven’t, then your impression of the game will be entirely based on this version. It won’t be a ‘VR port’ to you, but rather a native VR game judged on its own merits.
As an action RPG, you’ll have to fill out your stats first to push you in the desired direction you want to pursue: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. You can grow these areas using the associated abilities and by spending XP to make them even stronger, which in turn gets you ‘Perks’ that can unlock abilities like master-level gunsmithing, better accuracy when shooting, master lockpicking, etc. It’s really a fun system that lets you play the game you want to just by being that person and by pursuing the sort of gameplay and abilities that you want to specialize in.
‘Fallout 4’ Perk Chart
Like Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR underperforms in a few areas specific to the VR medium while at the same time drastically outperforming many of its VR contemporaries thanks to the game’s overwhelming size, variability of quests, numerous AI, and gameplay length. Now for something you haven’t heard a zillion times before: the nuts and bolts of VR gameplay.
Fallout 4 VR’s default teleporting locomotion scheme can be pretty tedious when moving around the Wasteland overworld. Although I found its precision much more useful when moving around a building’s interior during dungeon clearing, I still opted for the free locomotion option in the end. If you stick with the default teleport scheme, you’ll quickly find out that long teleports will drain your action points (AP) which are useful to have when you engage V.A.T.S., the game’s bullet-time mode. The AP drain is true for running at top speed in free locomotion mode too, so both locomotion styles end up offering an AP cost for faster movement. You can technically do as many ‘close’ teleports as you want, as there’s no cool down period because of the lack of AP cost, making teleportation the fastest way to travel across the Commonwealth (besides actual fast travel, that is). That’s a lot of trigger presses though.
Head Controller-relative free locomotion is the only other option. Snap-turning is an available option, but most Vive-owners are probably capable of hosting a full 360 setup (unlike stock Rift-players), so while it’s a welcome addition, some users simply won’t want or need snap-turning. I’ll speak more about locomotion in the ‘Comfort’ section below.
If you haven’t heard yet, Fallout 4 is mostly about wielding guns, although there are some melee weapons like machetes, baseball bats, bayonets, and (my favorite) Grognak’s axe. It’s safe to say then, if Fallout 4 VR can’t nail the shooting aspect, it’s failed in a pretty big department. Shooting is mostly a positive experience, although there are some hitches.
On my way through the world, my first gun was a 10mm pistol. Upon picking it up, I was happy to see the developers didn’t paste in an omnipresent laser pointer aimer, which always cheapens the shooting experience for me. That’s a big plus. While at close range, using a gun’s iron sights isn’t really an issue either, but the game’s occasional drabness demands at very least a glowing site so you can get a good sight picture in low light conditions. Thankfully, the base game is the gold standard of gun modding, letting you alter every gun you come across to make it stronger, take larger magazines, change sights etc. The VR version is slightly less effective in this regard though for one reason currently.
While a glowing iron sight made the shooting experience much easier, to my ultimate dismay I found that optical scopes simply don’t work. You can construct them, attach them, collect them, find guns sporting them, but when you try to use a gun outfitted with a scope, you’ll be presented with a dead, matte surface where you should be seeing a zoomed-in view of the world.
Reaching out to Bethesda, I was told usable scopes would come in a later update, but wouldn’t be available at launch. Reflex sights, the type of device that gives you a floating cross-hairs, work just fine though (hmph).
Otherwise, I’d say the game’s shooting experience is hampered by the lack of two-handed weapons, the lack of intuitive holstering mechanic, and a few comically-scaled guns. On the flip side, despite knowing two-handed weapons will never quite feel real with a dual-controller setup (not Fallout 4 VR‘s fault), the effect of shooting two of the game’s justifiably large weapons—the Fat Man tactical nuke launcher and the 5mm Minigun—was exactly as I predicted: pretty fucking awesome. Those certainly don’t make up for one of the most important gun mods being broken at launch, but you certainly can’t argue with being able to pistol-whip enemies in the face when they get too close.
V.A.T.S in VR | Photo courtesy Bethesda
My most favorite moments in Fallout 4 VR is battling two of the world’s medium-to-large menaces; nuclear football-wielding Mutants, and Deathclaws, the scaly behemoths that pop out of the ground to cause havoc. These hulking tank-beasts will make you practically drop your controller in fright as you try to run away, engage V.A.T.S., and cycle through your Pip-Boy hoping to find your highest-powered weapon that you forgot to favorite on your quick inventory list. There are larger baddies to battle, but those are usually boss-level fights that only happen every so often.
I don’t do companions besides Dogmeat, my mostly non-judgmental doggy pal. There are a number of companions available to befriend (and use as pack mules) though, but I find they get in the way more than anything. You can go it alone, or with any number of Wastelanders to make attacks a little less lonesome. Seeing these companions in real life was a bit jarring at first; from the whole new POV of a VR headset, the artificiality of the game’s NPCs comes to light—but I talk about this more in the ‘Immersion’ section below.
In any case, difficulty levels are variable, and can be changed on the fly during gameplay, making it as easy or as hard as you like at a moment’s notice.
It’s hard to beat getting a chance to walk around the more densely-packed areas like Diamond City either, which feel appropriately sized and filled with enough quests to satisfy several hours of losing yourself to the game. Yes. Side quests are abundant, but even the primary quest line will require tens of hours to complete—a main attraction to the game for sure. If you can overlook some of the less immersive bits (detailed below) you’ll find Fallout 4 VR mostly delivers on its job of plugging you into the Commonwealth.
A note about Rift support in Fallout 4 VR: As it is now, you can technically play the game on Rift (thanks to its inherent compatibility with SteamVR), but buttons aren’t appropriately mapped to make browsing in-game menus easy, or to make locomotion simple. Most interactions are based on touchpad swipes, which translate poorly to Rift’s thumbsticks. The game can be run on the Rift, but Bethesda doesn’t officially recommend it at this time.
Immersion
Even though you’re carrying a trusty map, genuinely massive games have a way of letting you figuratively lose yourself in the fabric of the story as its elements are strewn across an open world. Making your way into new territory for the first time can be a harrowing event, fraught with Ghouls, Mutants, and Raiders looking for blood. While the acute anxiety fades as you obtain higher levels, having a place as richly detailed as the Wasteland in VR is a major boon to immersion (despite the few ways it’s stretched to fit VR), if only for the fact that there’s always a challenge ahead, or a mystery around the corner to uncover.
While the game is both interesting and massive, I wouldn’t call any of the actual interactions within the world particularity immersive. That may be a harsh assessment, but as a two-year old game originally targeting flat screens, it feels too simplistic in some areas that a made-for-VR title would either do better, or avoid altogether.
Since you don’t have actual hands, which are replaced with floating controllers, hand presence is effectively null. This isn’t really a terrible thing, but the lack of meaningful object interaction in a world full of lootable buildings is. You won’t get a chance to do some of the things common to native VR games like manually inject a stimpack, physically reload a gun, or even pet a certain German Shepard (and tell him he’s a GOODBOYE). There simply isn’t any real object interaction to be had, as talking, eating, looting, and commanding your companion to do an action is all done through a single emotionless button press, often from a 2D menu. This may be convenient, but it isn’t really immersive.
Creating an inventory system for VR isn’t an easy thing either—nor is adapting one from an inherently menu-based game. Because a physical backpack full of 300 items wouldn’t exactly be practical, Fallout 4 VR definitely gets a break when it borrows a majority of its UI from the flatscreen version for its more utilitarian purposes. It does make a few VR-specific overtures when it can so as not to be entirely choked with floating 2D windows, but you’ll find those are pretty few in number.
Floating status bars aren’t really the most elegant of solutions for VR. There, I said it. Usually a developer would tailor the guns to give you some sort of indication that bullets were running out, or attach the counter directly to the gun so it doesn’t limit the field of view any more than it has to, but the blaring HP/AP bar and the ammo counter combined with the barrage of on-screen commands (looting, talking to NPCs, etc,) take away from the experience by being front and center most of the time. While navigation is neatly tucked away below your line-of-sight, everything else demands your immediate attention. It seems like a cheap fix to what rightly should have been overhauled entirely for VR.
The Pip-Boy arm computer tries to make up for all this PC-to-VR port-ness by being right there on your wrist, ready to flip through in a moment’s notice, enlarging somewhat as you bring it up to view. I liked using the Pip-Boy because it’s really the only place a 2D UI element makes sense. If you get tired of raising your wrist, you can make it function as a regular menu, although you’d be missing out.
Pipboy in VR | Photo courtesy Bethesda
Another big factor in immersion is the game’s NPCs and how you interact with them. NPCs move their heads and eyes to follow you as you move about the room during dialogue, but you won’t see anything like subtle reactions of getting too close, or any variable dialogue outside the game’s strict dialogue tree. Because VR is more immersive than traditional monitors, these things stick out more.
I know we don’t live in a time where perfectly realistic NPC characters are actually possible—but if the NPC interactions we see in Lone Echo (2017) are the best we can manage right now, Fallout 4 VR is showing its age.
On the more positive side of things, base building really helps the game feel more like ‘home’, and works really well in VR. Perusing a carousel of 3D objects on your left controller and placing them in the world just feels right. Once I was sufficiently impressed with my base, I set up a chair on the top of the Red Rocket station, turned on the radio and kicked back to watch the sun go down. It’s honestly what VR is all about.
Like its non-VR forbearer, there aren’t many display options to turn up the visual quality of the game. Bethesda’s minimum requirements says you should be running at very least an Intel Core i5-4590 or AMD FX 8350, 8GB RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD RX Vega 56 GPU. The recommended spec specifies an Intel Core i7-6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X, 16GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 / AMD RX Vega 64 GPU.
My Exemplar 2 system meets those recommended specs, so while your mileage may vary, I found the game’s visual detail to be pretty incredible considering it’s supposed to run at or above 90 fps. NPCs don’t appear significantly worse than the flatscreen version, textures seem high enough quality, and draw distance seemed to be impressively far. The odd radioactive storm and night/day cycles really tie it all together nicely.
Comfort
As always, teleporation is one of the most comfortable locomotion options outside of natural room-scale walking. Even the controller-relative forward motion is good enough to be called comfortable though, thanks to an adjustable ‘comfort vignette’ that reduces your FOV while moving to keep you comfortable. You can of course turn this off to get the full FOV while moving.
Snap-turning is also adjustable, allowing you to pick the angle and type of transition; instant or ‘smooth’, the latter of which tosses in a few frames to better blend the normally jarring snapping transition. There is no smooth-turning to speak of though.
There’s no seated option in the game, which is a shame. When I play longer games, I tend to stand up for the first hour or so, but then naturally sit down to give my feeble, lazy legs a rest. If you are physically seated, you’ll be continuously ‘crouching’ in the world with no practical fix.
Update 5:00 PM ET: It appears I mistook the controller-relative free locomotion for head-relative, which would explain some of the strangeness I initially perceived.
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar 2 Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar 2 is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
The Fallout 4 VR hype machine is slowly ramping up to full speed, as the company today released a talk with the game’s Lead Producer Andrew Scharf about some of the finer points of retrofitting the entire game for VR headsets.
“Feeling like you’re physically in the world of Fallout 4 by playing in VR is an amazing experience,” says Scharf. “All the way up to the sad moment when you remove the headset and realize there is no V.A.T.S. in real life.”
One of the biggest changes is how the game addresses V.A.T.S., the game’s aiming system. In VR, it’s a bit different, as instead of entering a selection screen to determine your shot, you activate a sort of slow-motion mode that you can even move around in. “I keep saying, it’s like you’re Quicksilver from X-MEN,” Scharf said, explaining what it feels like to use V.A.T.S.
Bethesda says in a blog post that Fallout 4 VR is to include all content from the base game “including hundreds of locations, characters and quests.”
Sie gehören wohl zu den mit am meisten Spannung erwarteten Titeln für die virtuelle Realität und könnten einen Schub für VR auslösen. Bethesda nennt im Rahmen der Gamescom 2017 in Köln nun die genauen Erscheinungsdaten von The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, Doom VFR und Fallout 4 VR. Noch in diesem Jahr werden Spieler die virtuellen Räume der AAA-Titel betreten und erforschen können.
Bethesda nennt Erscheinungstermine seiner AAA-Spiele
Als erstes ist der Rollenspiel-Klassiker The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR an der Reihe, zumindest für PlayStation VR (PSVR): Am 17. November soll der Titel für die Sony-Konsole verfügbar sein. Wie gehabt wird der Release der Version für die HTC Vive erst nächstes Jahr stattfinden, hier nennt der Publisher noch kein genaueres Datum. Gleichzeitig bedient Bethesda hingegen die HTC Vive und PSVR mit Doom VFR, das der Publisher am 1. Dezember herausbringen will. Zum Schluss folgt der größte Titel, Fallout 4 VR. Der Erscheinungstermin liegt auf dem 12. Dezember, hier kommen zunächst lediglich HTC-Vive-Besitzer in den Genuss.
Etwas Verwirrung verursachte ein Tweet, in dem HTC mitteilte, dass Fallout 4 VR exklusiv für die Vive erscheint. Später korrigierte der Hersteller die Angabe und bestätigte lediglich erneut den Termin. Vorerst sollen im Gegensatz zu Skyrim VR keine DLCs bei Fallout 4 VR dabei sein. Diese könnten aber später kommen, wobei es unklar bleibt, ob sie kostenpflichtig sein werden oder nicht. Wie erwartet nennt Bethesda für alle drei Titel keinen Termin für die Oculus Rift. Als Hintergrund für die Verweigerung gelten die Prozesse zwischen ZeniMax Media und Oculus. ZeniMax ist die Muttergesellschaft von Bethesda.
Last year’s announcement of Fallout 4 VR was met with a fantastic response. The hands-on demo offered? Less so. This year however, Bethesda Softworks has ironed-out the kinks, and Fallout 4 VR is now exactly the experience it should be; including more natural locomotion, an immersive Power Armor HUD and impressive V.A.T.S. incorporation.
To begin at the start, the setting for Fallout 4 VR’s 2017 demo takes place in the same area of the world map as 2016’s demo did: outside the Red Rockettruck stop. A small variety of weapons are equipped to the player’s favourites wheel, accessible on the right circle pad on the HTC Vive’s motion controllers (VRFocus received confirmation today that Fallout 4 VR would also be compatible with an Xbox One controller), including a pistol, laser weapon and a baseball bat. The player aims by manually moving the controller, as would be expected, as can also swing the baseball bat naturally.
Unlike The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR’s demo, playable at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) for the first time, Fallout 4 VR feels like a fairly complete rendition of the original videogame. Bodies can be searched, items collected and the all-important V.A.T.S. system finally makes an appearance. It’s different to the original versions of Fallout 4, that’s for sure. But boy, is it fun.
In Fallout 4 VR, V.A.T.S. still slows time and allows you to aim at a specific body part. However, shots are now fired in real-time upon a pull of the trigger opposed to once the final commands have been issued. Furthermore, the player is able to teleport around the enemy by holding the trigger on the left controller, positioning the location icon where they wish to land and releasing. This allows for a clearer line-of-sight, or even a rushing melee attack: at one point VRFocus charged an enemy and with a single blow managed to separate their head from their body, watching the resulting damage dealt in slow motion.
Teleportation is available as standard, however Fallout 4 VR now also incorporates snap-based movement. Rotation is handled by physically moving your body (when using HTC Vive motion-controllers) and tapping up on the left circle pad will move you forward in small increments. This makes for a much more natural movement, allowing for precision through teleportation or speed through rapid clicks. It’s still not perfect of course – no developer has yet nailed the problems surrounding locomotion in VR – but it’s a huge step forward over last year’s Fallout 4 VR demo.
The Pip-Boy integration is still odd; cleverly placed on the wrist but asking the player to consider the new angle of their arm when inputting commands, effectively altering the input system by 90 degrees. However, familiarising yourself with the use of this and the popup menus that appear for items such as the skill tree (effectively acting as a monitor in the world, moveable with the right motion controller) will surely only be a matter of time.
And time is something that many will likely invest in Fallout 4 VR. Despite taking issue with the price of the videogame and the lack of any downloadable content (DLC), many early adopters of virtual reality (VR) hardware will likely jump on Fallout 4 VR. Judging by this latest demo offered by Bethesda Softworks, they’d be right to do so.
“We have continually been impressed with the team at Escalation [Studios] that Tom and Marc have assembled,” said Todd Vaughn, Vice President of Development at Bethesda. “Their commitment to quality and innovation has made significant contributions to the projects we’ve worked on together, and we’re excited to have them join ZeniMax.”
According to Zenimax Media, Escalation Studios is currently working on a number of projects with studios and will continue to contribute its talents across PC, console, mobile, and VR titles going forward.
“ZeniMax’s studios are responsible for some of the most iconic games in our industry,” said Marc Tardif, Co-Managing Director of Escalation Studios. “Becoming a part of this amazing family of developers is an honour for everyone at our studio.”
“We are proud of the incredible team that has helped make Escalation [Studios] such a success,” added Tom Mustaine Co-Managing Director of Escalation Studios. “We can’t wait to see what the studio is capable of with the support of such a great company as ZeniMax.”
No details of which projects Escalation Studios will be leading have yet been revealed, though it’s likely that the developer will be involved in the forthcoming VR adaptations of DOOM and possibly also Fallout 4. VRFocus will of course keep you updated with all the latest from Escalation Studios and Zenimax Media.
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