Category: FPS

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‘Serious Sam VR’ Early Access: Like A Blast From The Past With A Modern VR Twist

‘Serious Sam VR’ Early Access: Like A Blast From The Past With A Modern VR Twist

When we first learned about Serious Sam VR during E3 2016 earlier this year, it came a bit out of nowhere, but at the same time it made perfect sense. We weren’t exactly expecting a VR adaptation of the classic gory shooter franchise, but that doesn’t mean his wise-cracking bombastic action felt out of place. In fact, it felt like a natural iteration of the franchise when we went hands-on with the rip-roaring slaughter fest for the first time.

Now that Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope is about to complete its jump to VR and release on Steam Early Access next week on October 17th, we took the time to dive back in for another go at the world Croteam built with the help of publisher Devolver Digital.

The Serious Sam franchise is a game series about action, gore, and over-the-top good times. The plot is often barely thick enough to make sense and the ratio of action to exposition is roughly 95% to 5%, give or take. After rolling through large levels full of hundreds of enemies, you’ll rest up by killing just a few more hundred enemies once again.

Now, the VR iteration retains a lot of that same DNA, but it’s in a very different package. At first glance, you’ll look at the screenshots and trailers and probably think that it just looks like “another wave shooter” and frankly, that isn’t an incorrect description. You stand in one place and all of the game’s enemies come charging at you from within your general 180-degree field of view. You can’t move around the environment like in Raw Data and you won’t have to spin around to shoot surprise enemies behind you like in The Brookhaven Experiment. My gut tells me the limited range of movement was a conscious decision to allow them to bring the experience to both the Rift and PS VR eventually.

Instead, in Serious Sam VR, you’ll literally be standing in one place and only face enemies that are funneled towards your location. It’s a bit restrictive, to be frank, and sometimes feels like a feature that you’d see in a separate, more robust full game, but it’s still fun.

Some enemies may get ambitious and instead of running directly at your bullets, try to come at you from the side, but for the most part you don’t really need to move your legs at all — just your head, arms, and torso. And for what it’s worth, you will move those parts of your body a lot if you want to have any success. It may be a relatively basic wave shooter, but that doesn’t mean that it’s boring or easy.

In the Early Access version of the Serious Sam VR, there are two planet missions to pick from: Earth and Pladeon. Each planet mission is broken up into four waves, each of which is in a completely different environment. After completing the first section with just your standard unlimited laser pistols, you can spend your cash that you earned buying new guns, refilling ammo, and regaining your health. By the time you reach the final area of a mission, you’ll likely have a mostly full arsenal of weapons to pick from.

Thankfully, just like any Serious Sam game, that arsenal is the real star of the show. You’ve got such a wide assortment of weapons to pick from, you could easily spend hourse replaying missions with different loadouts just to see what fits your playstyle best.

In addition to the standard laser pistols, there are shotguns, tommy guns, assault rifles, heavy laser guns, rocket launches, chainsaws, and yes — a minigun. The physically created prop that we detailed recently isn’t available for purchase, but it’s digital counterpart is in the game and it’s just as glorious to use as you’d hope.

Serious Sam VR is a relatively intense affair by all accounts. Even on the easiest difficulty setting, waves are relentless. You’ll quickly need to become accustomed to aiming with each hand, simultaneously, at different areas of the world, to take out enemies. There are few things that feel as badass as wielding a rocket launcher in one hand and a minigun in the other, pointed at two different enemies, lighting them up and spewing blood across the map. In this way, The Last Hope feels like you’re living out scenes from the cover art of previous Serious Sam games.

And that’s about it. Your fingers are gonna cramp up from squeeze the trigger of your Vive wands so many times, you’re gonna sweat from ducking and weaving out of the way of energy balls and rockets, and you’ll probably curse a bit when you get steamrolled by a horde of alien scorpions for the fifth time on the same damn wave. It’s simple and shallow, but it’s also intense and a hell of a lot of fun.

Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope releases onto Steam Early Access on October 17th, 2016 for $39.99. As the game receives updates, the price is expected to stay the same. Future updates will include more missions, environments, enemies, weapons, power-ups, and a skill tree.

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Hands-On: ‘John Wick Chronicles’ Showcases the Titular Assassin’s Unique Universe

Hands-On: ‘John Wick Chronicles’ Showcases the Titular Assassin’s Unique Universe

John Wick was a surprise hit when it came out in theaters October, 2014. Effortlessly cool, it was a perfect graft of a crime thriller onto a comic book world. The film felt completely new and exciting. In fact, it’s the world of John Wick that remains one of its most distinguishing features, and the one that VR Studios Big Red Button, Gameco, and Grab are looking to recreate with the help of Starbreeze Studios and Lionsgate.

Judging by the demo for the John Wick Chronicles VR game I got to try, I can tell you that the world hits that balance of thrilling first-person action and showcasing the unique John Wick universe.

The demo opens with the player picking up a gun and shooting the game’s logo to “awaken” in an opulent penthouse. I’m told that the game’s central location is in the Continental Hotel, the hotel for hitmen seen in the film. Hitting a button centered within an elegant wooden desk lowers a large screen that gives players a short clip from the new John Wick 2 trailer. A nice little bit of cross-promotional marketing for players who might have tried the demo at New York Comic-Con. The trailer cuts short however, and an ominous voice booms out over the PA system. The voice is there to tell the player, John Wick, that you’re about to die. Red dots from sniper rifles beam in through the windows and players are forced to duck and find cover.

Here’s where VR’s pros and cons meet. VR is a 360 degree experience and being able to physically move within a virtual space is one of VR’s most thrilling features. Unfortunately, until players have the ability to use full-room VR without wires, you’ll find yourself too conscious of the connecting wire behind your Vive headset to move as freely as you want to. While the actual ducking and dodging works perfectly, I sometimes found myself limited to 180 degree turns because of the wires and not wanting to trip.

Pressing another hidden switch opens up one of those old-fashioned, hand cranked elevators with the collapsible doors- the one’s you might see in an old Hollywood hotel, which is super cool because again, this is the alternate reality of John Wick. Taking the elevator lifts you away from the embattled sniper room and to the roof, where naturally more enemies await.

First-person shooters in VR always kind of remind me of the arcade game Time Crisis, the shooter/ducking simulator probably most widely seen at movie theaters. Of course for those of you who’ve had the good fortune of experiencing VR for yourself, you know that this is a shallow approximation. VR is far more engrossing than the average arcade experience, and it also makes it more overwhelming at times.

On the roof of the Continental hotel, you’re finally armed with a sniper rifle of your own. Holding the gun up to your face and pressing the left trigger button will allow you to look down the gun’s sight, giving you the chance to perform awesome (and powerful feeling) shots at far away targets. After the natural way of holding a gun in VR, it’s almost hard to go back to a traditional controller, or even mouse and keyboard. You might be less accurate at first in VR than with the other two controllers, but it’s way more immersive.

The demo also gave me a mini arsenal while on the rooftop. This includes an automatic rifle, two pistols, and two submachine guns. Dual-wielding is possible with the smaller guns, and it’s fun to try them out, but most of the enemies are too far away for any of the weapons but the sniper rifle and the automatic rifle to be useful. It’s not until the enemies start rappelling down helicopters and climbing up rooftops that they become close enough for your shorter range weapons to be effective.

Again, the wire causes some problem when you’re trying to shoot enemies to the left and right of you. Additionally, precision aiming with the shortsighted weapons, especially without a sight, is far more difficult than with the sniper, but I have to be honest, dual wielding weapons in VR is just more fun.

After dealing with several waves of enemies, and dying a few times (which is embarrassing because I’m told the demo is easier than the actual game,) you finally have to take on the big boss, or in this case, the big helicopter. Rather than unloading bullets into it, the encounter is more like a puzzle, forcing the player to shoot at specific weak points in order to take out the enemy. Here’s where VR demonstrates another of its unique attributes, forcing the player to demonstrate some real physical coordination when taking down the boss. Aiming at a small moving target with your whole body is way more difficult when you have to exert yourself to do it, but the sense of gratification that comes with winning is that much more intense.

Like the film, John Wick Chronicles’ best assets are the little details. The Vive controllers are represented with leather gloved hands in the game. There’s even a military watch on the player’s left hand that acts as the in-game timer for levels. Likewise, I like how detailed the environment felt, something Almir Listo from Starbreeze Studios explains is a high priority.  Even after only playing two levels, they’re both filled with details that really drives home how upper-class the Continental Hotel is. No street-level thugs here, the criminals of John Wick are part of the one percent.

If there’s a couple things I would like to see with the full game, it’s that I hope the other levels are just as detailed, to help continue expanding the John Wick universe. The rest of my grievances are mostly related to wired VR experiences as a whole, tripping over wires, feeling constrained by spatial limitations, etc. As far as how the game plays, looks, and most importantly makes you feel, I can tell you that I had no problems. Combat felt natural, the visuals were crisp, and no motion sickness on my end, which is coming from someone who did once actually get sick from a VR demo.

“I think the most important is that you feel like John Wick,” Listo explains. “I think we did a very good job asking the question ‘What would John Wick do?’ And a good example comes from development regarding grenades. Let’s say you’ve got a gun in one hand and a grenade in the other, and because it’s VR we try to capture reality. So how would you pull the pin of the grenade if realistically you can only use two hands at a time? Well you can bring the grenade up to your mouth and pull the pin out that way, something very action hero/guns akimbo in my opinion.”

If there’s one thing Listo wanted to be clear about is how everyone, from Lionsgate, Starbreeze, and the actual John Wick team is on board for the project. The team plans on launching a deluxe bundle for John Wick Chronicles that will include the VR game, PayDay 2 with John Wick DLC, and even the movie. “It’s a multimedia approach,” Listo says. “Entire John Wick survival kit.”

John Wick Chronicles is expected to ship in February 2017 for HTC Vive and Playstation VR. You can follow its Steam page here for the latest updates.

Matt Kim is an entertainment and technology journalist with work appearing in other publications such as Inverse, VICE, Kill Screen, and more. Follow him on Twitter: @LawofTD.

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‘RIGS’ Review: The Creators of ‘Killzone’ Deliver On Their Competitive VR Shooter Promise

‘RIGS’ Review: The Creators of ‘Killzone’ Deliver On Their Competitive VR Shooter Promise

You’d think a studio like Sony’s Guerrilla would have things boiled down to a relatively simple science at this point. The developer as a whole is most well-known for the long-running series of Killzone games — which span multiple platforms and story arcs — but the Guerilla Cambridge team specifically has a much more varied and eclectic track record. Naturally, asking them to take on the challenge of building a VR-exclusive competitive multiplayer shooter to be available on day 1 with the new platform was no small task.

The ‘Review Guide’ for Rigs, a document that briefs reviewers like myself on the mechanics and content of a game, opens with a page-long introduction about the mission behind the project. After two full years of development (and scrapping/reworking several ideas) leading up to the launch of Sony’s flagship virtual reality headset, the wait is finally over. If you’re a fan of intense, fast-paced competitive multiplayer shooters, this is the game you’ve been waiting for.

From the moment you start Rigs, it immediately feels like one of the most polished and completed games available on PS VR. The introductory cutscene has you whipping your head around, marveling at the action and flashes on screen. Then before you even reach any of the game’s core menus, you’re taken through a lengthy tutorial sequence with full voice acting.

Everything in Rigs from top to bottom is stylized as if you are playing a game based on a futuristic combat sport. For example, your Chief walks you through all of the different control mechanics, such as using the analog sticks on your Dualshock 4 controller and turning your head inside the headset. After shooting targets you’re taken out into a training arena to put your skills to the test. Luckily, the team at Guerrilla are aware of some players’ sensitivity to movement in VR, so they’ve added a handful of very particular comfort options.

For starters, the filed of vision (FOV) on the outskirts of your eyesight will close in as you turn and look swiftly — similar to the mechanic from Eagle Flight by Ubisoft. Additionally, you can decouple your Rig’s horizontal movement from your head, causing your aiming reticle and your movement trajectory to function based on your headset and your control sticks, respectively. Finally, there is even a flat menu-based replacement for re-spawning, as opposed to literally getting ejected into the air out of your cockpit.

Actual gameplay in Rigs is fast and satisfying. The type of Rig you’re using will influence your speed, damage, and abilities, but they all boost and run around arenas no matter what. Rather than simply differentiating your loadouts with weapons and abilities, you can also alternate between three core power modes at any time: turbo, repair, and impact. Switching to turbo mode boosts my speed, while repair mode slowly heals my Rig, and impact mode increases my damage potential. Racking up kills and picking up glowing yellow orbs fills your Overdrive meter and when that’s active all three of your modes are turned on simultaneously.

Once you get your bearings, you’ll be pleased to find a litany of things to do. In the past when we got hands-on time with the game, it seemed like a relatively shallow experience. Every demo we saw at public events took place on the same Dubai map and included only one game mode: Powerslam. As it turns out, there are four classes of Rigs, each of which are customizable with different weapons and abilities, as well as four distinct maps, and a total of three different game modes.

The classes of Rigs are Sentinels, Hunters, Mirages, and Tempests. Sentinels are built for defense and can emit a powerful shockwave slam, whereas Hunters are quick and agile on the ground. Mirages can double jump, affording vertical flexibility, whereas Sentinels can leap and hover in the air. Taking each of those four core classes — and augmenting them with one of the special ability modes — opens up the door for dozens of Rig combinations and team builds.

In addition to the aforementioned Powerslam, there are also Endzone and Team Takedown game modes. For all intents and purposes, Powerslam appears to be the core game mode. Think of it as a combination of robotic warfare and basketball. Essentially, you must enter Overdrive — by earning kills and finding orbs — and then ‘dunking’ your Rig itself through the center ring of the map. The team with the most points by the end wins.

Endzone on the other hand is like a mixture of American football and soccer, as there is a literal ball that you and your team must get through the goal of the other team. You can pass it back and forth and kill enemies carrying the ball. In practice, it feels similar to one-flag capture the flag from other traditional shooting games. Finally, Team Takedown is essentially Team Deathmatch.

Beyond the core game modes there is more than enough to keep you busy in Rigs. When you’re not playing online against other actual humans, you can play in the Offline career mode, which sticks you on a team and tasks you with rising up the ranks and earning fans and credits through competition. There is plenty of incentive to play both online and offline as the content you unlock and earn is cross-compatible between the two modes.

From the Headquarters menu, you can choose your Sponsorship challenges, which function much like bounties or challenge missions in other games, and will ask you to ‘Earn 5 Takedowns in a Match’ or something similar.

Completing the bounty earns you a reward, such as a new uniform, helmet, or podium celebration. You can also spend your currency to unlock different classes and types of Rigs. Everything feeds into this system of progression, unlocking, and customizing and the team at Guerrilla Cambridge have done an excellent job of striking that difficult balance.

Even though the singleplayer content is serviceable and gets the job done when you either don’t have friends online or don’t feel like playing with other people, the real star of the experience is clearly the competitive multiplayer. This is, far and away, designed from the ground up to be played against other actual people. Just like in any shooter, that’s where the game really shines. The simple obstacle-based or time-limit-restrictive Trial missions don’t add much.

To that end, it would have been nice to see options for more team-based customization, or the creation of custom teams and leagues within the game. Since this is intended to be a fictional future sport, it would have seemingly been a no-brainer to let people create more of their own branding and recruit friends onto their online ranked squads. Perhaps that’s something that can be added in a future update. A cooperative game mode would have been a welcomed addition as well.

Rigs is a game built to last for the PS VR ecosystem. More maps, game modes, Rigs, and customization options would go a long way towards extending the game’s life span, whether it be through timed exclusive events, free content additions, or paid downloadable content.

Final Score: 8/10 – Great

Guerrilla Cambridge has crafted a superb first-person shooter exclusively for PlayStation VR that utilizes the unique aspects of virtual reality to deliver an exciting gameplay experience you won’t find anywhere else. If Battlezone was too slow and cooperative for your tastes, then this is the launch day game for you. Rigs is a must-play for competitive shooter fans splurging on Sony’s VR headset this holiday season.

Rigs: Mechanized Combat League releases for PlayStation VR on October 13th for $49.99.

Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.

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How Indie Darling ‘SUPERHOT’ Is Using VR to Be Super Meta

How Indie Darling ‘SUPERHOT’ Is Using VR to Be Super Meta

I shoot. They shoot back. I stop, and a bullet suddenly just hangs in the air before me. I decide to run to the right, for a better angle on my opponent in this gunfight. I start to run, and the world springs back to life, that bullet now missing me and my enemy lined up in my sights.

When it was released on Steam in February, Superhot garnered attention for its unique premise: a first-person shooter where the world only moves when you do. It brought a degree of strategy and planning to the action genre — and some very tense moments. But even before the launch, Team Superhot began working on a version for virtual reality. There were demos of Superhot running on Oculus Rift with an Oculus Touch prototype in 2014.

“It’s absolutely critical for Oculus Touch to be there. Using VR with a controller or a keyboard is not doing it justice. You can’t involve yourself totally because you still feel that you are holding something. I was playing Edge of Nowhere and I had this feeling that I wasn’t this guy. I’m just controlling a puppet. I couldn’t feel terrified or involved because I’m just looking at a borderless screen. It’s not the experience I want from VR,” said Superhot game designer Cesary Skorupka.

With the demo shown so long ago and the PC version launching over six months ago, fans have wondered what happened with the VR version.

Obviously, the developers need to wait for the release of Oculus Touch, coming in the last quarter of this year, before they can release a game that uses it. But the larger issue is that Superhot VR isn’t just a straight port of the original game.

Skorupka said, “We are doing every level from scratch. Every level will be a new level. You can see glimpses of our style and of locations we used previously. We still don’t want to make it a totally different game. If you played Superhot, you will see things that are similar, but you won’t see any level that looks the same and plays the same.”

Anyone who has played a first-person game in VR knows it’s quite a different experience than playing from that POV on a monitor. With Superhot, that actual movement is integral to the gameplay. You have to carefully stop walking forward or turning so you can assess how the enemy layout in the gunfight has changed.

It is one thing to just halt your hands on the keyboard or your controller. It is quite another to try to keep your entire body still, your arms pointing forward with a virtual gun in your hand, unshaking.

“Time moves only when you physically move and when people first try the game, most of them feel really stressed. You’ve got these towering red statue things that want to kill you. So you are nervous and you move a lot. You want to grab something and hit them. And then you die,” said Skorupka. “You have to calm yourself. Then and only then will you succeed. It’s like this Kung Fu Zen experience. Then you look at people who start playing as little moves as possible, and it looks like they are doing Yoga or Meditation.”

When played in VR, Superhot does make you feel superhuman. I am walking forward, but I suddenly stop and punch the crystalline enemy before me. I pause, spotting his discarded weapon flying up in the air. I catch it. I stop once more and see a bullet just inches from my chest.

I take a breath with the world completely still around me, and then I quickly sidestep, the bullet just missing me as it continues on its path. The tense flow of the game is even more gripping when you are actually moving yourself, and not just nudging an analog stick.

The controls of the game require adjusting for VR. Like other FPS games, you control the camera with your gaze. Like other motion control games, you aim your weapon with your actual hands. Moving and dodging in place with your actual body is a big part of the moment by moment gameplay of Superhot, but what about traversing levels, such as the early subway station level?

Many first-person VR games are using an instant teleport or a sudden rush mechanic, ala The Gallery or The Assembly, and Superhot is no different. But Skorupka promised that it wouldn’t be quite as you expect.

“We are exploring some things with teleportation, but not in the way that others games are doing it. We’ve discovered it plays into the theme of Superhot. Rapid change of scenery adds to the feeling of being thrown into an action sequence and then you just resolve the conflict. Bam, bam, bam  — and then you are somewhere else. This is something we wanted to do in the original Superhot. We tried again and again, and in the end it didn’t play well. Here, we got better tools. I don’t want to spoil it.”

Part of the conceit of Superhot is that you’re a guy on his computer, interacting with a DOS-like operating system and then logging into a computer game. The result is the simple, colorful style of the game within a game. But that flat DOS menu interface would not work within the three-dimensionality of VR. Or would it?

Skorupka would not reveal all the details, but said it would be something like you are at an actual desk and rather than selecting “Launch Superhot” from the DOS menu, you would physically grab a diskette and put it into the computer to start up the “game.” The trailer for Superhot VR shows a realistically rendered room covered in old computers, which is the likely location for these interactions.

And what about the larger “meta-ness” of the game? You are a person who pirates a game from a company’s server, with these strange glass graphics, get into chats about it with your friend, and interact with your computer in the fore-mentioned menu. The developers are figuring out how to be meta in VR, but that brings its own unique challenge.

Skorupka said, “The biggest issue is that VR is very young. With the original Superhot we had years of things connected to PC gaming and the shooter genre. It was this deconstruction of FPSs. Right now we don’t have much to deconstruct. So we have to build everything ourselves. We have to build on these little discoveries that people have made recently. It’s not that deep of a well that we can bring something from. But we will do something interesting with the meta-narration and the whole world of VR.”

This VR version of Superhot will be out for Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch by the end of the year. The developers will then work on releasing it for other virtual reality platforms in 2017.

And whatever Team Superhot comes up with, if it matches the ingenuity of the original, the result will be a mix of action, strategy, and surreality. And Superhot VR will be an exploration of what being virtual means.

“We want to use the original story as much as we can, but of course we can’t use the old tricks we used in the original Superhot. Still, the medium is the message. So we want to use as many things that come out of using VR,” said Skorupka. “When you use VR, there are certain things that happen to you. You might feel them or notice them. And sometimes they are kind of scary, like the way you can involve yourself, be lost in this VR experience and not notice what is happening around you. We want to play with that. We are trying to explore immersion as deep as we can.”

Kevin is a freelance writer with work appearing in outlets such as Geek & Sundry, Kill Screen, and Fast Company. Follow him on Twitter: @khohannessian.