It has been a little while since we last heard about sci-fi horror videogame Syndrome, the last time being back in March this year when it was confirmed that the title, originally announced in 2015 and to be made playable with the Oculus Rift through its PC release. It was to make the leap to PlayStation VR at the end of April 2017 having been announced the month prior but it was then delayed. No further mention of the title or its Oculus Rift version was made at the time.
In Syndrome you wake up onboard a spaceship in a far off region of space. Dazed and confused from your time in deep sleep you come to realise there is something very wrong with the ship. The crew are in the majority missing, and those that aren’t… aren’t the crew anymore. It’s a tense, frantic battle for survival.
VRFocus raised the subject of the PC release with Big Moon Entertainment, who worked on the VR side of the game, (Camel 101 having worked on the core game elements) and we received confirmation that the PC VR version is coming. Speaking to Big Moon Entertainment’s PR and Community Manager Ricardo Mota he confirmed to us that the “VR Survival Mode” would be coming to Syndrome on 29th September 2017. Not just for PlayStation VR owners but for Oculus Rift and also for HTC Vive. As the name might infer, this is an alternate play option and unfortunately is not the full campaign.
VRFocus got hands-on with this mode and we’ll be bring you a preview of it in the near future. For more news from Gamescom be sure to check back regularly with VRFocus.
The menu system, as an area which had previously called for significant improvement, appears to have been streamlined. Now positioned in line with your controllers – opposed to being fixed to the player’s view – the menus for searching objects and fallen enemies are bold and clear, though sadly navigation of them still requires using the HTC Vive motion controller discs to represent a d-pad, rather than simply pointing with the motion control.
Elsewhere we were able to further dive into Fallout 4 VR’s mission design which, unsurprisingly, remains exactly the same as the original Fallout 4. The on-screen information and signposting is relative to default head position opposed to the direction the player is looking, though it’s rarely presented outside of your field-of-view. Whether this is a conscious decision to pull the player’s focus or simply an easy option isn’t clear at this point, however it does feel a little cumbersome when a mission objective is updated in the middle of heated combat.
The fact that Fallout 4 VR 
