Quest 2’s Resident Evil 4 Reportedly Getting ‘Mercenaries’ Mode in 2022

Resident Evil 4 - Mercenaries

Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 arrived as an Oculus (Meta) Quest 2 exclusive last month and it’s fair to say that the virtual reality (VR) port has been a well-received success. However, there was one glaring omission from the VR edition and that was the ‘Mercenaries’ mode which added even more replayability to the other versions. Over the weekend it seems a video leaked stating that the mode will be arriving next year.

Resident Evil 4

Spotted by Biohazardcast, a video reportedly dropped via the Oculus YouTube channel confirming the popular gameplay mode would indeed arrive for Quest 2 in 2022. Now, it looks like that was an accidental leak as the video has been made private so there’s no way to definitively confirm the details. However, Biohazardcast did reupload its own version of the trailer, which looks fairly genuine.

Why all the interest over the Mercenaries mode? Well, it’s appeared in every Resident Evil 4 videogame since the first release almost 20 years ago. While you could always replay the main campaign to unlock all the little extras, Mercenaries mode provided a far more bite-sized chunk of action, taking players back to various locations from the campaign. Levels were timed, with the challenge being to kill as many enemies as possible for the biggest score. Variety was added through the option to select from one of several characters, each with their own weapon loadout.

Mercenaries isn’t the only additional gameplay mode the VR version is missing, with the ‘Assignment Ada’ and ‘Separate Ways’ DLC also omitted. The leak does indicate that the Mercenaries mode will be a free update and more details could arrive during The Game Awards as Resident Evil 4 is nominated in the AR/VR category.

Resident Evil 4

Developed by Armature Studio, Resident Evil 4 has been completely remastered for Oculus Quest 2. You can play the game entirely from a first-person perspective, all the weapons can be manually reloaded; dual wielding is now an option and more. VRFocus said in its review that: “Resident Evil 4 on Oculus Quest 2 is a testament to Armature’s VR skills whilst highlighting the difficulties in bringing an almost 20-year-old videogame into VR. With the immersion settings on full whack, running around monster-filled castles was thoroughly engrossing and genuinely tense at points.”

As more details regarding the Mercenaries mode for Resident Evil 4, VRFocus will let you know.

Phasmophobia Nightmare Update Adds New Map, Ghost Types, Difficulties, Weather

The Nightmare update is available now for Phasmophobia, adding in a brand new map, new ghost types, a rework of the game’s difficulty levels, weather and much more.

The new map is called ‘Maple Lodge Campsite’ and is described as a “medium sized map featuring picnic areas, games, multiple tents, a log cabin and a haunted lake.” According to the patch notes, this map has a higher object density than previous maps and more visual detail as well.

Other existing locations will receive an update in the future to add more objects and visual detail, alongside an updated truck minimap that is consistent with the one available in the new Maple Lodge Campsite map. Users whose PCs meet minimum requirements should be able to run the new map with increased detail and quality without any problems, but the patch notes say that outdated hardware might encounter FPS drops.

Every single location will also now have different weather each time you start a contract, which can affect the gameplay. The weather variations include clear skies, fog, light rain, heavy rain, strong wind and light snow, some of which will impact hearing or visibility.

There are four new ghost types in this update — Onryo, The Twins, Obake, Raiju — which have an increased chance of spawning during the Halloween period.

There’s also been a complete rework of all the difficulties, with the aim of making each one “feel more unique, and provide more options for players at every skill level.”

Amateur difficulty, recommended for new players, has a longer setup time and hunt grace period, matched with a short hunt duration. Sanity pills restore a lot of sanity, and you can regain half the value of lost equipment if you die.

The next level, Intermediate, has average setup time, hunt grace period and duration. The fuse box also starts as off, there are fewer places to hide and you only regain some of your lost equipment’s value.

Professional takes it up another notch — no setup time, short grace period, long hunt duration and sanity pills only restore a little of your sanity. There are far fewer hiding places and on rare occasions, the ghost will change its preferred room.

Then if you want something even more challenging, there’s now a new fourth difficulty, Nightmare, which is “designed to be a challenge mode for those seeking the most intense gameplay Phasmophobia has to offer.”

This mode adopts most of the conditions from Professional but with some changes and extra complications. Ghosts will not reveal one type of evidence and they will sometimes change their preferred room. It has the shortest grace period and longest hunt duration, with the latter being extended by kills. There are almost no hiding places, sanity pills restore much less sanity than any other more and “paranormal interference has damaged some of your monitoring equipment.”

There’s also several bug fixes and quite a number of smaller changes to gameplay and mechanics, all of which can be found in the Steam patch notes.

The Phasmophobia Nightmare update is available now on Steam for PC, with optional PC VR support.

Project Terminus Brings Co-Op Survival Horror To Oculus Quest And Rift This Week

Project Terminus, a promising VR horror adventure we first tested out over a year ago, gets an official Oculus Quest and Rift stores release this week.

The game, from CVR, arrives on both headsets on October 28 with both cross-buy and crossplay support. You can check out a trailer for the experience below. This is billed as the first act of what the developer intends to become a series of titles.

Project Terminus Release Date Revealed

In Project Terminus, Paris has fallen to what looks like a zombie invasion. In the game’s campaign mode, up to four players will explore the city’s darkened metro system, surviving against hordes of the undead. You can also play by yourself. When we played a demo for the game in January last year, we were impressed with the interaction system, which delivered fun melee combat and explorable environments. We’ll be interested to see how the project has expanded since that time. Check out our gameplay from the demo below.

CVR says the campaign itself will last “multiple hours” but there’s also an arcade mode with smaller levels and wave-based survival objectives.

There’s plenty of spooky treats in store for VR fans this Halloween. Resident Evil 4 VR released on Quest this week and a frankly absurd number of games are getting Halloween updates too. What are you going to be diving into? Let us know in the comments below!

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife PlayStation VR Launch Delayed

Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife

If you were looking forward to Fast Travel Games’ new horror title Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife arriving for PlayStation VR this Thursday, VRFocus has some bad news, it has been delayed. Thankfully not by much though, with the launch pushed back to the end of the month.

Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife

The studio didn’t give much of a reason why simply saying in a statement that: “The reason for the delay is that Fast Travel Games wants to ensure the game is delivered with the best possible experience on the platform.” Quite vague so maybe the team encountered a bug or some other critical issue?

In any case, you’re going to have to wait a few more weeks to play Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife, Fast Travel Games’ first virtual reality (VR) horror and one set in the World of Darkness shared story universe. An atmospheric title that aims to build the tension rather than throwing in loads of jump scares, you play as Ed Millar, a photographer who along with his girlfriend is invited to a seance at the sprawling Barclay Mansion.

Things go awry and you end up dead, stuck between the living world and the afterlife as a Wraith. in this new form you have to explore the mansion and discover the reason for your current predicament. As a Wraith you have supernatural abilities allowing you to move through walls, manipulate objects at a distance and track the movement of other spirits. Because you’re not alone in the mansion, Spectres, spirits of wrath and vengeance roam the corridors, each having their own connection to the house and its owner. These cannot be reasoned with or fought, hide and try not to get caught.

Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife

“For those that love slow and tense survival horror Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife certainly delivers. Coming in at around eight hours of nail-biting content, Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife does the World of Darkness proud,” said VRFocus in its Oculus Quest review.

The PlayStation VR release of Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife will now take place on 27th October 2021, retailing for $29.99 USD / £24.99 GBP / €24.99 Eur. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Fast Travel Games, reporting back with its latest announcements.

Resident Evil 4 Brings Survival Horror to Oculus Quest 2 in October

Resident Evil 4

If there’s one reason to own an Oculus Quest 2 in 2021 then it’s surely going to be the upcoming release of Resident Evil 4. Officially revealed back in April alongside confirmation that it would be an Oculus Quest 2 exclusive – sorry no original Oculus Quest support – Capcom and Armature Studio have announced that Resident Evil 4 will now launch next month.

Resident Evil 4

October was always kind of a given considering a 2021 launch had previously been slated and when else do you launch a virtual reality (VR) survival horror than around Halloween. While the Oculus Quest 2 exclusivity might be a sore point, Armature Studio has completely reworked the 2005 original – the first title in the franchise to offer a more action-oriented approach.

Dropping a brand new gameplay trailer for the first time since April, you get to see all the VR compatibility work the developers have put in, from using guns with full manual reloading to interacting with the environment, solving all of those tricky puzzles. One of the big obvious changes is that Resident Evil 4 is now entirely in first-person, for that fully immersive experience.

As was previously revealed, Resident Evil 4 has been rebuilt to be as accessible as possible for VR players. Playing seated or standing, there will be options for roomscale movement and teleportation, as well as standard smooth locomotion. The Oculus blog notes that: “Armature has added a full upper-body rig on top of Leon’s character to combine his movement with the dual-handed interactivity,” so players can use two guns or how about a gun and melee weapon? Plus you won’t be diving into your inventory as much, weapons can be holstered on your body.

Resident Evil 4

Giving Resident Evil veterans to retread this classic in a whole new way whilst offering newbies a chance to play a Resi videogame on the Oculus Quest 2 for the first time, Resident Evil 4 centres around Leon S. Kennedy who’s on a mission to rescue the U.S. President’s daughter from European cult Los Illuminados.

Capcom and Armature Studio will release Resident Evil 4 exclusively for Oculus Quest 2 on 21st October 2021. Check out the new trailer below and for further updates, keep reading VRFocus.

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife Tiptoes Onto PlayStation VR in October

Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife

There haven’t been as many virtual reality (VR) horror titles appearing in 2021 as in previous years with one of the most notable exceptions being Fast Travel Games’ Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife. Originally released for Oculus before coming to Steam, soon it’ll be the turn of PlayStation VR players to wander the haunted hallways of Barclay Mansion.

Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife

Rather than wall-to-wall scares, this haunted mansion experience provides a much slower, atmospheric adventure, all set within the World of Darkness universe. You play as Ed Miller, a photographer who dies during a seance at the luxurious home of one Howard Barclay, a Hollywood movie producer. As you might have guessed, your death doesn’t see you move happily along into the afterlife, instead, you’re stuck between there and the living world. 

So you need to figure out what went wrong and what happened to your girlfriend who joined you at the gathering. But you’re not alone on this little escapade as you’ll be joined by Shadow, a manifestation of Miller’s dark subconscious. While this being can be helpful at times it isn’t exactly on your side, relishing in your struggle, and occasionally complicating things as well.

However, Shadow isn’t a real threat but the Spectres are. These are damned creatures that wander sections of the mansion, actively hunting you. They’ll come running if you make a sound or you happen to get in their line of sight and there’s no fighting them off; there are no weapons in Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife. So you have to be sneaky and utilise hiding spots to avoid them or create distractions.

Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife

Reviewing the Oculus Quest version of Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife VRFocus found that: “For those that love slow and tense survival horror Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife certainly delivers. Coming in at around eight hours of nail-biting content, Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife does the World of Darkness proud.”

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife is scheduled to arrive on 7th October 2021 for PlayStation VR, with a recommended retail price of $29.99 USD/£24.99 GBP/€24.99 EUR. Check out the new trailer below and for further updates from Fast Travel Games, keep reading VRFocus.

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul Now Available On Oculus Quest

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul is now available for Oculus Quest.

The horror game is based off the film franchise of the same name and is set in a large spooky house, encouraging discovery of puzzles and scary surprises. It originally released for PC VR back in 2017 and in our review we said it was a solid horror game with a few flaws that let it down.

Back in 2017, one of the big draw cards was the randomization of various scare elements through the game — jump scares, objects and other elements that appeared in one section of the house might appear somewhere different the next time you play. You could never be certain at which point and where you were about to be scared, as things were never guaranteed to happen in the same place twice.

This mechanic will carry over to the Quest version of the game, alongside other key features from the PC VR release such as 3D audio. There’s also the ‘Immersive Movement Role-play System (IMRS)’ which removes all directions and UI elements from the game once you finish the tutorial. If you want the ultimate immersive Paranormal Activity experience, you’ll probably want to turn this option on.

There’s no info on whether any other changes have been made that might address the design and control issues present in the original release, but from a content perspective it looks to be just a straight port without anything new added in.

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul is available now on Oculus Quest for $19.99.

Phasmophobia Gets 2 New Ghosts And Big Gameplay Changes

A recent Phasmophobia update features two new ghost types and a slew of changes to various gameplay mechanics across the entire game.

The Exposition update, v0.3.0, is Phasmophobia’s latest in a string of updates over the last year, released as the game remains in Early Access on Steam and continues to receive new content and tweaks ahead of a full release.

The new ghost types are the Goryo, a “vengeful Japanese ghost from the aristocratic class”, and the Myling, a Scandanavian incarnation of the souls of dead children who are stuck haunting earth until they receive a proper burial. There’s also a new evidence type, the DOTS projector.

To make room for the two new ghost types and the DOTS projector, the evidence for all ghost types has been changed as of this update. Existing players will need to check their journals next time they jump into the game and relearn which evidence points toward which ghosts.

However, the changes and new features don’t stop there — the Steam announcement post for the update lists a huge amount of bug fixes and adjustments to gameplay across the board.

Sprinting and walking speed has been changed, as has the VR teleportation mechanic, which will now give more options to reflect the change in general movement speed across the game.

All equipment has new sounds and visual effects, plus electronic equipment will now alert ghosts during a hunt, so you’ll have to turn everything off before hiding. Lighting has been improved across most maps, including improvements to volumetric lighting which should reduce the fogginess in some areas.

Phasmophobia is available now on Steam with optional VR support for PC VR headsets. You can view a full list of the Phasmophobia changes and new features here.

Phansmophobia To Get OpenXR Support, Progression Overhaul

The public Phasmophobia Trello board outlines plans for future updates, with new content, an overhaul of the progression system and OpenXR support on the horizon.

The Trello board lists extensive changes and plans, with a mixture of specific and more general goals for the game. Some of the wider, game-wide changes planned include increased accessibility options (such as colorblind support and quick chat for ghost communication), randomized weather on each maps, more uses for temperature actions (such as opening a window or turning on a heater) and tracking of a player’s long-terms statistic (such as total deaths, contracts and hunts).

A task labeled “Horror 2.0” features such as new ghost events (and an overhaul of ghost events in general), hallucinations, new death rooms and new death animations are mentioned.

There are also plans to overhaul many of the game’s larger systems, such as an overhaul of the sounds, the UI and the main menu room. Changes are also planned for the equipment layout in the starting van and the design of your journal. In terms of an overhaul of the progression system, there’s not too many details but the Trello board lists reworks of the objectives, equipment, leveling, money and difficulty systems.

For new content, the goals are described very vaguely but include new ghosts, new evidence, new maps and new equipment.

For VR specifically, the goal is to swap from OpenVR support to OpenXR, which will allow support for new and future headsets and controllers with easier integration. OpenXR is the new industry standard that provides an API for VR and AR content making game engines compatible across various different hardware platforms. Valve, Microsoft and Facebook have all recommended that games engines use OpenXR moving forward.

Overall, it looks like lots of good changes are on the horizon for Phasmophobia. That being said, it seems like a lot of the planned work is still in early stages, so don’t expect anything too soon.

Back in March, Phasmophobia ramped up the difficulty and improved the ghost AI, along with announcing planned support for bHpatics suits. You can see the full plan for future Phasmophobia content over on the development Trello board.

A World of Madness Awaits as Bad Dreams Revealed for Quest, PC & PlayStation VR

Bad Dreams

Indie French team Creative VR3D’s previous virtual reality (VR) projects included Darkness Rollercoaster – Ultimate Shooter Edition but its latest title could be its biggest yet. Called Bad Dreams, this twisted horror-themed world is coming to most major VR headsets, with plans to support development with a Kickstarter campaign next month.

Bad Dreams

Mixing psychological and survival horror into one frightening experience, Bad Dreams puts you in a maddening world that’s designed to test your puzzle-solving skills as well as your senses. “Tired after work, you are watching TV in your hotel room. Suddenly, you wake up on an idyllic beach. After a peaceful walk in the sand, you discover a bunker, a gateway to a dark underground network. The dream turns into a bad one when you realized you’re not alone,” explains the synopsis.

Creative VR3D wants to immersive players in the world with as many interactive elements as possible. While there will be standard items like guns that will have realistic mechanics and handling, there will be other moments where you have to hold your nose or cover your ears to protect your mental health. This will be a big part of the experience and if you don’t, then you’ll fall into the “Limbos”; nightmares within nightmares from which you have to escape.

While there will be action elements where you can fight these abominations, Bad Dreams is also about stealth, using a flashlight to steadily explore the underground network trying not to draw attention and stay alive. This is mixed in with environmental puzzles and a very limited inventory, two slots plus both your hands.

Bad Dreams

Currently, Creative VR3D is working towards a Fall 2021 launch for Bad Dreams, listing support for Oculus Quest, HTC Vive, SteamVR and PlayStation VR. The team also list PlayStation VR 2 on their website. Having already worked on the videogame for over a year the studio plans on launching a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign on 13th July. Details of the campaign and how much it wishes to raise have not been made public just yet.

When those details are available including further updates for Bad Dreams, VRFocus will let you know.