Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know which superhero you’d love to see in a dedicated VR game next after Iron Man?
With Iron Man VR releasing in just a few short days on July 3rd, this Friday, it’s an exciting time for PSVR gamers. One of the most well-known and truly iconic superheroes of all-time is entering the immersive realm of VR with his own, dedicated game complete with a robust campaign and lots of depth — at least, according to the developers.
We’ve gotten the chance to take on the role of lots of iconic superheroes over the years in VR, such as Batman in Arkham VR, several Marvel characters in Marvel Powers United VR, and even as Spider-Man specifically in the free Far From Home VR experience. But now we want to imagine what another fully-fledged made-for-VR superhero game would be like that focuses on a single hero.
Superman is one of the most notoriously difficult characters to get right in games, but maybe playing as him in VR would offer that sort of empowerment you’d seek. Or, perhaps a full game building on the web-slinging of Spider-Man could be fun. Teleporting between dimensions and using your hands for magic, like Doctor Strange, could be a blast too.
Let us know what you think! Which superhero do you think deserves their own dedicated VR game next after Iron Man VR?
Last week Iron Man VR developer Camouflaj told us that the upcoming PSVR exclusive featured around ‘8 – 10 hours’ of AAA VR gaming. Now the Iron Man VR trophy list gives us an idea of how that time is divided up.
The trophy list debuted on Exophase over the weekend. If you want to avoid spoilers then we wouldn’t recommend reading it, but the list and icons indicate that Iron Man VR is comprised of 12 missions and an opening prologue.
We got to see that prologue and the first mission in the demo that released on PSVR a few weeks back. Remember, though, that Camouflaj is kitting out the game with optional extras and challenges, taking part in which is likely to push the game to the developer’s estimations.
Other trophies confirm that the game will feature more Flight and Combat Challenges and that you’ll have star ratings at the end of each mission. You’ll also be rewarded for killing a certain number of enemies with specific weapons and completing the campaign of different difficulties. There’s also a trophy for catching a grape in your mouth which will probably be as hard as the basketball trophy in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.
Not long to go now; Iron Man VR debuts on PSVR on July 3rd. Publisher Sony has been releasing a bunch of developer diaries for the game in the run-up to launch and Camouflaj shared plenty of other details with us in our interview.
Will you be chasing every trinket on the Iron Man VR trophy list when the game launches on Friday? Let us know in the comments below!
Iron Man VR releases exclusively for PSVR next week and we recently talked with Ryan Payton, founder of developer Camouflaj, about the game’s development. During the conversation he briefly touched on the game’s early prototyping phase and mentioned it began life as a PC VR title.
“When we first were prototyping the game, obviously we’re iterating on PC a lot and we were moving in 360,” says Payton. “But as the project developed and we first signed the game with Marvel, then Sony became a part of the conversation. Both Camouflaj and Marvel were really excited about having Sony as a partner to publish the game because we absolutely love PlayStation VR. We want this game to be played by as many people around the world as possible.”
Obviously every game begins life as a PC game since that’s the platform that contains the development tools studios use to create games themselves. But in this case it sounds like the game was playable initially on PC VR platforms due to the freedom of 360-tracking. But after Sony entered the picture as publisher, the team adapted to PSVR and embraced the headset as the new target.
“They have great motion controllers, they have a great headset, but as you noted [during the interview], they have only the single PlayStation camera,” says Payton. “But instead of backing down and deciding that our game was going to be only, for example, a seated experience, instead of doing that, the team decided to think really, really creatively about the capabilities of PlayStation VR.
“The fact that they have the Move Controllers with these gyroscopes, that we have a general sense of what the player wants to do, even if their body is occluding the PlayStation camera…And so there’s a lot of great tech underneath the hood and a lot of great design thought that allowed us to offer 360 degree movement for players who so choose to play that way.”
In the past the developers from Camouflaj have described what they do to enable the illusion of 360 tracking as “black magic” and if you try out the free Iron Man VR demo on PSVR for yourself you’ll see that’s not far from the truth. Even though there is only the single camera and your hands / body occlude the controller easily, it seems like flight never really gets wonky even if you turn all the way around. Technically, it’s quite impressive.
“Ensuring that the game had world-class flight and combat mechanics, as Iron Man in VR, was paramount,” says Payton. “That’s exactly how we laid the foundation of the game. Back when the game was simply a prototype and we were pitching to Marvel and we told our partners, and we told ourselves, that throughout development, we were going to make sure that moment to moment gameplay and locomotion were going to be world class. And I think the team has done an incredible job delivering on that.”
We’re only just over a week away from the release of Iron Man VR, and so promotional material is ramping up ahead of the July 3 launch. The latest Iron Man VR video from PlayStation runs through some of the customization and adjustments you’ll be able to make to Tony’s suit as you play through the game.
In the video, Designer Ryan Darcey from Camouflaj notes that while flying and shooting is the “bread and butter” of Iron Man VR, you’ll also spend some time in the iconic Malibu mansion playing as and learning more about Tony. It’s here that you’ll be able to visit the garage to modify and upgrade the Iron Man suit in various ways.
According to Ryan Payton, Director of Iron Man VR and Founder at Camouflaj, the garage “allows players to kind of relax, just be Tony, listen to the radio, work out, but also be able tweak the suit and make it feel like this is your suit that you’re customizing and improving.” You can take a look at that customization system in the video embedded below — it looks like you’ll have a fairly high degree of control over not just the weapons, but also the aesthetic of the suit too.
You’ll be able to customize the repulsion and also craft additional weapons to add to your suit for equipping in auxiliary slots or augment slots, which allow you to craft different types of upgraded equipment. You can improve things like your thrusters and your HUD capabilities.
Iron Man VR is fast-approaching next month and after around a year and a half of time between its original unveiling and now, the anticipation is high. We recently interviewed two key developers on the team and chatted about the game’s length and depth.
During the interview we spoke with Ryan Payton, founder of Iron Man VR development studio Camouflaj, and Brendan Murphy, Lead Writer on the project. One of the main topics we talked about is the game’s structure. In the demo it’s hard to get a feel for what the actual gameplay flow will be like from one major story beat to the next and if it’s entirely linear on-rails, if it branches at all, or if there are any free, open areas to explore outside of the actual missions.
According to Payton, they’re designing it “like campaign driven games” people will be familiar with from outside of VR.
“So like, for example, like Halo, a big set piece, and then you kind of take a break from that set piece, go into the shoes of Tony Stark and then you’re back to another big new environment with another big, cinematic action-based mission,” says Payton. “So that’s kinda like the structure of the campaign, but in between each mission, for the most part, we bring players into Tony Stark’s garage, which kind of acts as a hub and then players can access a globe where they’re able to see a lot of the different threats that Tony’s under.”
On top of that there will be optional missions as well, such as objectives revolving around free flight, free roaming, specific flight challenges, combat challenges, and more. You’ll earn research points to unlock and customize your impulse armor and gradually experiment with new things over time.
“One of the things that we did when we pitched Marvel is that we promised them that Marvel’s Iron Man VR was not going to feel experimental,” says Payton. “It wasn’t going to feel like a short demo. It wasn’t going to feel like an ‘experience,’ it was going to feel like a full-fledged, high-quality, AAA VR game that was built off of the previous lessons that we learned by playing other VR games. We’re kind of standing on the shoulders of giants, of other great VR games.
“We’re learning from them and then we’re growing. We’re using that as a baseline. And then we feel like in some ways we’re pushing the medium forward a little bit as well. Because it’s all part of this process of medium that is relatively young. And it’s such an exciting time to be releasing a game. So we also feel very privileged and lucky to have that amount of time and resources that were provided to us, to, to give this game, to give this IP, the proper amount of content and quality that I think all the fans really, really want.”
The ultimate question though, at the end of the day, is what does that translate into for players. I personally despise judging a game on its length to dollar ratio, but at the same time a AAA platform exclusive based on one of the most ubiquitous IPs on the planet carries a certain weight with it.
“I’m always hesitant to talk about playtime because everybody is different and some players love to speed run through things,” says Payton. “That being said, based on playtest data that we’re seeing, on average the first-time campaign length ranges between about 8-10 hours. But we’ve seen much longer play times than that too.”
Did you miss out on the UploadVR Showcase: Summer Edition last week? Check out every trailer, article, announcement, interview, and more from the UploadVR Showcase right here.
We recently got the chance to interview Ryan Payton, founder of Iron Man VR developer Camouflaj, and Brendan Murphy, Lead Writer on the project, about their unique take on telling an original Tony Stark story. Iron Man VR is a PSVR-exclusive releasing this July 3rd.
I first got the chance to play Iron Man VR right when it was originally announced almost a year and a half ago. At the time, I only got to do some practice flight in the Iron Man suit flying around Tony Stark’s mansion and then a quick mission in the sky where I defended an airplane that was about to crash. It was quick and action-packed as a good showcase of gameplay, but didn’t tell me much about what the game as a whole is actually like.
To be clear: this is not related to any active comic book storylines, although the team did look there for inspiration, nor is it connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any other video games. Iron Man VR is, from top to bottom, a standalone title we’ve been told.
During a video chat interview last week, Payton and Murphy talked to me about what it was like to try and establish an original take on Tony Stark and Iron Man in the wake of Robert Downey Jr.’s run as one of the most globally recognized, celebrated, and adored movie franchise characters of all-time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe of films.
“Yeah, well, they certainly cast a long shadow,” admits Murphy. “…But, all the stuff about what has come before and the performances by other people before, we didn’t really concern ourselves too much with that. We use the comic books as reference and we set out to start fresh and create a new take on the character…We had talked about not wanting to tell an origin story.
“It just seemed obvious that it had been done and done well, but we still wanted to tell what felt like the essential Tony Stark story. And how do you do that with a character that’s been around since 1963 and there’s, you know, countless iterations of them? When we met with Marvel and it went well and, you know, we started to collaborate with them, the first thing they said was, ‘Yeah, please don’t make an origin story.’ They urged us to tell an original story, not just a retread of something we’ve already seen.”
Everyone knows the origin of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man given their lengthy history of feature film releases, so with the MCU still fresh in the mind of fans, a retread of Stark’s origins just isn’t needed. So, in the case of Iron Man, what does an origin story actually look like?
“Part of trying to make it a quintessential Tony Stark story, without it feeling like something that you’ve seen a bunch of times or at all, was hammering down on this theme of: Tony Stark being his own worst enemy,” says Payton. “I would say it’s probably the main theme of our game. And it’s such an essential, like Tony Stark thing to create a problem and then have to solve it basically. I would say, without spoiling anything, we kind of drove down on that theme.”
Did you miss out on the UploadVR Showcase: Summer Edition? Check out every trailer, article, announcement, interview, and more from the UploadVR Showcase right here.
The latest behind the scenes look at Marvel’s Iron Man VR gives us a look at some more famous Marvel faces.
The video, which sees members of developer Camouflaj speak to the game’s immersive elements, features S.H.I.E.L.D. head Nick Fury and Ghost, who will serve as the game’s antagonist. You probably know her from Ant-Man & The Wasp, but the character is primarily an Iron Man baddie when it comes to the comics.
We also get our first fresh look at some gameplay outside of the game’s first two missions. A battle above a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier looks like the perfect setpiece for Marvel fans and a city-wide brawl also features.
Camouflaj is promising a full story-driven campaign here, so we’re really excited to see where else the game takes us and who else we might meet. What’s impressed us so much about Iron Man VR thus far is the tracking, which works its way around the PSVR headset’s limitations with surprising efficiency thanks to smart implementation. The jury’s still out on if that will translate well to a fun full game, though.
Iron Man VR is out on July 3rd exclusively on PSVR. A free demo for the game released a little while back, which we thought was an excellent showcase, though it does highlight a few of the game’s issues, too. If you’re yet to pick up a PSVR or need a pair of Moves, Sony is bundling the game with some hardware in different regions, so be sure to check out those promotions.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave and forced to build weapon parts for the past week, you should know by now that there’s a free demo of Marvel’s Iron Man VR on PSVR.
You might also know that it’s really, really good.
The full game isn’t out for an entire month yet, touching down on July 3rd. That gives us plenty of time to pour over this playable teaser and get some much-needed practice in. Based on our first playthrough, though, we’ve come up with a list of four things we love about the game (as well as a few things that could be improved). Read on for more!
What We Love
The Tracking
We’ve written about this at length at this point, but it was still hugely reassuring to get the demo in our homes and find it still holds up. Iron Man VR uses a lot of clever techniques to allow players to twist and turn unlike other PSVR titles. There are artificial turning options but the game holds up really well even if you turn your body almost completely the other way from the camera.
Flying in Iron Man VR requires you to keep your hands by your sides, so the Move controllers are almost always in view of the camera. But even if they’re not you won’t see your controllers go haywire like you would in other PSVR experiences. Aim at enemies with your repulsor blasts and, sure, Tony’s arm might not accurately extend like it would if you were facing the camera, but it still works on a mechanical level. We can’t wait to put this feature deeper to the test in the full game.
The Controls
Of course, tracking wouldn’t really matter if the game didn’t play very well. But, thanks to smart movement and clever corner-cutting, Iron Man VR feels great to control. Triggers activate your jets and the Move button fires a repulsor blast (more on that in a bit). From there, everything is essentially determined by the direction of your hands. It surpasses the age-old issue of Move’s lack of analog sticks with remarkable grace.
Plus, there are some intelligent design choices that help navigate more intricate gameplay moments. Want to punch an enemy? You won’t need to worry about accuracy; throw your fist forward and you’ll lock on and dash towards the nearest foe. Plus the game will do a small bit of auto-piloting for cinematic moments, like the end of the first level in which you rescue Pepper from a jet. It can be a handful at times, but Iron Man VR largely feels great to control.
The Heroics
One of the key qualities that kept the Marvel Cinematic Universe so endearing over the past decade was that it didn’t forget superheroes were meant to save people, not just punch bad guys. Iron Man VR takes that principle to heart, or at least it does in its first level. Between bouts with enemy drones, you’ll return to a falling plane to put out fires, repair wings and, eventually rescue Pepper. These moments create dynamic, fresh-feeling gameplay experiences which, notably, aren’t just confined to mashing a button like they might be in a regular game. More of this, please.
The Story & Characters
One of the things that made Insomniac’s 2018 PS4-exclusive Spider-Man game such a hit was the freedom given to the developers to truly craft their own take on an iconic character. Insomniac basically designed its own alternate universe filled with interesting twists and turns for fans new and old. Iron Man VR looks like it might chart a similar path; we learn from the demo that Tony has been Iron Man for about five years and pick up with him in a similar position to the Iron Man 2 movie; he’s just handed control of Stark Industries over to Pepper Potts. We don’t get to see much more than this in the demo, but we can’t wait to see where Camouflaj (a studio that built itself on story-telling in games) goes from there.
But it’s not just the plot but also the characters and delivery. Iconic Stark AI, Friday, is given a playful makeover here, appearing as a holographic human with a personality all of her own. Pepper, too plays a major role and the moments in which you more directly interact with her (going to grab a cup of coffee, for example) suggest there’s a lot of gold to mine here. We can’t wait to see this side of the game expanded on.
What To Improve
The Performance & Visuals (At Least On Standard PS4s)
It’s painfully obvious that Iron Man VR is pushing the absolute limits of what’s possible on PSVR, both on a tracking and technical perspective. But, played on a standard PS4, this demo also butts heads with the latter factor. While the majority of the gameplay is silky smooth, we noticed a few instances of slowdown, particularly during more cinematic moments, which made movements feel clunky. I haven’t tried the game on PS4 Pro, so can’t judge how it runs there.
Visuals are also a little on the iffy side (again, on a standard PS4). While the first level benefits from having endless skies, the Malibu-set tutorial has some blurry textures and character models look a little rusty. Granted, this isn’t something we expect will change dramatically between now and July 3rd, but it would be nice.
Button Mapping
This is a small one, but quite important to the overall flow of gameplay. As great as Iron Man VR controls, I often struggled with the button mapping, and can’t find a way to change it. After four years of playing PSVR titles, my brain is hard-wired to think of the Move’s trigger as the default ‘shoot’ button, not navigation. Similarly, the best Move locomotion schemes have used that main button as a ‘walk forwards’ option. Here, these two functions are essentially reversed and, in the heat of combat, I was tying my brain in knots trying to remember which was which.
Again, this is a small thing, so I’m really hoping some options to change the button mapping arrive in the full game.
Iron Man VR hits PSVR on July 3rd. What did you make of the demo? Let us know in the comments below!
Following last week’s news of an indefinite delay, Sony is cancelling pre-orders for upcoming PSVR exclusive, Iron Man VR.
Pre-orders for the game had been live on the PlayStation Store for the past few months, including several editions. But Sony took those pre-orders down in conjunction with the delay, alongside pre-orders for The Last of Us Part II, which is also delayed. Now a message appearing on PlayStation’s support page confirms digital pre-orders for the game are going to be refunded.
“The Last of Us Part II and Iron Man VR have been delayed,” the message reads. “All digital pre-order consumers will automatically receive a refund. Please check your email for more details.”
No new date was given for the game. This message, paired with that fact, suggests we’re talking about a pretty lengthy delay. Iron Man VR was originally set to release in late February before initially being delayed to late May, though that delay had nothing to do with COVID-19.
Iron Man VR is published by Sony itself and developed by Republique studio, Camouflaj. As the name suggests, the game sees you suit up as Tony Stark to take on Marvel baddie Ghost in an all-new story. We’ve been looking forward to the game for some time thanks to its innovative control scheme, which allows for convincing 360 degree movement despite using the PSVR’s 180 degree tracking tech.
We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we have the new Iron Man VR release date. Until then, why not check out our video showcasing the game’s tracking?
Sony is delaying the release of Marvel’s Iron Man VR “until further notice.”
The Marvel VR game had already been delayed into 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic is causing a cascade of logistics issues. Last week we reported game delays were likely as quality assurance teams were the latest to be affected. Sony also said The Last of Us Part II was delayed as well, with Sony announcing in a tweet, “Logistically, the global crisis is preventing us from providing the launch experience our players deserve.”
Update: SIE has made the difficult decision to delay the launch of The Last of Us Part II and Marvel's Iron Man VR until further notice. Logistically, the global crisis is preventing us from providing the launch experience our players deserve.
That’s a huge blow to PSVR owners who were looking forward to Iron Man VR’s release. Sony and Microsoft have been ramping up with the plan to release their next generation consoles later this year. While neither company has made reveals around VR hardware for its next generation console, the PS5 is expected to be backward compatible with original PSVR games. Overall, this means that Iron Man VR was expected to be one of the last major VR releases for the PS4.
Reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to shift on a daily basis. In recent weeks production of the Valve Index and Oculus Quest headsets were affected, companies shifted to work from home policies, and the entire technology conference circuit was cancelled, from Mobile World Congress to Game Developers Conference to F8, E3, and more. Social distancing guidelines aim to slow the spread of the disease and the risk to lives that would occur if too many people sick at once ended up needing ventilators and hospitalization.
