Back at E3 2019 earlier this year we learned that Ready at Dawn was working on an Oculus Quest port of its zero-gravity VR disc sport, Echo Arena, and would be bringing it over to the standalone VR headset in “all its glory.”
Yesterday, at Oculus Connect 6 (OC6), I got the chance to try it out for myself on Quest for the first time and I can confirm that it’s certainly a capable port of the popular game, but certainly not a perfect translation.
Generally speaking, the game runs great on Quest. The developers describe it as still being in “alpha” but for all intents and purposes it seems far more feature complete than most alphas I’ve tried. Everything works already. All the controls are the same allowing me to reach out with my hands and use wrist thrusters to glide around the arena, I can push off of objects, boost with the left stick, brake with the right, use the grip buttons to grab the disc or environment, and use the triggers to punch and block.
Like I said, this is definitely Echo Arena. It’s all here. But it’s just not quite as good, which shouldn’t be a big surprise.
This screenshot is captured from the PC version.
For starters, you can tell it’s downgraded visually pretty clearly. I haven’t played Echo Arena in months but I could still spot some differences. The lightning system seemed less remarkable specifically and I am pretty sure I could spot a tad of fixed foveated rendering around the edges of my display. Character models were lower quality as well, even in terms of the differences between my avatar and the avatars of other players. For example, my hands were articulated with individually animated fingers, but other players appeared to have a smudged glove for hands, basically.
Those are pretty minor differences when you’re in the heat of a match though and don’t actually matter. But since the Quest only has four front-facing inside-out cameras in the corners of the headset face plate, the tracking volume is much smaller than the original Rift and smaller than the Rift S. Specifically, when reaching above my head, down around the back of my waist, or behind my back.
In most VR games you usually keep your hands out in front of you, but in Echo Arena that isn’t really the case. You’ll often grab a piece of the environment without looking at it directly or hold onto the wall, then turn to look towards the disc before pushing off and launching yourself. That action was sort of hit or miss on Quest. The same goes for reaching behind my hand to wind up a throw/pass or flicking it backwards to toss. The action usually worked okay, but it often forced my arms and hands to get all distorted, which was a bit jarring.
This screenshot is captured from the PC version.
To be clear though: Echo Arena on Quest, from what I’ve seen so far, is absolutely capable, playable, and quite good. I would definitely play this version and would personally recommend it to Quest owners from what I’ve played. Not having to worry about wires is reason enough to make Echo Arena on Quest one worth keeping on your radar because it feels great to spin around without issues. That being said, it just isn’t as good as on PC VR, but that should have been expected anyway.
There is still no release date for Echo Arena on Quest, so stay tuned for more once we know!
Could we one day see Oculus exclusive games like Lone Echo, Stormland and Asgard’s Wrath on PSVR?
Oculus’ Jason Rubin would like that very much. Speaking to Kotaku at E3 last month, Oculus’ VP of Special Gaming Initiatives said he would “love” to make a trade with Sony.
“We’ve thought about it,” he replied when asked if Oculus games could come to PSVR. “I would love to make a trade with Sony. You know they have great stuff that they funded, and we have great stuff we’ve funded.”
Oculus publishes exclusive games for Rift and Quest under its Oculus Studios label. The Facebook-owned company funds games from developers like Ready at Dawn and Insomniac under this initiative. Sony, meanwhile, owns developers like Sony London that work on PSVR exclusive titles such as Blood & Truth. Both companies produce some of the most polished, visually astounding and all-round best games in VR.
But could a trade actually work? The VR scene finds itself in an interesting stage of collaboration in its early years, where companies are more concerned with making the industry sustainable than they are directly competing with rivals. Oculus could certainly stand to benefit from selling its software on PSVR, which has sold over 4.4 million units (Rift and Quest figures aren’t known).
The real question is if Sony would be willing to cooperate. PlayStation-published games tend to remain exclusive to PlayStation, but bringing high-end PC titles to its next VR headset, rumored to be supporting the next PlayStation console, could be hugely advantageous. At the same time, we’d love to play the likes of Astro Bot: Rescue Mission on a Rift.
Yesterday I got the chance to try the first ever playable demo of Lone Echo 2, the highly anticipated sequel to our 2017 Game of the Year winner, Lone Echo. In the series you play as Jack, a robotic ally to Liv, one of VR’s most emotive and well-developed NPC companions.
From what I saw during my demo, Lone Echo 2 is very much a bigger and better sequel. Rather than throwing out the entire design of the first game and starting from scratch, Ready at Dawn have taken a more iterative approach. Jack and Liv are still the center of the story, as is there constant struggle for survival in abandoned reaches of deep space, and you’ll still float around in zero gravity environments exploring, talking with Liv, and uncovering secrets. Taken at face value, it sounds awfully similar — but there’s more to it than that.
In the interview above you can see more details about the vision for this sequel, but specifically in my demo I spent about 20 minutes absolutely immersed and thrilled to be back in one of VR’s most beloved worlds.
Things started out simple enough: Liv tells me that we need to figure out how to get deeper into the ship we’re stranded on and figure out what’s going on more or less. After a bit of floating around and grappling on sections of the environment, we entered what looked like an atrium. Visually this area actually reminded me quite a bit of the main lobby area from recent sci-fi film Passengers or like some of the ships you see in BioWare’s Mass Effect games.
The first part of the demo was extremely familiar for anyone that’s played the original Lone Echo. Liv and I floated about rooms, she remarked on some objects in the world, I could ask her questions about things to get more insight, and eventually I triggered some dialog about another ship floating out in space. That’s when the Central Intelligence unit kicks on.
Having another character around really helps not only liven up moments of dialog, but it also brings out extra layers for both Liv and Jack as characters. Notably, Liv starts to sound more guarded and careful due to Central appearing as another artificial machine that’s far less warm and welcoming than Jack, whereas Jack seems less apprehensive towards Central and more open to hearing its ideas. Based on the dialog choices you have to make, you can lean into some of those new implications a bit.
Eventually I came across a room I needed to get into but the door is locked and the area is overran with biomass that’s pulsing and glowing, desperately trying to make contact with an energy source. At this point I’ve got to venture deeper into the ship to restore power to get into the room, but must be careful not to touch the biomass or else it could force Jack to reboot at a fabrication station, similar to the original game.
The first Lone Echo was notable for its slow pace and lack of physical enemies and combat and even though Lone Echo 2 mostly holds true to that same concept, it does have a bit more variety now. In particular, Ready at Dawn have done a good job of making enemies both parts of the puzzle solving and action scenes simultaneously.
Like most demos of this format, I just wanted to see more. I only got to just briefly interact with the biomass creatures before our demo time was over and I could honestly spend an entire day or more just hanging out with Liv, chatting. More than anything Lone Echo 2 is a world I want to spend more time in because despite the crippling loneliness of its setting, I can’t help but feel closer to Liv when she looks at me and smiles.
The fact that the Echo universe has expanded so dramatically to now include three total games (Lone Echo, Echo Arena, and Echo Combat) as well as the upcoming sequel is an excellent sign. Ready at Dawn have built a true universe with multi-franchise potential and Oculus appears to be all-in on supporting that vision.
Lone Echo 2 is slated for an early 2020 release on the Oculus Rift platform. Let us know what you think of what you’ve seen so far down in the comments below!
Ready At Dawn announced today it is bringing its Echo Arena multiplayer to Oculus Quest “in all its glory.”
During UploadVR’s E3 VR showcase, RAD CEO and creative director Ru Weerasuriya revealed the popular Oculus Rift multiplayer game will make the zero gravity jump to the Oculus Quest standalone VR gaming console.
The Irvine-based studio is also continuing the groundbreaking 2017 single-player VR adventure Lone Echo with Lone Echo II for Rift and Rift S. Weerasuriya previewed the upcoming PC VR game during the showcase as it continues the close relationship explored in the original between Captain Olivia (“Liv”) Rhodes and Jack, an artificial intelligence.
“You’’ll be able to reprise your role as Jack in this story,” said Weerasuriya. “Lone Echo II really reinforces this idea that you and Liv are like family and that you and her basically will go through anything against all odds.”
Ready At Dawn is the studio behind PlayStation Portable games in the God of War and Daxter franchises and they took the jump to VR with their Echo series for Oculus headsets. The Echo games explore a variety of interactions in zero gravity with Lone Echo focused on the intimate storytelling of VR. Echo Arena is a bit like the sport played by the kids in Ender’s Game and its active gameplay makes for highly competitive matches and it is embraced by Oculus as a VR esport. Similarly, Echo Combat is a first-person shooter spin-off from Echo Arena that features gun-based shooting in zero gravity. Ready At Dawn recently announced optimiziations for the Insight tracking system deployed on Rift S as well.
With Echo games forthcoming on both of Facebook’s Oculus Touch-equipped systems, look for Ready At Dawn to lead the way in showing what’s possible with storytelling, interaction and multiplayer on both Rift S and Oculus Quest.
“Bulldogs are a symbol of the British spirit,” Captain Oliva ‘Liv’ Rhodes tells you as you inspect her Union Jack-sporting dog ornament wearing a Churchill hat. “We don’t want to know when the odds are against us.”
“Ah,” your character, an android named Jack, replies. “Sounds familiar.”
In a few hours’ time, it will to you too.
Lone Echo did a lot of things really, really right. From the revelatory zero-gravity locomotion to the unmatched visual fidelity, Ready at Dawn’s VR debut remains a must-play. But much of the game’s atmosphere and action would be for naught if it wasn’t down to the remarkable bond you grow with Liv. It’s arguably the game’s crowning achievement.
VR itself plays a part in that. Liv, an assured and regimented captain, isn’t afraid to get right up to the player’s eyes and make sure they meet her own. The developer’s flair for visuals also helps. Liv is one of VR’s most expressive and detailed NPCs. She shows herself to be equal parts confident and kind, ready to get the job done but with compassion for those that do it. Her tone is stern but welcoming. Actor Alice Coulthard gives her equal parts authority and approachability.
But it’s also true that Liv herself is a compelling companion. She’s funny and fierce, with little time for the protocols and formalities her rank implies. In the opening, Jack is trapped. He begins to over-explain a possible malfunction. Liv waves her hand to interrupt and bangs on the pod. A lever appears to release you. She shoots you a playful smile. “You’re all set.”
She’s strong and capable, too, held back only by her own mortality. When a mid-game development leads her to believe Jack is gone, she packs up and ventures into uncharted space on an ironically suicidal survival mission.
It’s Liv’s curious relationship with Jack that gives it all weight, though. It feels partly paternal but somewhat cautiously romantic, too. Dialogue between the two is relaxed and open, yet Liv is playing one part mother, one part partner. At some points she mockingly picks at Jack’s AI constraints as if he’s a child learning the ways of the world. In others, she fondly recalls the pair’s relationship as if it were something more intimate. The game opens to Liv learning she’ll leave Jack behind when she finishes her tenancy at a mining facility. It’s a conflict she carries with her for the rest of the story, informing every fond memory with a hint of sadness.
Lone Echo’s closing act solidifies that work. The climactic ending, in which you battle to save Liv’s life, carries genuine desperation. But, perhaps more tellingly, it’s how Jack inherits some of her qualities that shows you her strength. “I will walk you through the procedure,” an AI construct named Apollo says, referring to how to keep your ship intact.
“Or, we could just break them,” Jack replies.
And yet, like I said in my review two years ago, we stop short of getting definitive answers as to what these two are to each other. Lone Echo plays like the first act in something wider rather than the complete story. Getting back in to further explore the dynamic between Jack and Liv is one of the main reasons I can’t wait for Lone Echo II. The five minutes we spend with her in the experience trailer suggest Ready at Dawn is reassured in who Liv is. She plays cards with your dismembered arm and shrugs it off when you notice. It also hints we might see more of the history between the two explored.
What Ready at Dawn did with Liv in Lone Echo was lay a foundation. Not just for the developer to build upon with a sequel, but also for others to start experimenting with. Years from now, Liv will be one of the original templates for VR character interaction. We’re eager to see how she evolves from that.
“Just sit tight,” the British bulldog says with a wink in the Lone Echo II teaser. We’ll gladly wait.
Oculus Rift exclusive Echo VR is one of the more interesting VR games out there for its unique usage of hand presence. You can climb or grab practically any object and propel yourself around in zero gravity. I haven’t played too many other games that use zero-g to make themselves as immersive as Echo VR does, but it stands out because you aren’t just using a thumbstick to move around in the game’s world.
SinceEcho Arena(Echo VR’s original title) first came out, I always wanted to play a laser tag variant with the same zero-g VR mechanics present in the existing game. Apparently I wasn’t alone in wishing for one, and Echo Combat(a $9.99 expansion pack to Echo VR, sold on the Oculus Store) is the direct answer to that itch.
As a new player, how should you go about playing Echo Combat if your primary interest is competing and winning rounds? There are actually a few important mechanics to the game that you need to be aware of if you want to have any hope of annihilating other players.
Grab Cover
You can literally grab and/or climb anything in Echo’s environment, making it a viable tactic to grab a nearby surface and pull yourself behind it for cover. Echo Combat can be difficult if inertia gets the best of you when you find yourself out in the line of fire. Instead, always focus on staying near walls, floors, and other surfaces that you can use to quickly propel yourself around.
Wait For Your Teammates To Spawn
This is a big one. Respawns happen at various intervals and the last thing you want is your team to drip into the arena, where individual teammates can be picked off one-by-one. When you die and respawn, wait for at least one other teammate to respawn before you pop back onto the field and start shooting again. You can also use the acceleration of your other teammates to move onto the field faster if you launch yourself off of them at full velocity, or vice versa.
Fission Map Tips
Fission is a map that should feel a bit reminiscent of Overwatch, where one team is pushing a payload across the map while the other team is trying to defend the checkpoints.
As attackers:
When you’re first coming out of the spawn zone, don’t let yourself get pinned down by the opposite team. Rush them as soon as you can and get a foothold on the payload. While you’re moving up, huddle on the payload and use it for cover as you push towards each gate.
As defenders:
Try to draw individual enemy players away from the payload. The more time they waste, the better shot you have at winning the match. It’s your objective to keep them stalled, so have at least one teammate sniping from a remote position. Your team should be getting on the payload to push it backwards as well.
Combustion Map Tips
Combustion is a king of the hill map, with a central capture point that your team must stay near long enough to win. If you’re currently on the capture point, it provides cover. But it’s also exposed from all sides and enemies can maneuver their way around the nearby tunnels to flank you. If you’re attempting to take the capture point away from the opposite team, watch for blind spots around its central pillar where hiding enemies can isolate and kill you at short range.
Dyson Map Tips
Dyson is another king of the hill map, but significantly larger and more open. This is the only map in Echo Combat with multiple spawn points. You can opt in for instant spawns that are much further away from the capture point, or you can wait for a timer to countdown on the Back Pad, which puts you right next to the capture point. You should spawn at the Back Pad or the Tunnel whenever possible, because you might as well wait for your teammates to respawn anyway.
The capture point on this map is much more exposed than Combustion, but it’s defensible if you’re willing to huddle your team around the point and use the glass railing for thin cover. You might find yourself needing to move from cover to cover far more often, but you’ll want to keep all 360 degrees accounted for.
Equipment Tips
Weapons
Pulsar: Your standard automatic weapon, great for short-medium range battles and for providing suppressing fire at longer ranges. This is the one that’s easiest to learn and use.
Nova: A shotgun which overheats quickly and takes its time to cool down. Definitely use it for short range combat where you can quickly get in and land a headshot or a few solid body shots.
Comet: A laser-pointed sniper pistol which you can charge up for maximum damage. Use this one from long range.
Meteor: This is basically a handheld rocket launcher. Use it at short-medium range, but be careful to land your shots carefully because of the hefty cooldown timer on each.
Ordinance
Arc Mine: When you throw this, it automatically activates midair and generates a boundary. When that boundary is crossed, the Arc Mine ignites and stuns nearby enemies. While it’s obvious when an Arc Mine is ready to blow, as it shows a visible boundary, you should use the Arc Mine to create access denial areas inside of important chokeholds.
Stun Field: A projectile that stuns enemies that it touches. This is almost like a get out of jail free card if you find yourself up close with an enemy and your gun is overheated. It activates as soon as you throw it, and can be used to immobilize enemies just long enough for you to eliminate them. Many players like to use the Stun Field because of how simple, easy and effective it is to deploy.
Detonator: A remotely detonated grenade that you can throw and/or use like a mine if you’d like. If it takes damage, it ignites on its own. However, you can bounce it off of surfaces to get it behind an enemy position, and then remotely detonate it for maximum damage.
Instant Repair: A device that instantly repairs your chassis, as the name suggests.
Tac-Mods
Phase Shift: This makes you unable to take or dish out any damage, but you still have the full functionality of movement. Use this to get into or out of tight corners very quickly, or even to distract your enemies.
Repair Matrix: This is an area of effect heal, which at least one team member should always carry on them for large-scale healing across the entire team. If a teammate is outside of the device’s range, they will not receive healing from it.
Threat Scanner: This is also an essential tac-mod for at least one teammate to use at all times. It instantly scans the map for each enemy position, and then tags that position for your entire team. Anybody on your team can also see enemies through walls when they’ve been tagged.
Force Field: This allows you to set up a stationary shield that you can get behind and use as cover. Use this when you’d like to fortify a mid-air position with a long range weapon.
Echo Combat is a lovely zero-G FPS that you can grab from the Oculus Store for $9.99. If we left out any useful tips today, please let us know in the comments!
Shooting guns in VR feels natural at this point. When VR headsets first hit the market games like Space Pirate Trainer made novel use of motion controllers by letting us gun down robots and other enemies from inside the immersive, virtual realm. But now, almost three years removed from the debut of consumer VR, pointing and shooting is second nature for most. That is, until you add zero-gravity gameplay into the mix.
Lone Echo is a shining beacon of the possibilities with VR storytelling and Echo Arena was a groundbreaking moment for multiplayer VR games and VR as an esport with its Quidditch meets Ultiamte Frisbee in zero-G concept. Now with Echo Combat, Ready at Dawn is back with a new format for its renamed ‘Echo VR’ platform, delivering an Overwatch-style objective-based multiplayer shooter that pits two teams against one another with a variety of weapons and powers in free-roaming zero-gravity arenas. The results are truly intense.
Echo Combat is, in a nutshell, a team-based first-person shooter with the novel twist of each map existing in a zero-gravity dome environment. Tis means that many of the classic FPS tropes gamers are accustomed to are all here (recharging shields, objectives to capture or hold, different weapons, various abilities, etc) but feel unique given the medium and environment.
For example, in a game of Battlefield V I might hunker down behind a sandbag for cover and pop my head out to take aim at enemies approaching in the distance. There are some elements of elevation at play, but generally speaking it’s just a question of distance and aiming my gun in front of me. Echo Combat applies that same logic to a full 360-degree environment. While floating through the air enemies could be above, below, behind, or any variation around you. This is amplified by the fact that weapons have actual force knock back based on their kinetic force. That’s why holding onto a surface for cover and stability is essential.
But then that brings us to the most genius part of the entire Echo VR lineage of games: the grappling and movement system. Since it’s a zero-gravity environment you can push off of surfaces to traverse areas, or simply climb along walls and objects hand-over-hand like you would at a playground. That small action is immediately satisfying and immersive in a way no other locomotion system is in VR. You can further tweak movements with wrist rockets that let you boost around like Superman.
Most of that applies to Echo Arena as well though, what sets Echo Combat apart is the focus on gunplay. There are a handful of unique weapons, from an auto pistol, to a long-range rail gun, to a short-range burst shotgun type of gun. Loadouts can be further customized by selecting from different sorts of projectiles to detonate, as well as special abilities like shields, healing, or pinging enemy locations in the UI through walls.
It’s a good and balanced selection overall, but not great. Part of the charm of Echo Arena was that it felt entirely original. We’d seen similar things in films like Ender’s Game or Tron, but we’d never seen or done anything like that, physically, in VR or any other game before. Echo Combat is basically just Overwatch with fewer nuances, dramatically fewer characters, maps, and modes. It gets the job done as a novel VR shooter, but comparatively it feels less inspired than its Echo-predecessor.
Don’t get me wrong — Echo Combat is a great game — but it doesn’t feel like a watershed moment for multiplayer VR like Echo Arena did since it’s really just an iteration on an existing formula. However, this does open up the door to more iterations on this formula and a curious concept of what that might look like a few years down the road with a potentially even wider assortment of modes and game types.
Whereas Echo Arena was all about careful planning, teamwork, and skill-based wrist-flicks, Echo Combat falls into a much more familiar gameplay loop of shoot, hide behind cover, die, and respawn. The teamwork aspect is still there, but it’s far less emphasized since simply shooting the bad guys is all you really need to do. This breeds a slightly different core community than the collaborative and creative matches of Echo Arena, for better and worse.
Final Score:8/10 – Great
Echo Combat is a polished and well-balanced VR shooter in zero-gravity that mixes the locomotion from Echo Arena and Lone Echo with the team-based dynamics of shooters like Overwatch. It feels great to play and has a ton of action for fans of the genre. While it may not be quite as creative and groundbreaking as Echo Arena was at the time, Echo Combat scratches a very specific itch in a way that only a AAA-caliber development studio like Ready at Dawn can.
At their regular prices the games would total to $209.93, thus this pack saves $109.94 (%52). The deal is one day only, ending at midnight tonight Pacific Standard Time.
Onward and Arizona Sunshine are on sale separately at 40% off and 50% off, but the other games are not. While this certainly isn’t a budget oriented deal, we think these games are some of the best that VR gaming currently has to offer. All seven would make excellent additions to your library.
Lone Echo [8.5/10]
Lone Echo is a roughly five hour voice acted story driven VR game. It was created by The Order 1886 developers Ready At Dawn, funded by Oculus. You play as a service android under the command of Captain Olivia Rhodes. When a catastrophe strikes, you and Olivia must work together to try and repair the station. We were highly impressed with the game when we reviewed it, giving it 8.5/10 and concluding:
Lone Echo is a landmark achievement in three key areas of the VR experience: locomotion, UI, and interaction. The winning blend of intuitive movement, discovery-based gameplay and character-driven storytelling create a compelling sense of presence that few VR games could hope to match, while the considered pacing gives it a fresh identity. I hate to mark it down on such a trivial aspect as length, but the package simply feels incomplete, rounding off in the second act and depriving you of both the narrative and mechanical evolutions I was expecting to encounter in the third. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that I expect its sequel to be one of VR’s very best.
Onward
Onward is a realistic multiplayer military shooter which feels like playing Insurgency in VR. Remarkably, it entered early access when it had just one developer. Since then, it has become one of the most popular multiplayer games in VR.
Superhot VR is a unique shooter experience where the faster you move, the faster time moves. If you keep completely still, time will freeze. It is a perfect blend of mental and physical challenge, and perhaps one of the best VR games ever made.
SUPERHOT VR is a pure, distilled, injection of unadulterated adrenaline that will get your blood pumping just as quickly as time stops in the game itself. With every movement you make, time creeps forward ever so slightly, and everything from the level design to the way it feels to dodge a series of bullets in slow-motion is orchestrated to reinforce the core ideals of the experience. From start to finish it plays out like a fantasy ripped from the screen of every action movie; an indulgent cacophony of visual and gameplay excitement.
The Climb [8/10]
Still today, The Climb has some of the best graphics you can see in a realtime VR game. The game remarkably launched for the Rift using an Xbox controller, before the Touch controllers released, but received a large update on the launch of the controllers to add full support. Even with an xbox controller we were impressed, giving it an 8/10 saying:
There may be some control issues holding it back but, in the end, The Climb creates a world in which the mechanics are so satisfying, the visuals are so beautiful, and the sense of accomplishment is so real that you just want to continue doing what the game enables you to do so perfectly: keep climbing.
Arizona Sunshine [8.5/10]
Arizona Sunshine is a zombie FPS with a full voice acted singleplayer campaign and co-op multiplayer. When we reviewed the game, we gave it 8.5/10, concluding:
Vertigo Games proved that even in the most saturated genre we’ve seen for VR games this year — shooters with zombies — there was still room for something fresh. Arizona Sunshine combines the narrative power of a fully-featured 4+ hour campaign mode, with the intensity of a wave-based horde mode, and then adds multiplayer to both experiences. The protagonist’s witty humor make it worth recommending on his charming personality alone, with enough depth and variety to keep people coming back for several hours. By doing so many things so well, Arizona Sunshine quickly rose to the top of the pack as the best overall zombie shooter we’ve seen yet in VR.
GORN
GORN is a comically over the top cartoon gladiator simulator which many consider to have the best melee mechanics in VR. As the game isn’t out of early access yet we haven’t formally reviewed it, but in our preview we stated:
If there were ever a VR game to convince even the strictest of VR pacifists to chop someone’s head off, it’s this. I dare you to not smile just a little as you hit a man so hard his eyeballs fall out. This plays like a hyperbolic anticipation of everything VR will one day come under fire for; an in-the-face parody of the inevitability of it all. I can picture the Fox News complaints about young children ripping people’s arms off in VR already, but here’s a game that makes actually doing that joyously silly before anyone’s really made it thrillingly empowering. I can’t help but admire the developer’s angle here.
Eleven: Table Tennis VR
Eleven is seemingly the most simple game in this bundle, but to many it will provide the most hours of fun. Eleven represents the mastery of virtual table tennis, a sport so ideally suited for VR that VR companies often use it as an example of what the medium can do when giving interviews to news outlets.
While we haven’t formally reviewed Eleven yet, as of this article it sits on a 4.75 star rating on the Oculus Store and 95% on Steam.
Strap on your wrist jets and load up your weapons because Echo Combat, the upcoming first-person zero-gravity VR shooter from Lone Echo and Echo Arena developers, Ready at Dawn, is heading back into Open Beta. The Open Beta 4 period is now live starting today and lasts until Sunday, September 9th, at 9AM PT with patch 14.0, bringing with it lots of bug fixes, party support, and balance changes.
More details in the trailer:
One of the featured changes with this most recent patch that’s very welcomed is the addition of new cover points throughout the map. Since Echo Combat only has a single map for its one game mode getting the balance just right is crucial.
The main areas of focus for the rest of the new patch focus on the Arc Mine gadget, 2D spectator mode fixes, nerfing the Barrier Tac-Mod, spawn timer adjustments, and various other tweaks.
Last month Echo Combat had its first Open Beta period allowing anyone with a Rift to hop in and play Ready at Dawn’s take on the first-person shooter totally for free all weekend long. We livestreamed the beta while it was happening twice (here and here) if you want to get a feel for what the game is like.
In our original hands-on with the game earlier this year we likened it to Overwatch in terms of objectives (pushing a payload) and being able to switch “classes” in a sense by changing weapons. Here’s a quick look at the game in action:
Echo Combat is the second multiplayer VR game from Ready at Dawn, following Echo Arena and the single player narrative story, Lone Echo. Echo Combat is expected to release later this year and this will be far from the last Open Beta period. In the blog post the company writes:
This weekend’s Open Beta is the first of many scheduled throughout the rest of the year and leading up to Echo Combat’s official release. Alongside more opportunities to play Echo Combat until release, players can also look forward to new content monthly.
If you’ve been following the VR shooter scene for a while now, you might even notice that it shares a lot in common with Ubisoft’s forthcoming shooter, Space Junkies. We did a breakdown comparing the games, deciding that Echo Combat edges out Space Junkies just barely based on time spent with each so far.
If you plan on playing the Open Beta this weekend let us know down in the comments below!
