Category: Mario Kart

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Mario Kart VR London Site Finds A New Home In A Central Location

There’s a new place to play Mario Kart VR in central London.

VR Zone, the VR arcade arm of Bandai Namco, this week launched the game at Namco Funscape in County Hall. Funscape is a long-running arcade venue located next to the London Eye and right in front of the River Thames. You could already play the game at the O2 venue, though this is a far more central location. As with other sites, the installation offers space for up to four players at a time.

In Mario Kart VR, players climb into kart-shaped seats with a steering wheel and pedals. Vive Trackers are fitted to your hands and then you pull on a Vive to find yourself cast as either Mario, Luigi, Peach or Yoshi depending on which kart you picked.

What follows is a whirlwind tour of some highlights of the Mario Kart series, racing through different environments and using some iconic weapons like green shells. We’ve played Mario Kart VR a few times now and it remains one of the most polished, accessible experiences we’ve seen in arcades.

The game costs £7.95 per person, which isn’t too bad even if the experience only lasts for a few minutes. You can book to try it online right now.

The last time we tried Mario Kart was at Tokyo’s amazing Mazaria Arcade where we saw a bunch of other experiences you can’t find outside of Japan.

Are you going to check out Mario Kart VR in London? Let us know in the comments below!

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Inside Mazaria, Japan’s Best VR Arcade With Dragon Quest, Evangelion VR + More

We’ve been to some cool VR arcades in our time at Upload but Japan’s are, somewhat unsurprisingly, in a league of their own.

A commitment to lavish production values and access to some of the most legendary pop culture brands on the planet make for an experience you can’t get anywhere else in the world. Nowhere is this truer than Mazaria, Japan’s best VR arcade.

This enormous park, run under Bandai Namco’s VR Zone project, features a wide range of amazing attractions. There’s everything from Dragon Quest to Mario Kart along with some amazing original VR content too. We already gave you a quick glimpse of some of these experiences in the last episode of The VR Culture Show, but we thought we’d give you a more in-depth look, too. Here’s

Dragon Quest VR

Square Enix’s legendary role-playing games are notorious for stretching on for tens of hours. This VR experience, meanwhile, lasts just 10 minutes but manages to capture the heart and soul of the series in that short amount of time. Up to four players take on various class roles, including mages and warriors and are then fitted with the respective kit.

A fighter can expect to wield a hefty sword and shield for example (they’re literally very heavy), and then swing them at slimes as you walk around a large area. It’s all a little hectic; there’s not much of the series’ staple strategy in place beyond reviving downed team members, but it captures the air of adventure and joy incredibly well.

Pac-Man

Pac-Man helped kick start the videogame revolution and now he’s here at the beginning of VR too. Granted this two-player virtual maze might not be as telling a glimpse of the future, but it’s a lot of fun all the same.

Wearing Oculus Quests, you hurriedly navigate classic levels, eating up pellets like the man himself. You’re against the clock and hunted by the iconic ghosts, now far more terrifying than they’ve ever been before. Working together to snap up every last pellet is a giddy delight, although you’re strictly told not to run.

Armored Trooper Votoms

Here’s a more obscure anime hit, though one that’s perfect for VR. Armored Trooper Votoms comes to VR in the form of a two-player mech battling game. You sit in motion chairs and glide around an arena, trying to take each other out. This is a visceral VR experience; the chair rattles violently when you’re peppered with machine-gun fire and sparks fly as you screech across the environment. The controls are a little difficult to get the hang of, but it’s still a pretty fun time.

Taiko no Tatsujin

Everywhere you look in Japan, there’s a good chance you’ll see one of the impossibly happy critters from Taiko no Tatsujin staring back at you. The arcade drumming phenomenon continues to be something of a hit. In VR, it somewhat inevitably makes for a Beat Saber-like rhythm game, albeit in a much cuter world.

Vive Trackers stuck to controllers with shifting weights make for a tactile experience. All you need to do in this one is hit the beat as it arrives; there’s no need to swing in certain directions or with a certain hand. It’s a lot more manageable than some Beat Saber tracks, which came as a bit of a relief to us.

Evangelion VR

The legendary anime has a VR arcade adaptation to call its own. Similar to Armored Trooper Votoms, this has you sitting in a cockpit-style setup, though this time you’re working with friends rather than against them. You take on a huge enemy against the clock, smashing down buildings and dodging enormous laser beams as you go. While the sense of scale is amazing, grasping the controls is a little confusing and the time limit makes this pretty easy to fail.

That said, the suiting up scene at the start, which includes famous characters from the series, is recreated to perfection, drowning you in nostalgia as you’re submerged underwater. It’s worth a look for the intro alone.

Mario Kart VR

We’ve been hands-on with Mario Kart VR before, but it remains no less enjoyable as when it debuted over two years ago. You sit in a kart and grab the wheel, Vive Trackers attached to the back of your hands for tracking. The race that follows is a colorful celebration of Nintendo’s beloved racing series, made all the more fun if you’re competing with friends. We’re still hopeful for a full Mario Kart VR game at some point.

Gundam VR

Fortunately, this isn’t just another mech battling game. Instead, this Gundam VR experience wisely captures the thrill of watching giant robots punch it out as if you were a helpless onlooker. At one point you even get to sit in one robot’s hand as it protects you from danger, with a physical version of its giant thumb to cling on to for safety.

Dinosaur Escape

A fun one to end on. This dinosaur escape game is a little scrappy, but it’s got a unique setup that makes it memorable. You ride on virtual scooters, with jets of air blasting your face for immersion. Speeding through the dark with dinos snapping at your heels is a little terrifying, especially when they take a swing as you, but you’ll mostly be laughing at how ridiculously funny this is.

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Death Lap Review: Mostly Competent VR Combat Racing

Death Lap is the latest VR outing for Anshar Wars developer Ozwe Games and it does its best to channel the spirit of Twisted Metal into a relatively standard lap-based racing game. Read our full review to see how it fares!

Based on the footage I’d seen, the art work, and the way the game has been marketed, you probably thought it seemed like a Twisted Metal-inspired car combat game. I think that’s a reasonable assumption to make. In reality, it’s much more like a grungy version of Mario Kart.

Let me explain.

Twisted Metal is hardly a racing game. It’s actually more of an arena combat game that just so happens to pit vehicles as the main characters set across a variety of torn up and run down cities awash with rubble and broken streets. The focus is on evading and engaging in vehicular combat, not so much racing to the finish line. On the flip side, Death Lap is entirely about racing. Your objective is to finish three laps around the chosen race track as quickly as possible to land first place and bask in the glory. The weapons and gritty setting are just backdrops.

Since the Oculus Quest is sorely lacking in the racing game department Death Lap is arriving at a good time (just ahead of Radial-G: Proteus later this month) but its execution doesn’t really match up with its marketing too well.

Just like in Mario Kart you’ll run over boost arrows, hit ramps, drift around corners, and pick up power-up boxes to supercharge your hunks of metal. The main difference is that each vehicle is also equipped with unique close-range and long-range weapons as well. For example, my favorite vehicle has a giant drill on the front that shreds cars I sneak up behind or ram into, while also packing a powerful rocket launcher mounted on top. Using my right hand to aim and my left hand to steer, I’m free to blast my opponents away while drifting across the finish line.

It’s a good concept that packs some serious thrills. One of the levels (shown below in the GIF) takes place across an enormous pinball machine, similar to the casino levels in Sonic the Hedgehog. There’s another level focused on “Sin City” and yet another featuring a flaming clown roller coaster (again, “Hi, Twisted Metal!) to drive through.

Level variety is decent then, but there are only 5 tracks and a handful of vehicles to pick from. Nothing left to unlock after about 20 minutes of playtime. No upgrades, no customization — just a few tracks and a few cars. Supposedly the draw here is the leaderboard and competitive online multiplayer, but there isn’t enough depth to really keep people coming back from what I’ve seen.

 

As a package Death Lap isn’t as feature-packed as I’d have liked to see, but it’s still a lot of fun to play when everything is clicking. Leading your shots to blow up cars as they drift around obstacles in the distance is super satisfying and the weapon variety is actually pretty great. Other than the rocket launcher cars are equipped with mini guns, mini missile launchers, a laser gun, and one even has a rail gun style beam.

Visually it leaves a bit to be desired, even on Rift. Environments look a little muddy and textures are extremely flat, even in the vehicle cockpits. You can tell this is clearly a Quest-first game, which is fine, but it doesn’t compare to the same quality of other Oculus Studios-published titles in terms of production values.

Comfort

Death Lap seems to be a pretty comfortable experience for the most part. Having a cockpit to sit in helps ground you to avoid motion sickness and the default comfort setting means you need to physically turn your head and body to stay facing forward, which works well on Quest. You can disable this so the car turns, but it’s noted that could cause some discomfort if you’re susceptible to that. There’s also a third-person camera mode, but that felt a bit weird to me. The camera also zooms out every time you barrels roll off of a ramp in the air.

To steer the default method is just using the left analog stick like any non-VR racing game would do, but you can toggle an alternate method in the main menu settings that has you twist your wrist to steer instead. I’d prefer a method that lets you actually reach out with your left hand in 6DOF space, like you do with your right hand to aim, and actually grab onto the wheel itself. Neither of the included methods really felt appropriate to me but I did prefer the wrist twisting.

Although this review was conducted primarily using an Oculus Rift version of the game, we have played it on Quest too. The main differences are in the visuals, as the Quest is a bit lower quality as expected. Gameplay and content are unchanged and it supports both cross-play for multiplayer and crossbuy for Rift and Quest.

To be honest I’m hoping Ozwe returns to the Anshar franchise and either delivers a brand-new game or at least ports Anshar Online to Quest since it’s already on Gear VR, Go, and Rift.

DeathLap_screenshot_01

Death Lap Review Final Verdict:

This isn’t the ultimate VR racing game by any means, but it still manages to deliver the fun of competent combat racing in spurts. With a small offering of tracks and vehicles, no real progression system, and no customization it’s a bit bare bones, but the thrill of seeing explosions and drifting around a giant pinball machine salvages a lot of the intensity.

Final Score: :star: :star: :star: 3/5 Stars | Pretty Good

death lap vr pro con list

Death Lap is now available for Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift headsets at the price of $19.99.

This review of Death Lap from Ozwe Games was conducted on an Oculus Rift S using two Touch controllers. You can read more about the new five-star scoring policy here.

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