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Iron Man VR is Coming to PlayStation VR This Year
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has just held its first State of Play broadcast and shared quite the lineup for PlayStation VR fans, in fact, the short stream was practically dominated by virtual reality (VR) titles, some being revealed while others had launch dates confirmed. The show kicked off with a bang thanks to the announcement of Iron Man VR.
The reveal was a mixture of both gameplay and cinematic footage, allowing fans to see a brief glimpse of what it’ll be like to don the famous Iron Man suit which has dominated the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) ever since the first Iron Man film back in 2008.
Iron Man VR is the work of Camouflaj, PlayStation Worldwide Studios, and Marvel Games and will include support for PlayStation Move controllers. There are no concrete details regarding the story and whether it’ll be a completely separate entity from the films, or tie-in to the MCU in some way.
The videogame is scheduled to launch at some point during 2019 and could well be the most definitive version of Iron Man to grace the videogame market yet. As further details are released VRFocus will keep you updated.
Marvel’s VR Game: What We Want From An Ultimate X-Men Experience
When it comes to gaming, Marvel is finally getting its act together. After years of pouring its efforts into the mobile market with its licensed heroes like Spider-Man and Deadpool to be made into mediocre action games, the company is finally starting to pay proper attention to PC and console gaming. You can see it in the return of the Marvel vs Capcom franchise, the announcement of a PS4 exclusive Spider-Man game made by Insomniac, Marvel Heroes gaining momentum, and the reveal of Square Enix’s Avengers project.
As fans of the brand, we’ve been waiting a long time for this, and we can’t wait to see what the company does with VR.
Earlier this week we reported that Marvel’s Games division was promising at least one VR project that will “absolutely amaze” its many fans. That’s the only hint the company was willing to drop, but it was enough to set our Spidey-senses off. We’d love to peer into the brains at Marvel to see what’s in store but their psychic defenses are all too strong, so we’ll have to guess instead.
So, without further ado, we present our pitch for our dream Marvel game (and something I’ve personally been longing for for years): X-Men – Danger Room.
To me, my X-Men!
Now, anyone that follows the comics and movies know that Marvel’s mutants have had a strange few years. Marvel doesn’t have the movie rights to the X-Men, Fox does. As Marvel’s multi-billion dollar Cinematic Universe has grown, its influence on the comic books it inspired has been felt; the X-Men have felt increasingly like a separate part of the universe whereas they used to be tightly integrated with it. Tellingly, none of Marvel’s upcoming games feature any mutants.
That’s partly why we want Marvel’s VR game to be focused on the X-Men. With recent relaunches in the comics, the X-Men are looking a little more like themselves again, and it’s time to see the studio embrace its family of misfits once more outside of its own pages. VR is the perfect venue to host the reunion.
Mutant Mechanics
When you take a minute to think about it, a lot of VR’s more common and obvious gameplay mechanics are directly linked to various members of the X-Men. Gear VR’s on-board touchpad immediately reminds anyone that uses it of the way team leader Cyclops reaches up to his glasses to let loose an eye-beam. In games like Psychonauts, we move things with out minds much in the way Jean Grey would. Even teleportation locomotion reminds us of the blue-haired Nightcrawler.
When you start thinking of all of these mechanics coming together in a single game, something special starts to form in your mind. What if you could have a four-player co-op game in which players could take on the roles of different X-Men and do battle with their biggest enemies via the Danger Room, a simulation room very similar in concept to VR itself, where training excesses bring mechanical versions of Magneto, Mr. Sinister, and others to life for you to battle against?
Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
Imagine this. You boot up the Danger Room. To one side you see Storm starting to summon winds to blow back a squad of giant mutant-killing Sentinels. To your left Kitty Pryde reaches into one of the machine’s legs and starts pulling out core components. Iceman circles around above your head, fast-firing frozen chunks and creating his own shields and weapons with Tilt Brush-esque controls. Then you look down at your own two hands and see Wolverine’s iconic claws extending from them.
A Sentinel’s foot is coming right for you, you quickly glance towards a safe spot, hit a button and a thick plume of purple smoke surrounds you. It fades just as soon as it appeared as Nightcrawler jumps back to a strategic location. Kitty manages to bring a Sentinel to its knees and Iceman’s blockades slow it down. You take your shot; metal-bodied mutant Colossus appears next to you, grabs you and flings you towards the head of the beast, which you chop off and watch topple towards the ground.
VR X-Mas
An X-Men VR experience seems like the ideal VR action game, and the list of possibilities goes on and on. Gambit’s staff combat and exploding card-throwing powers, Rogue’s ability-sucking touch, Jubilee’s fireworks-spouting fans and, yes, Deadpool’s wise-cracking shootouts could all fit perfectly inside this package. Working together to take down Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, or defend the world against the latest threat from Apocalypse would bestow hours of fun upon us.
The idea’s just too perfect not to be done (there’s a chance I may have already told multiple developers about this idea so if it comes true I take full credit). We’re not sure when Marvel will finally be ready to reveal what it’s working on in VR, but we’ve got our fingers, toes and — in Angel’s case — wings crossed that it’s something to do with the X-Men.
Tagged with: Marvel Games, x men
Marvel Games Promises ‘Absolutely Amazing’ Things In VR That Will Make Fans ‘Go Crazy’
Comic book giant Marvel Entertainment has already conquered the movie industry, and now its sights are set on videogames including, it appears, VR experiences.
That is according to Jay Ong, senior vice president of games and innovation at Marvel. In a recent interview with Gamespot, he confirmed that there are “absolutely” VR projects in the work at the company right now.
“Absolutely expect some announcements in VR,” Ong said, “that’s something we’re really excited about. I think our fans are going to go crazy. The things we’re doing there are absolutely amazing.”
Ong explained that the company had done a “deep dive in looking” at VR towards the end of 2016, and found that it “offers some pretty incredible opportunities” that it’s currently exploring. He didn’t hint as to what the company’s VR projects may be — perhaps they’re related in Marvel’s interest in VR for film — but he certainly didn’t play down how committed Marvel is to the technology.
“We think if we do something there, it shouldn’t be just for the novelty of it,” Ong added. “It should be something that defines the platform, that defines the experience.”
He said that he expects the upcoming Spider-Man game, which is being developed by Edge of Nowhere’s Insomniac Games (though, sadly, not in VR), to be one of the best games on PlayStation 4, while the recently announced Avengers game is expected to be one of the best games on PS4 and Xbox One.
“We think our efforts in VR will be the same thing,” Ong concluded.
That’s certainly bullish, which has us aching to find out what Marvel is working on in VR. Recently, we saw Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demo prototype glove controllers for the Oculus Rift that he said allowed him to “shoot webs” just like Spider-Man himself. If this tech didn’t look like it was so early in development, we might wage Marvel has teamed up with Oculus similar to how Sony partnered with the company for the PS4 Spider-Man game. That’s just speculation on our part, though.
We have plenty of ideas for superhero VR games, if Marvel needs any ideas.
Tagged with: Marvel Games