The temperature is getting colder, the nights are getting darker, and there’s more than a few unsavoury noises coming from beyond the foggy darkness. It’s the witching hour draws near and Halloween is just a short while away.
Throughout the few couple of weeks we’ve been keeping you up to date constantly on all the latest Halloween related updates, be they related to new content as we’ve seen today with Luden.io’s pumpkin-filled update for city destruction sandbox videogame VRobot. Limited time bundle deals, as we’ve seen from HTC Vive adding Star Trek: Bridge Crew into the sales deal for a short time. New releases such as OBSCURA, The Exorcist: Legion VR and Stifled. Even augmented reality (AR) videogames are getting in on the act with Scooby-Doo Go, another dog – this time a ghostly one – in the form of Bydo’s Returnand of course the inevitable update from Niantic Labs for Pokémon GO.
For Oculus themselves they have several items in the offing; includingEcho Arena‘s 2017 Halloween Bash, with the VR multiplayer title receiving a makeover with mysterious sights, new costume options to customise your avatar and a number of spooky and peculiar holiday-themed toys for you to play around with – if they don’t decide to play with you, that is. There’s been a small focus on re-advertising some fright filled experiences as well, with the likes of ABR VR receiving a new trailer upload on Oculus’ YouTube Channel.
The best news for Oculus Rift owners though must surely though be the newly announced Halloween sale which has, for the second year in a row, now gone live on the Oculus Store. Seventeen Oculus Rift along with sixteen Samsung Gear VR videogames and experiences have been reduced in price for a limited time. The full list is below.
Update:
We’ve also been informed that additionally included in the sale, though left out of Oculus’ own list (and hence this post originally) for some reason is Paranormal Activity The Lost Soul.
If you didn’t realise already today is the most ominous of days, Friday 13th. If you happen to own an Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR however then there’s no need to fret, in fact you can celebrate as Oculus has decided to mark the occasion by discounting a bunch of scary videogames to immerse yourself in.
There are 15 titles on discount across each platform for one day only featuring some of the best horror available for the platform. From psychological thrillers to all out gun toting action experiences, there’s something for everyone – if you can handle it.
Underwater VR survival experience Narcosis launched last week for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. It garnered some critical praise for its atmospheric horror and now developer Honor Code Inc. are introducing some new updates and bug fixes.
Narcosis places the player in a bulky diving suit deep underwater, trying to survive after a terrible disaster left them stranded and alone in the depths of the ocean, armed only with a flashlight, some flares and a knife. The experience relies on creating an oppressive, stressful atmosphere to immerse the player in the experience as they try and explore underwater ruins and get to safety while maintaining their precious supply of oxygen.
The new update introduces the opportunity to collect Steam Trading Cards, Badges and custom Emoticons. The development team have also fixed some bugs, so now mouse/keyboard users can correctly invert the Y axis and the flare trajectory works as it should. Ultra-wide support is also currently being worked on.
The development team at Honor Code have teased the player base with the following: “Have you recovered all the ID tags? Unearthed all the ‘relics’?” Does this suggest that more may be added in future? Does it mean there are more to be found than the players have so far discovered?
Honor Code are also asking users to leave reviews and feedback so they can get a better picture of what needs to be changed or improved.
Narcosis is available for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via Steam for £15.99 (GBP). Further details and updates can be found on the official Steam page.
VRFocus will continue to bring you updates on Narcosis and other VR titles.
Last week Oculus Rift users got Rock Band, this week things are a bit more reserved. There is some good stuff to check out for a variety of genres though, so there’s something for pretty much everybody. Horror fans have the creepy deep sea thriller of Narcosis to look forward to, while whimsical sandbox fans can give Giant Cop a look. Amidst a handful of Gear VR titles and plenty of new Steam releases, it’s a solid week of new content.
Grab your coffee and donuts because you’ve got criminals to apprehend. But first, pick up that tiny little pedestrian and fling them into the ocean, before you pick up that car and throw it into the next intersection. At the core of it all you’re just a cop that’s supersized, but in reality you’ll spend more time goofing off than playing the otherwise rather boring game.
Recommendation: Wait for a price drop or discount. It’s not bad, but it lacks compelling reasons to keep playing after 5-10 minutes of being silly. Full review here.
Depending on how sensitive you are to VR sickness, you may want to stay far, far away from Stunt Kite Masters. It’s exactly what it sounds like in that you’ll embark on excursions while riding a kite across scenic beaches. It’s incredibly fast and silly, albeit a bit unpolished.
Recommendation: Pass for now while it’s a Gallery app, even if it’s a Rift port on Gear VR. Worth a look if it’s ever super cheap.
Dick Wilde, from PlayStack
Price: $16.99 (Rift)
For the most part Dick Wilde is just another wave shooter, but this time there are really bright and evocative colors to keep your eyes busy with unique weapons and intense action. It’s far from being taken seriously and is mostly just a silly way to shoot some bad guys and relive some stress.
Recommendation: If you like wave shooters, this is one of the most fresh takes in a while.
Narcosis, from Honor Code
Price: $19.99 (Rift)
Narcosis is a game about exploring the deep, dark depths of the ocean in a specialized diving suit. You’ll spend most of your time refilling oxygen tanks and piecing together a horrifying story amidst the loneliness of being trapped underwater.
Recommendation: It’s a bit short and rough around some edges, but it’s far from bad. Here’s our full review.
Ghost in the Shell, from Here Be Dragons
Price: Free (Rift and Gear VR)
Take an intimate look at the mind of Major Motoko Kusanagi as you explore her memories. The feature film, releasing this weekend, is about a cyber-enhanced soldier that sets out to hunt down criminals in a near-future setting.
Recommendation: It’s free and it’s quite impressive visually. Check it out.
Hidden Fortune, from Archiact
Price: $3.99 (Gear VR)
Hidden object puzzles are classics on the PC and they fit into the VR scene quite nicely. It mixes elements of object searching with adventure game design to create a unique spin on both genres.
Recommendation: Super simple but incredibly polished. Worth a look for fans of these types of games.
New Oculus Rift Releases on Steam
EXA: The Infinite Instrument, from Aesthetic Interactive, Zach Kinstner
Price: $14.99
EXA welcomes you to a new dimension of music creation with a versatile virtual instrument. The tool can take any form and produce any sound which you can playback in loops.
Recommendation: If you’re interested in making music, this is a must have program.
Moriarty: Endgame VR, from Transmedia Entertainment
Price: $7.99 (Currently Discounted)
Moriarty: End Game is a living virtual comic book where players are allowed to enter and experience the panels/scenes of the stories. The story takes you into a post-apocalyptic world where Moriarty takes on Sherlock Holmes in their final conflict.
Recommendation: Very intriguing style of storytelling. If you’re looking for a newer way to experience a narrative, grab it.
Downward Spiral: Prologue, from 3rd Eye Studios Oy LTD
Price: $8.99 (Currently Discounted)
Influenced by 70s sci-fi, Downward Spiral drops you into a zero-G journey. You can either work through the story solo or with a friend or engage in a deathmatch mode for up to 8 players. The game includes modes with or without room-scale and locomotion that promotes comfort.
Recommendation: Very short experience that includes PvP to add a bit more value. You may disappointed with the length, but this could be an investment in a really interesting series. Check out our impressions here.
Enigma Sphere: Enhanced Edition, from Yomuneco Inc.
Price: $14.39 (Currently Discounted)
This enhanced edition of Enigma Sphere includes new game modes and experiences as you become a superagent in this interesting world. You’ll solve puzzles, find hidden spheres, and destroy android life forms in the story mode. Then, you can play challenge, sphere attack, and other modes for a more casual experience.
Recommendation: There’s a lot of fun and value to be found in this dense package. Grab it.
Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter, from Croteam VR
Price: $39.99
The First Encounter is a full VR port of the 2009 HD remaster of the original Serious Sam game and comes with not only teleportation style movement but full locomotion for those that can handle it. Here you get the full single-player campaign, cooperative multiplayer, and competitive multiplayer in Serious Engine 2017. It was in Early Access before, but now this is the full release.
Recommendation: Absolutely must have for FPS fans. If you can handle full locomotion in VR, there’s even more value to be found. Here are our thoughts.
Planet Defender, from Fevolution Innovation Inc.
Price: $6.99
Planet Defender is a wave shooter where you have 150 seconds to take down as many creatures as possible in pursuit of a high score.
Recommendation: There are similar experiences with more to them at a similar price elsewhere. Pass on this.
Gem Hunter, from FoxLeap
Price: $7.99
Gem Hunter is an action platformer where you fly a hovercraft as you collect diamonds for the Fox King. You’ll also mine gems, fight off creatures, and customize your ship while working toward the highest score.
Recommendation: Very fun experience. The early access portion is only 4 stages, but the full game will have 12. Best to grab it now because the price will go up.
Twisted Arrow, from Phaser Lock Interactive
Price: $14.99 (Currently Discounted)
Twisted Arrow is an adrenaline packed archery shooter where you must fight through a city overrun with monsters of different types. From military enemies to monstrous ones, you’ll use a collection of different arrows and your shield to survive.
Ze VR takes the classic breakout style of gameplay and applies to it a virtual space. Shoot your balls and then deflect them with a shield or pulse to continue taking your targets out.
The virtual reality gaming scene in its first year went through a predictable obsession with outer space. The deep space isolation game ADR1FT was there for Rift buyers on day one, along with dog fighting flight combat game EVE: Valkyrie, and countless others ever since. Space represents the final frontier, the great unknown, and a technological destination for countless people. But that ignores the great, dark unknown right beneath our feet this very second: the ocean.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what terrifies me more: being trapped in the middle of space, in the vacuum, with nowhere to go and nothing to save me (much like a particular character near the end of space thriller Gravity) or being trapped in the middle of the sea, surrounded by equal parts claustrophobia and impossible depths. After playing Narcosis by Honor Code, a recently released VR horror game about the quiet and lonely depths of the ocean, I’m leaning towards the latter.
Narcosis, upon first glance, immediately conjures up feelings from several other games. It’s got the methodical ‘walking simulator’ vibe of titles like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, it has a horror setting mixed with the depths of the ocean, like SOMA, and it mixes it all together with a slow-burning narrative that loosely strings you along in VR, similar to ADR1FT.
Ultimately though, Narcosis has most in common with its VR cousin, ADR1FT, than either of the other two games I listed. You’ll spend a lot of time progressing from one spot to the next, refilling your oxygen tank, exploring caverns, and trying not to get mutilated by creepy giant spiders. However, instead of floating around in zero-G with a fancy space suit, you’ll wade through bubbles underwater as you boost across gaps and inch your way forward at a painful snail’s pace.
There are a lot of measures taken to reduce motion sickness in players (such as FOV dimming, the natural suit with a helmet framing, snap turn options, eliminating head bobbing, and plenty of other choices in the menus) but the utterly agonizing walking speed feels most like a way to artificially elongate a brief (approximately 2-3 hours) experience.
Gameplay feels like a shadow of what it could have been. There are solid ideas here with the inclusion of a thruster that lets you propel yourself forward with a burst of speed and flares that you can launch out to distract creatures. Well that and you can swing a knife. Ultimately none of that comes together in a way that makes you feel like you have any real control or power over your situation as the sluggish floatiness of everything muddles any real sense of excitement.
Sea creatures like grotesque fish and giant underwater spiders are sprinkled throughout the adventure. For the first 20 or so minutes I marveled at their presence as they scurried through the water and along rock faces. Seaweeds swayed as bubbles fluttered through the air and the overwhelming sense that I might die beneath the ocean started to press in on me. Luckily, it never got too intense to bear.
The narrative isn’t overly shocking or mind-blowing, but it’s still one of the strongest elements the game has going for it. The pacing is strong, voice acting is above average, and the occasional hallucinations add a nice touch of unpredictability to break up the monotony. The lack of other real characters to meet and interact with (for the most part) throughout the journey creates a very palpable sense of loneliness which, as it turns out, directly feeds back into the sense of deep sea isolation at the core of what makes Narcosis tick.
Final Score:6/10 – Decent
Once you get past the annoyances of the slow locomotion and uninspired gameplay, it really does start to feel like you’re there, underwater, trudging around trying to find your way. It’s a rare feat in these early years of VR to find the shine of something special, but Narcosis does have the glimmer when you stumble across those perfect moments. If you’re okay with a 2-3 hour adventure that’s a few jump scares spread out between searching for oxygen tanks with an intriguing narrative to guide you through, then Narcosis has enough going for it to be worth a look for some, but not all.
Narcosis is now available on Steam with support for both the HTC Vive, OSVR, and Oculus Rift, as well as the Oculus Home Store with Rift support. Narcosis is listed at $19.99 on both storefronts. It’s also playable outside of a headset in non-VR mode, but is best experienced in VR. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.
The long-awaited underwater survival horror title, Narcosis, is now available to purchase for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Set in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, Narcosis leaves the player stranded on the seafloor with little light source and few tools as they try to reach the surface before their oxygen depletes.
Narcosis throws the player into high-stress situations with abandon, accelerating oxygen intake, distorting sight, sound, space and time. Often equipped with only a knife, flashlight and flares, players will face unwelcoming flora and fauna deep under the sea as they learn about true primal fear and human limits.
VRFocus has been hands-on with Narcosis on a number of occasions, stating in a preview that it has the power to ‘prove that intrigue is as powerful a tool as action in VR videogames’.
According to developer Honor Code, Inc., Narcosis was; “First conceived as a student project, this first-person survival story unfolds from inside a “walking coffin” – a half-ton, high-tech deep-sea dive suit – following an industrial catastrophe. Influenced and inspired by a growing appetite for unconventional horror and narrative-driven games, Narcosis is rooted in reality, but steeped in the surreal.”
Narcosis is now available to purchase for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive via Steam, and on the Oculus Store. Franco-Californian Honor Code, Inc. will also launch an Xbox One edition of the videogame next month, and VRFocus will keep you updated with all the latest VR titles from the development studio.
Narcosis is one of those VR games that I’ve been writing about pretty much as long as I’ve been writing about VR itself (just over three years). In fact, the survival horror game made its debut at the 2014 Game Developers Conference (GDC). A few weeks on from GDC 2017 wrapping up, we finally have a release date for the game.
Developer Honor Code this week announced that Narcosis finally launches on March 28th with support for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. It’s also coming to Microsoft’s Xbox One which doesn’t support VR, at least not yet. You can check out the latest trailer for the title below.
Narcosis invokes a bit of BioShock with its moody deep sea atmosphere, though it leans more on the survival horror side than 2K’s shooter masterpiece. Your character finds themselves stranded on the seafloor and must manage oxygen supplies as they trek through the rusty remains of a science facility. As the game progresses the protagonist begins to struggle with their sanity and starts to question what’s real and what’s not, struggling with horrific visions.
This isn’t just a horror game of show and tell, though, as you’ll also have to fight off threats with a knife.
Being that the game started development so long ago, this is one of the rare first-person Rift and Vive titles played with a gamepad. It also started life as a student project, quickly turning into something that’s under development in both France and California with a team that’s past credits include work on series like Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, and Assassin’s Creed.
We have high hopes for Narcosis, then. We’ll see if it lives up to them in a few weeks’ time.
Developer Honor Code have announced the launch date of underwater virtual reality (VR) experienceNarcosis for Oculus Store, Steam and Xbox One as well as revealing a new trailer.
Narcosis gameplay involves the player being trapped in a heavy, bulky deep-sea diving suit following an engineering disaster that has stranded them underwater. The player must carefully manage their oxygen as they explore the ruins of an underwater base and keep an eye out for the typical dangers you would expect from being underwater, such as hostile sea-life.
Honor Code are aiming for a tense, atmospheric experience, calling on elements from games such as Dead Space and Bioshock. A knife, flashlight and a few flares are all the player has to hand to help them survive the dangers around them, and Honor Code have implemented a system where if the player-character gets into high-stress situations, their oxygen intake increases and their perceptions begin to distort as the oxygen level begins to dip dangerously low.
Narcosis has no villain as such, the player is simply pitted against the environment, facing isolation and their own fears in a way only possible through the immersion of VR.
The release date has been confirmed as 28th March, 2017. A price point has not yet been established. The VR version will be compatible with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. You can visit the Steam page for further details.
You can watch the Narcosis trailer below.
VRFocus will bring you further updates on Narcosis as they become available.
The best news for Oculus Rift owners though must surely though be the newly announced Halloween sale which has, for the second year in a row, now gone live on the Oculus Store. Seventeen Oculus Rift along with sixteen Samsung Gear VR videogames and experiences have been reduced in price for a limited time. The full list is below.
