Joy Way confirmed that multiplayer is coming to Stride for Quest and PC VR via Steam in June, with more details to come soon.
The developers announced the news via Reddit, accompanied by a new trailer showcasing the multiplayer mode in action.
As you can see in the trailer embedded above, you’ll be able to play with a number of different players, performing parkour moves across various maps. You’ll also seemingly be able to choose from a number of different outfits for your avatar and interact with other players in some non-parkour capacities.
In a comment on Reddit, Joy Way said it will share more details on the mode next week. There’s no details on multiplayer launch date for PSVR yet, with the launch next month seemingly targeting PC via Steam and Quest platforms only. It’s unclear whether the Oculus Store release for PC VR will also receive the multiplayer update in June as well.
Multiplayer has been a long time coming for Stride. Joy Way first began testing it in Alpha on PC almost a year ago, in June 2021, with plans to later bring the mode to all platforms. That test involved a mode called ‘Zombie Horde‘, which was essentially a version of tag where a group of players were cast as survivors and another group as zombies. The latter have to chase and tag the former — the last survivor standing was the winner of the round.
Just earlier this month, Stride was restored to the Quest store after it was made unavailable for over a month, as part of a move from Meta to unlist apps with “financial entities” based in Russia. You can find more details on that story here.
Painting VR added new in-game tutorials and an expo mode this week in its latest update.
After launch last month, this minor update adds some new features that help you display your artwork and get new users comfortable with all the mechanics.
The new in-game tutorials run through the basics, allowing you to properly understand the fundamentals like brush settings, mixing colors, using reference images and more.
As you can see in the video above, expo mode is the other big addition, which lets you go through your portfolio and select artworks to hang on the walls around you. You can position your art however you want, and even scale them to be bigger or smaller. Once you’re happy, lock it in place and admire the work hanging in your own personal gallery.
There’s more on the horizon too. Multiplayer support should still be on the way to paint in VR with friends, but hopefully you’ll also be able to give them a tour of your exhibit space and the artwork hanging in your virtual warehouse as well.
First Person Tennis, a tennis simulator, is coming to the Oculus Store for Meta Quest 2 (formerly Oculus Quest) next month.
While First Person Tennis debuted on App Lab last year it’s now been approved for a full release on Quest and listed as coming soon on the store for a June 2 release. For those with PC VR setups, it’s already available on Steam with support for all major headsets.
On the Quest platform, the game will support both the original headset and Quest 2, with arcade and simulation modes and online multiplayer. There’s multiple locomotion options — teleport, run in place, sliding run — and you’ll be able to play across seven different court surfaces and 13 tournaments, competing on global leaderboards. You can check out some gameplay in the mixed reality trailer embedded above.
Each week we will be taking a look at some of the upcoming videogames, demos and unique experiences available through Oculus App Lab for the Meta Quest headsets. Many of these videogames come in varying states of completion, so each title is subject to change.
This week we’re feeding vegetables and racing at speed!
Cookie Gardening Demo
I’m not entirely sure why anthropomorphic vegetables would want to eat chocolate chip cookies, but I feel like if I focus too hard on this the questions would continue spiralling out of control. Let’s just accept it. In Cookie Gardening you sit in a garden with lots of cute vegetables scurrying around; broccoli, potatoes, carrots and many more are darting around and it’s your job to catch them, put them in a basket and sell them.
How do you catch them? Easy, you drop cookies nearby and wait until they dash in before you snag them and throw them in the basket. I’d love to tell you what the point is, but I have no clue, and I’m not sure it even matters. After a successful hunt in the garden, you can head over to a shop to spend your hard-earned gold on upgrades, more bait cookies and new variants of the vegetables.
One of the first upgrades you’ll buy is an office, where a fussy VEGETABLE gives you particular tasks to earn bonus rewards. For example, collecting three types of potato rewards some extra gold.
Due to the very loose reasons to be in the garden hunting vegetables, and the ease with which the game plays, this would be ideal for a first VR game for kids. You don’t have to move around in reality, the veggies are easy to catch, everything is colourful and cute and the repetitive nature of the gameplay would attract children over adults. It’s a solid demo and a must-try for families with a Quest headset.
Omega Pilot
Omega Pilot uses asynchronous multiplayer to pit you against players from around the world (though real-time multiplayer is on the way) and I’m glad that real people didn’t have to witness me pilot my hovercraft into the walls. And floor. Or barrel roll it upside-down and barely bring it back to its correct position. I’m a terrible Omega Pilot.
Taking its cues from the Wipeout franchise – high-speed, angular, hovering vehicles – I found myself a pilot desperately trying to grasp control of the ship. Oddly, Omega Pilot has chosen to only use motion controls to steer the craft and they’re very sensitive. Holding the grip button and rotating your hand will roll the vehicle, and tilting it up and down will change the nose height. This all happens while holding the trigger to accelerate. This is all on the right controller, with the left taking care of button presses for a turbo boost and a slow-motion ability.
By the end of my first race, I felt like I’d taken an unfortunate tumble in a washing machine. My vehicle was spinning, bumbling and what I can only call, careening, in every direction except the one I wanted. At points my vehicle was trying to impale itself nose-first into the ground, other times I would head into a corner feeling as if I was at the perfect angle only to run straight into a wall.
By the end of my first session I felt nauseous and a bit frustrated. Motion controls are great when done well and for many, these are probably fine, but leaving out stick movement feels like a misstep. In a racing world where sometimes up can become down swiftly, the addition of balancing motion controls feels a little overwhelming. I can imagine that for many, Omega Pilot would feel ‘too much’ and a little alienating.
Zenith revealed a new teaser for its next update, promising ‘dozens of hours’ of new content and six instanced dungeons.
Content patch 1.1 will be the first major update for VR MMO Zenith: The Lost City, which launched back in January for PC VR, Quest and PSVR. Since a hugely successful launch, a lot has happened — the studio behind the title Ramen VR raised an additional $35 million in a funding round, while also announcing major plans for ongoing updates that would add new content to the game.
Zenith: The Celestial Throne Update Teaser Trailer
The studio looks set to deliver on the second part of that promise very soon, with six brand new instanced dungeons arriving in update 1.1, which you can catch a glimpse of in the short teaser trailer embedded above.
It’s only a short bit of footage for now, but there’ll hopefully be more to come very soon. A tweet from the Zenith account says the dungeons are “filled with interactive puzzles, adversaries, and of course – lots of LOOT!” If we were Zenith fans looking for more details, we’d be keeping an eye out on any upcoming VR showcases, if you know what we mean…
Beyond the 1.1 update, there’s still more plans and lots to come for Zenith. We know that the upcoming third class, the Cyber Ninja, will be stealth-focused and use a ranged bow as its weapon.
With regular updates, DLC releases and changes to the game since launch, Beat Saber remains VR’s poster child. Read on for our updated Beat Saber review for Quest 2, PSVR and PC VR.
Years of Dominance
It’s hard to understate Beat Saber’s influence on the VR industry. It was one of the earliest success stories in VR gaming and became a catalyst for the now-oversaturated market of VR rhythm games. After launch in 2018, it catapulted itself into the spotlight as the must-have VR game for any headset owner and became one of the only VR-exclusive titles to gain brand recognition in the wider gaming industry. As starting points go, it was a good place to be in.
Perhaps more amazing is that in 2022, four years post-release, Beat Saber remains dominant as ever and has never properly faded from the zeitgeist. Meta acquired the studio behind the game, Beat Games, in 2018, but Beat Saber remains available on almost every major VR headset – Meta-owned or otherwise. It consistently holds a near-unbeatable position around the top of most VR store charts, as it has done for several consecutive years now. With consistent free updates and paid DLC releases, there’s now a wealth of content to work through as well.
Beat Saber 2022 Review – The Facts
Platforms: Oculus Quest, Quest 2, PC VR, PSVR Release Date: Out Now Developer: Beat Games, Meta Price: $29.99
Even the skeptics would have to admit that Beat Saber is still the biggestVR game in terms of availability, omnipresence and recognition, especially with more casual audiences. But a lot has changed since 2018 – not just advancements in hardware, but also our understanding of solid VR design principles.
The standard is higher than ever, so how well does Beat Saber hold up?
Surprisingly well, is the answer. But before getting into the nitty gritty, let’s cover the basics.
Easy to Understand, Hard to Master
Beat Saber is a VR rhythm game with an easily-understood core concept. Set to music, the player will use two ‘lightsabers’ – one red and one blue, by default – to slice through blocks as they fly through space towards the player. The colour of the blocks – red or blue – correspond to which lightsaber to use, while directional arrows on each indicate whether you should slice up, down, left, right or even diagonally. If you’re confused, think Fruit Ninja… but with music. In VR.
The blocks are aligned to the rhythm of the music – the more on-time and accurately you slice, the higher your score. Slicing consecutive blocks without mistakes builds combos. Missing blocks or making mistakes resets your combo and can stack up to result in a level failure.
There’s other twists as well – walls you have to avoid, bombs you can’t hit, double blocks or cross-armed slices – but overall it’s a conceptually simple game with a very high skill ceiling. Even though the upper echelon of players compete at an insanely high level, everyone can play Beat Saber – the large variety of music, modes and difficulty levels means it’s enjoyable for newcomers and experts alike.
Old Genre, New Platform, Same Feeling
Rhythm games are a popular gaming genre, no matter the platform. But not only does Beat Saber execute the rhythm game tropes well, it also exhibits an expert understanding of what makes a fantastic VR experience – especially impressive for 2018.
Beat Saber’s gameplay isn’t just addictive, it’s tactile. Every move you make lines up perfectly with your expectation for how that action should feel. In other games, actions don’t always align with the virtual world, like putting your hand up against a virtual wall only to realize that your physical hand falls through it.
There’s no such disconnect in Beat Saber. There’s cohesion and responsiveness between your actions in real life and VR, because slicing blocks is designed as an inherently weightless action. Your brain never expects feedback from your actions, so everything just feels right.
This unsolved hardware problem – generating realistic feedback and resistance against actions – is likely to stick around for quite a while. By avoiding the problem entirely, Beat Saber has positioned itself as a timeless experience, at least for the foreseeable future. Even across generations of different hardware, Beat Saber feels incredibly satisfying to play – just as much now as it did in 2018.
Games Modes, Accessibility, Modifiers
Compared to launch, there’s now a lot more on offer in Beat Saber as well. The music library has been massively expanded (more on that later), but there’s also several different game modes to keep you entertained.
The classic mode is Solo, the stock-standard high score mode that lets you play through any track you like, with many optional modifier options. There’s also now a multiplayer mode, which lets up to five players compete against each other for a high score, either in public or private lobbies.
A campaign mode does technically exist, but feels neglected and overdue for a complete overhaul – it’s not worth your time over Solo mode. An upgraded campaign with better structure and some form of progression might be interesting (and perhaps is on the way), but the fairly neglected state of the existing campaign isn’t exactly a huge loss.
Accessibility options and gameplay modifiers are abound in Beat Saber, which let you tailor the game to your needs and wants. You can enable different options to make the game easier, more accessible, harder or just completely different, adding a lot of depth for people who want to mix up gameplay or cater to specific needs.
There’s also special 360 and 90 degree levels that see you turn on the spot as blocks come from different directions – a fun gimmick, but nothing mind-blowing.
An Expansive Library
Given how big the library has grown since launch, Beat Saber’s music selection should have something for everyone by now, provided you’re willing to pay extra.
Humble beginnings saw only a few original electronic tracks included at launch, composed by Beat Games Co-Founder Jaroslav Beck. New free tracks and additional original music from Beck still arrive in updates from time to time, but it’s the paid DLC releases that offer the most exciting selections, featuring some prominent and legendary artists – Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy, BTS, Green Day, Lady Gaga, Panic! At The Disco, Billie Eilish, Imagine Dragons and Skrillex, to name a few.
Each pack brings with it a unique feel, perfectly crafted to capture the spirit of the featured artist. It makes each pack feel truly hand-crafted and brings much-needed variety across the library. The only downside for new players will be the cost – when you add DLC to the cost of the base game, things could start to get a bit pricey.
However, the expansion of Beat Saber’s music selection has also had an effect on consistency. The skill ceiling of Beat Saber players has increased dramatically in the last few years, as has the style and variety of track mapping. While the developers have evolved the game’s mapping, it’s now clear that the difficult labels – Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert, Expert+ – can mean completely different things from one track to another. What was considered Expert in 2018, for example, feels like a walk in the park compared to an Expert map released in 2022.
Room for Improvement
Outside of the actual gameplay, parts of Beat Saber’s user experience are starting to show their age. The entire menu system – large, flat and floating panels, with a point-and-click cursor attached to each controller – might have been serviceable in 2018, but now feels clunky and unintuitive. There’s been lots of innovation in intuitive user experience in virtual reality, but Beat Saber has not kept pace.
The same can be said for the game’s visuals. While overall the game looks great on most platforms, it also doesn’t feel like the best possible visual presentation, especially on Quest hardware. Other releases have really pushed Quest’s standalone hardware to the limit, delivering stunning visuals. It’s hard to believe Beat Saber couldn’t do a bit more to impress in this day and age.
Admittedly, the newer DLC and OST releases feature environments that are way more visually interesting. But if anything, this only contributes to the aforementioned feeling of consistency – some levels look breathtaking, while others now look incredibly dated and barebones.
All of these minor issues are a result of the piecemeal approach taken by Beat Games, adding and changing elements slowly but consistently, bit by bit. While it’s an approach that has served Beat Saber well until now, it’s also segmenting the game and beginning to make it feel less like one cohesive package.
It would be nice to see this addressed, preferably in one big drastic update. Even a full on sequel – Beat Saber 2 – might be the best option, providing a polished and ground-up rework of the core game, while introducing some new elements and transitioning existing players over with legacy map and DLC support.
Beat Saber Review 2022 – Final Verdict
For any new headset owner, Beat Saber remains an essential purchase. Even if the genre is not traditionally your style, the game holds such an esteemed place in VR history and remains completely relevant to modern audiences, exemplifying sublime gameplay that puts intelligent VR design first.
Yes, parts of the experience are starting to feel ever so slightly outdated, but those are very minor gripes for what is otherwise a seminal VR game. Nothing has yet to penetrate the virtual reality zeitgeist quite like Beat Saber. If you have a headset, you have to try it. It’s as simple as that.
UploadVR recently changed its review guidelines, and this is one of our new Essential review labels. You can read more about our review guidelines here.
This review was conducted primarily on the Quest 2 version of the game, but applies to all platforms. What did you make of our Beat Saber review? Let us know in the comments below!
The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort is a stunning course that gives players an expansive panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean, while also providing players with tough wind conditions for the same reason.
From May 26, the course will be available to Quest 2 players on GOLF+, allowing them to experience the iconic course in VR for the first time, as pictured below.
It’s not clear yet whether the Kiawah Island course will be a free or paid release. One of the game’s other real world courses, Wolf Creek in Nevada, released as paid DLC for $7.99, so there’s a fair chance that the Kiawah Island release will follow suit.
While the full courses were a welcome addition, they are sadly not supported on the original Quest — those players can enjoy the putting and driving ranges, but not full courses. This means the upcoming Kiawah Island release will also only be available on Quest 2 headsets.
Each week we will be taking a look at some of the upcoming videogames, demos and unique experiences available through Oculus App Lab for the Meta Quest headsets. Many of these videogames come in varying states of completion, so each title is subject to change.
This week we’re solving puzzles and causing carnage!
Unblocking Demo
To say Unblocking is a Tetris-style clone does it a bit of a disservice. There are definitely Tetris elements at play; you’re presented with Tetris shapes and you must use them to solve puzzles or clear lines from a board. However, they don’t fall from the sky, they’re selected purposely.
In the puzzle mode, you’re tasked with clearing all of the blocks from the playing area. To do this, you must select a shape and overlap it against the blocks, making them disappear. Sometimes it’s as simple as using a cross over a cross-shape, other times you must clear one shape in order for the blocks above them to fall and create a new shape to erase.
In the arcade mode, things feel a bit more Tetris-y. Only again, you’re placing the blocks wherever you like. Here you are presented with four shapes, of different colours and the goal is to create horizontal lines to erase those blocks. You can chop and change the shapes and colours you place in the hopes of creating the perfect lines, but often you’ll need to overlap colours, blocking progress.
Unblocking is a devious little puzzler. On the surface, it appears simple, and the opening puzzle levels are exactly that. However, as you progress things become rather taxing. Sadly, as this is only a demo, there’s not much to experience, but what’s here is certainly an enticing opportunity for the developers to bring us a great puzzle game. The virtual reality doesn’t lend much to the game beyond playing in a fancy room, but it’s hard to complain when the puzzling is as good as this.
No More Rainbows Beta
I’m going to get this out of the way. I love this game.
At first, when No More Rainbows informed me I would need to use my arms to scoot along the floor I rolled my eyes and gave a sigh of exasperation. So many of the App Lab games recently have used the same technique. Whether you’re pretending to be a baby, a squid or a dog, there’s a game that wants to mimic crawling forward, and so far, I’ve hated each one.
But this? This works. You play as a snarling gorilla monster who seemingly hates happiness (much like myself). You wake up, smash the alarm clock and discover the land has been taken over by unicorns, fruity cute gumballs and bright colours. The tutorial tells you that you can take small leaps forward by swinging your arms. Then, if you do that with more force, you’ll kind of ‘Incredible Hulk leap’ all over the place.
What transpires from here is a literal assault on joy. You get to explore these bubblegum worlds leaping around, climbing vertical surfaces, bounding over bottomless chasms to smash anything cute you can see. Busting open the gumball creatures causes their soul to vanish inside of you, which then opens new worlds for more smashing.
I played this on a day where I was a little aggravated, which may have helped. However, the locomotion controls and the concept itself would have stood out to me anyway. Who doesn’t want to smash the smug happiness out of something so saccharine? As with Unblocking above, this is only a demo/beta, but it’s a generous one. Still, I reached the end and found myself craving more. I’ve never felt so happy destroying the happiness of others.
Holy hell, Little Cities has broken into the top 10 best-selling games on the @MetaQuestVR! It only launched last week…
You really need to give yourselves a round of applause @PurpleYonder People seem to be really loving our humble little city creator pic.twitter.com/1Y9z6ihLkW
— Jimmy Bowers @ nDreams (@jimmysbowers) May 19, 2022
The list of top sellers on Quest remains pretty stable a lot of the time. Massively popular games like Beat Saber, Job Simulator, Superhot, Onwards, Population: One and Saints & Sinners are almost always featured in the top ten, with room for only a few others to rotate in and out if they sell enough.
For Little Cities to make it onto the top of the list, even for a brief moment, should signal that it’s selling quite well at the moment compared to other staple titles.
Demonic Trials, a new event coming to In Death: Unchained, will mix up the core gameplay over the course of three weeks, starting from May 24.
The event will introduce three ‘Demonic Sigils’, one for each week, which will “completely change all of the known game rules and set brand new goals for the players.” Interestingly, the event will also let players choose from all of the chapters and environments featured in the main game, allowing those who have never progressed to later stages of the main campaign to experience some of the later environments.
Unlike other In Death events, Demonic Trials is not a tournament and players won’t compete against each other — instead, everyone will be working together to earn ‘Legend Points’ and rewards. You won’t be rewarded on your score, but on the collective effort from all players across runs in the event.
Developers Superbright do warn that this event will be more demanding than the main game, with “more challenging rules and requirements for ending the run and killing enemies.”
This event is the latest in a string of similar limited-time challenges and post-launch updates that Superbright have brought to In Death: Unchained since release. We were big fans of the game in our review written at the time of its Quest release in mid-2020, but since then there’s been loads of new content and visual improvements to enhance the experience for new and existing players.
People seem to be really loving our humble little city creator 
