Take-two Interactive, parent company of Rockstar Games, revealed in their earnings call that L.A Noire: The VR Case Files is actually set to release in December and not on November 14th as previously mentioned.
The VR game, which targets HTC Vive, delivers seven of the original, self-contained cases from the hit neo-noir action-adventure game L.A. Noire (2011).
As first reported by IGN, L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files was supposed to come alongside versions of of L.A. Noire for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One—all set to release on November 14th. It wasn’t until Rockstar’s parent company Take-two Interactive published their quarterly earnings report recently that it was revealed the special VR version would lag by a few weeks, giving it an indeterminate December launch date.
Announced that new versions of the blockbuster detective thriller, L.A. Noire, are scheduled to release on November 14, 2017 for Nintendo Switch™, PlayStation®4 and Xbox One. These new versions include the original L.A. Noire game plus all of its additional downloadable content, with specific enhancements tailored to the unique capabilities of each platform.
Following these in December, 2017, comes LA Noire: The VR Case Files, featuring seven select cases from the original game rebuilt specifically for a virtual reality experience on the HTC VIVE™ system
LA Noire: The VR Case Files wasfirst announced back in September, causing some fanfare with the possibility of being able to experience the game’s highly-convincing character animations face-to-face, albeit only through a few of the game’s iconic cases.
We’ll be updating this article once a solid launch date is established, so check back soon.
Killing Floor: Incursion (2017),Tripwire Interactive’s latest entry into the zombie-splattering co-op shooter genre, was supposed to arrive on SteamVR-compatible headsets last week. It’s available on Steam starting today for $40.
Update (11/14/17): Even though it launches today, it appears the game isn’t live just yet and still available for pre-order at 15% off. It won’t last for long, so have at it before it reverts to its normal launch price.
Original article (11/08/17): Citing concerns surrounding new features like Holdout mode, an endless high score challenge, Tripwire says the game will be delayed by a week so the developers can give everything an extra check.
image courtesy Tripwire Interactive
Killing Floor: Incursion was once thought to be an Oculus exclusive, thanks to last year’s initial announcement that carried no mention of future support for other VR platforms. Now on Steam, the game is set to support both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (with Touch). For wayward platform buddies looking to get in on cross-play co-op between Oculus Home versions and Steam-purchased versions, there’s some bad news:
Jared Creasy, Community Manager for Tripwire Interactive told Tom’s Hardware“[i]t will be important to note that the Oculus version and Steam versions will NOT be able to matchmake with each other due to the different backends being used,” said Jared Creasy, Community Manager for Tripwire Interactive.
Here’s the devs explaination, posted on the studio’s blog.
Hello everyone,
Many of you have noticed that the Steam release date for Killing Floor: Incursion has changed from today to November 14th. We would like to confirm this change and provide additional information about what is happening.
As Incursion proceeded towards the finish line for this major milestone (with the new game mode – Holdout, community requested features, and a new platform release as well) it became apparent that we needed to take a bit more time to get things right. What this means is that the team is taking an extra week to look over all these items to make sure they are up to a standard that not only we are happy with, but we believe you the fans will be happy with as well.
We are very excited to bring the game to Steam and get the new content and features into the hands of new and existing fans as quickly as we can. We strongly believe this is the best move for the game (and its fans) and we thank you for your understanding and patience.
Killing Floor: Incursion is currently 15% off on Oculus Home, and will launch with a 15 % off price on Steam November 14th.
Megaton Rainfall (2017) for SteamVR headsets isn’t here yet, and according to Pentadimensional Games, it won’t be until sometime in 2018.
The superhero game that lets you become an indestructible, interdimensional superbeing launched on PSVR with the understanding that it would be a timed exclusive. Upon seeing a recent update to the Steam page, which appended a new launch date of November 17th, it was thought that PSVR exclusivity was coming to a quick end. Unfortunately for owners with SteamVR-compatible headsets, VR support isn’t a part of the November 17th launch date and won’t arrive until later in 2018.
Main developer Alfonso del Cerro confirmed it with Road to VR earlier today.
No, we've got a temporal VR-exclusivity deal with Sony. More platforms coming next year.
As the result of 5 years of hard work by del Cerro, Megaton Rainfall does a lot for such a modest title. Currently sitting at a strong [4.5/5] on PSN, it’s poised to offer a quick but memorable experience that lets you zip around the world, destroying targets that should (and shouldn’t) be obliterated.
The undeniably stylish SUPERHYPERCUBE (2016)—which feels a bit like Tetris reimagined for virtual reality—initially launched as a PlayStation VR exclusive. Now, just over a year later, the game is coming to Steam for the HTC Vive this week. As with most SteamVR games, the title should technically support the Oculus Rift too, but, apparently related to developer KOKOROMI’s 2016 boycott of Oculus, the studio isn’t guaranteeing the game will work with headsets other than the Vive.
SuperHyperCube will launch on Steam this Tuesday, November 7th. It’s also getting a permanent price cut to $15, down from the $30 launch price (the price cut will also come to the PlayStation Store.
The game challenges players’ spatial reasoning by offering up an object made of cubes arranged into arbitrary shapes and a wall with a cut-out that the object must pass through. The object can fit through the cut-out but only in the correct orientation, which players can change by rotating among two axes using a controller. Each time you succeed in fitting the object through the wall, more cubes are added, creating an ever increasing level of difficulty as the shape becomes mo complex.
The PSVR version, which is played with a gamepad, holds a respectable 4 out of 5 star rating on the PlayStation store. It isn’t clear if the Steam version will work with the Vive’s controllers or if players will need to use a traditional gamepad (we’ve reached out for clarification). Even if it does work with the Vive controllers, the game’s gameplay doesn’t appear to be adapted for motion input.
SuperHyperCube isn’t built designed for motion input or room-scale play, and is in fact probably best played as a seated game. Since the Vive is a room-scale system out of the box, it isn’t clear how the title will fare on Steam where VR players are usually seeking experiences that make effective use of the Vive’s controllers and the available tracking space.
Image courtesy KOKOROMI
And what of Rift support? SteamVR and OpenVR effectively support the Rift by default, but KOKORMI says that “support is not guaranteed or provided for [non-Vive] PC headsets.” It isn’t clear if the studio has done anything to specifically block the Rift from working with the title but it seems unlikely that they’ve spent any time making sure controls work properly on the Rift (though if it’s playable with a gamepad there’s really not much that would need to be done).
In a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform.
In light of this, we will not be pursuing Oculus support for our upcoming VR release, SUPERHYPERCUBE.
And though Luckey was eventually ousted from Oculus, it would seem that KOKOROMI is sticking by their decision to boycott the company over his actions. We’ve reached out to the studio to confirm whether or not the boycott is the reason for the stated lack of support for headsets other than the Vive. We’ll have to wait for the game’s launch to see whether or not the Rift will work properly with SuperHyperCube.
It was announced earlier this week that Survios’ latest game, Sprint Vector, is coming to PlayStation VR in Q1 2018. I was initially worried that PSVR’s limited tracking would hamper the game’s totally awesome ‘Fluid Locomotion’ system, but after watching one of the studio’s talented devs show off his skills, it looks like the system can work great on PSVR too.
I’ve not hidden my praise for Survios’ new Fluid Locomotion system, which enables high-speed, immersive movement across vast distances without nausea. I’m convinced that when Sprint Vector finally hits the streets, we’re going to see a lot more people working on this sort of movement in VR. So it’s great to see that the unique locomotion system can work on PSVR too.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. After trying Sprint Vector on PSVR for myself, I got to see one of Survios’ top internal players show me how things are really done, demonstrating a lot of high-flying shortcuts and scoring a time that blew mine away. It’s clear from his performance that the game is being built with a high skill ceiling in mind, offering faster paths for players who put the time into seeking out optimal routes.
Sprint Vector is due out for Vive, Rift, and PlayStation VR in Q1 2018, though it isn’t yet clear if the PSVR version will offer cross-play with the Rift & Vive versions.
Described as an “action-puzzle adventure game”, Overturn’s puzzle elements play a secondary role; the game weighs heavily on fast, first-person action, combining projectile weapons and frantic melee combat with fists, shields, and blades. Overturn is available now on Steam for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift; it is also in development for PSVR.
Waking up in a laboratory complex, you’re immediately introduced to the game’s narrative design, which is text-based, describing your character’s thoughts in the centre of your vision. It’s a welcome choice in this case, as even the best voice talent would struggle to deliver this questionable script in a convincing manner. Once you begin exploring the laboratory, you’ll find the text ‘checkpoints’ already laid out across the level—similar in appearance to Valve’s ‘developer commentary’ text bubbles—hardly conducive to maintaining immersion.
Image courtesy YJM Games
Floating text aside, Overturn delivers a sharp presentation, with intuitive menu systems, useful tips placed logically in the game world, and slick environments, lighting, and effects. Production values aren’t sky-high, but there are atmospheric moments, particularly when it goes dark and you’re given a flashlight (I just wish it could be held it in both orientations), and levels have been designed intelligently to play to the strengths of VR. The anime-style character design might not be to all tastes, but it is less exaggerated than the work-in-progress footage (and the studio’s previous title that appears to be based in the same universe, Smashing The Battle VR) and works well with the overall aesthetic.
VR FPS locomotion enthusiasts will be pleased to hear the game offers both freeform ‘traditional’ movement input for those who want to glide around smoothly, and teleporting with snap turning for those susceptible to VR sickness. The teleport option is well-implemented, limiting the jump distance so you can’t ‘cheat’ the system too much, and the fuzzy visual blur on each transition is surprisingly effective. Snap turning is also welcome, but the rotation might benefit from being even faster, if not instant.
Image courtesy YJM Games
Overturn’s straightforward level progression is well-judged in terms of pacing, introducing the player to melee combat with fists on a few basic enemy types, before offering grenades and laser weapons. The blocking system works well enough, bringing your hands together to defend as you would in boxing, but the actual punching—and eventually blade-swinging—can quickly regress into wild hand-flailing, particularly on ‘Easy’. ‘Normal’ difficulty is challenging enough to warrant a more deliberate approach at times, but there is a distinct lack of nuance to the close-quarters combat, with little in the way of impact animation. Ranged weapons fare much better, and the grenade-throwing physics are intuitive.
Image courtesy YJM Games
Once you meet Magi, a mysterious girl with incredible powers, the game steps up several notches, and combat becomes more frantic and varied. Magi follows you around, offering a range of power-ups including ‘Time Slow’; as always, slow motion combat is endlessly enjoyable in VR. She can also craft health packs, which you consume by holding them up to your face, and you need to maintain her energy and health too. Battle arenas begin to introduce cover, which, as with all VR FPS games, becomes useful in a more organic way than traditional cover mechanics played on a flat display, as players will naturally gravitate to walls to physically hide/duck behind.
Image courtesy YJM Games
Enemy types and boss battles are also varied, and the game introduces new weapons and mechanics at an enjoyable pace. Since its recent launch on Steam, Overturn has grappled with enemy balancing, with the ‘Normal’ mode being rather too difficult at times. After a few rounds of updates, the game is in a better place, while still offering a serious challenge. There isn’t a stand-out feature, and its presentation is dripping with clichés, but Overturn is weirdly compelling enough to retain my attention.
Despite the news that CCP Games is shelving VR for the time being, the company promises that their last title Sparc will not only go on, but CCP is carrying through with plans to launch the game on both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Update (11/17/17): ‘Sparc’ is now available on Steam for Vive and Rift, and Oculus Home for Rift. Both stores are selling for $20, and promise cross-play support. Besides support for more headsets, no additional content has been added. Considering CCP has closed its Atlanta studio, it’s likely ‘Sparc’ will receive minimal support moving forward.
Original article (11/02/17): Launched initially back at the end of August for PSVR, Sparc is a 1v1 VR sport from CCP Games, the company behind EVE: Valkyrie and others. The company today announced that the game will launch on November 16th for both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (via Steam and the Oculus store), priced at $20. Cross-play will be supported across all three platforms, allowing Rift, Vive, and PSVR players to compete head to head.
CCP designed Sparc as a VR sport where players face off in 1v1 arenas, attempting to strike their opponent (or score a goal) with their orb, while simultaneously defending their own goal and dodging or deflecting the opposing orb. Visually it’s a good looking game with some cool avatar customization, but in my hands-on with the PSVR version, the system’s controller tracking sometimes made me feel like I wasn’t able to be as precise as I would have liked:
As you can imagine, with PSVR’s less-than-stellar tracking, having your tracking camera set up just right is important to success in Sparc; you’ll want to make sure your arms don’t exit the tracking volume when at their maximum extension in all directions. It wasn’t until I tweaked my own setup (and a fair amount of practice) that I felt like I was able to achieve reasonably accurate throws. CCP has lathered on a fair amount of aim assist to help with this (though it is reduced in the ‘Advanced’ game mode which is designed for greater levels of competition).
It remains to be seen if the more precise tracking of the Vive and Rift controllers will translate to improved throwing accuracy, and whether or not the studio is tweaking the aim assist to compensate for differences in tracking performance. For a competitive game especially, it would be unfortunate for the platforms not to be well balanced. With the game launching in two weeks, it won’t be long before we know the answers to those questions.
IMAX and Ubisoft today announced that a special edition of Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2017), Ubisoft’s co-op multiplayer set aboard a Federation vessel, is launching for an exclusive run in IMAX VR centers worldwide.
Created by Ubisoft’s Red Storm Entertainment, the new edition was “re-designed and optimized” for IMAX VR centers, the company’s dedicated out-of-home VR facilities, and contains a mission called Rescue at Perseph.
With up to four people per ‘pod’, the new mission puts players at the game’s familiar consoles set aboard the U.S.S. Aegis, and tasks the crew with rescuing a stranded group of Vulcan scientists escaping from a damaged space station. Klingon interference is mostly assured, because let’s face it, they aren’t known for doing the whole “peace” thing.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew – Rescue at Persephis is now available at the IMAX VR center in Los Angeles, but will be heading to the other two active locations in New York and Shanghai sometime soon. Upcoming centers are also set to open in the UK, Toronto, and other locations worldwide in the coming months.
Showings are blocked out in 20-minute intervals and are by reservation only. A minimum of 2 players is required (max 4), and end up costing $15 per person.
The LA location also hosts other VR experiences including Raw Data (2017), Eagle Flight (2016), John Wick Chronicles (2017), and Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine(2016)—making it a great first chance to get into a few different experiences if you haven’t been able to pop a VR headset before.
We gave Star Trek: Bridge Crew a solid [9/10] in our review for absolutely nailing the fun of social co-op. If the out-of-home setting can provide a quick entry into the game that still offers the challenge of learning your role (and owning it like the Captain you always knew you’d become), this stands to be one of the better experiences for larger groups.
You have a minor infestation of tiny people in your house. They don’t pay rent, they don’t like to brush their teeth, and they always want to use your stuff—the most important of which is your VR headset (even if they technically aren’t supposed to).
Nowadays you’re sooner to park your rugrat in front of a TV or iPad than give carte blanche with your precious VR headset, but as headset prices go down and the technology becomes more suited to the brains of little ones, this will invariably change. Despite some niggling issues with suitability for tiny developing brains in current gen headsets, kid-focused VR content is coming.
A forerunner to the trend: Morgan Lives in a Rocket House. As a CGI cartoon created for flatscreens, you follow Morgan, a kid marooned on an alien planet light years from Earth. Along with a cast of characters, you get to watch Morgan play and learn in the happy little village his ship crashed into many years ago—the sort of setup like Peppa Pig and Dora the Explorer that kids seem to love. Virtual reality versions of these cartoons, like the upcoming VR episode of Morgan Lives in a Rocket House in VR, may be what kids clamor for in the near future for good reason: it gets them paying attention to the magic of the world present all around them, and doesn’t just leave them immobile and dead-eyed sitting in front of a TV.
Created by Peter Monga, a New Zealand-based indie dev, Morgan Lives in a Rocket House in VR is the first VR episode in the series. At only 4 minutes-long, it’s more of a proof of concept, but it gives us a peek into the future of a kid-focused genre that hasn’t seen much attention until now; preschool entertainment.
Morgan Lives in a Rocket House in VR is launching November 3rd on Steam for free.
There’s a few reasons why kid-focused VR content hasn’t popped up en masse since the launch of consumer VR in 2016. Besides the fact that VR headsets are simply too expensive to buy for small children and are designed for adult head-sizes (jammy fingers don’t help), the current generation of VR doesn’t replicate the exact way reality appears to the unaided observer. Because current gen headsets don’t give the user all of the same depth cues reality does, causing a phenomenon called vergence accommodation conflict, only sufficiency-formed human brains need apply—that’s the hypothesis anyway.
image courtesy Oculus
While technologies like foveated rendering are set to change this in the near future, giving a more ‘correct’ photon-to-eyeball experience, current gen headsets like Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PSVR are staying on the safe side. Samsung and Oculus have a 13+ age rating for both Gear VR and Rift, and Sony maintains the PSVR “is not for use by children under age 12.” HTC hasn’t set a specific age limit, but offers warning about ‘young children’ using the headset.
Admittedly there’s a lack of hard evidence that the headsets’ inability to replicate reality’s focus cues will necessarily do harm. Digital Trendsspoke to Martin Banks, a Professor of Optometry, Vision Science, Psychology, and Neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley to understand more on the subject:
“So far I’ve seen no so-called smoking gun, no concrete evidence that a child of a certain age was somehow adversely affected by wearing a VR headset,” said Banks. “My guess is that all they’re doing is saying that kids are developing and development slows down when they reach adolescence, and so lets just play it safe and say that while these kids are undergoing significant development, we’ll advise people not to let them use it.”
While parents should definitely take caution when throwing the quickly-developing brain of a young one into the current gen of VR, we can’t help but highlight the short and sweet Morgan Lives in a Rocket House in VR as it shows incredible promise to deliver entertaining stories and even a lesson or two from within VR, much like the award-winning Henry (2017). As creators like Monga further test the digital waters with their kid-focused content, it’s remains clear that VR for kids is coming, and it’s going to transport your kids to another dimension sometime soon.
Waltz of theWizard, an uncommonly high-quality VR wizard experience from Reykjavik-based Aldin Dynamics, just got an update today introducing a new locomotion system and a “significant” expansion to the potion-mixing magical experience including an entirely new area full of traps and supernatural guardians.
Aldin details the update in a blog post, where they introduce
‘Telepath’, a new VR locomotion style that combines elements of teleporting and linear movement. Critically, Aldin maintains Telepath “encourages greater physical engagement and simultaneously minimizes risk of discomfort.”
According to the company, Telepath is a path-based system that lets users instantly define where to go and how to get there with a wave of the hand. Effectively it functions a bit like a user-defined on-rails teleport that speeds-up forward motion when you make natural, running hand gestures. Much like the zero-G locomotion scheme seen in games such as a Lone Echo (2017)or Climbey (2016), tying artificial movement to real-world motion significantly reduces the discomfort associated with VR locomotion.
Aldin continues:
Artificial locomotion may never feel like an adequate substitute for physical movement, but there’s no solid way around play area limitations. For now our best option is to make VR locomotion systems that feel as natural and unintrusive as possible, for the broadest range of users.
Telepath’s basic implementation comes alongside a new area just outside the Wizard’s tower, which lets you engage in basic combat with some very imposing figures.
Aldin Dynamics remains one of the most experienced VR studios in the world, launching software on Oculus developer kits and Gear VR. It’s Ghostline VR analytics software, showcased in Waltz of the Wizard, was also used in the construction of games such as SUPERHOT VR (2017) and The Gallery: Call of the Starseed (2016).
Waltz of the Wizard currently holds a [10/10] rating on Steam with over 200,000 owners, beating out Valve’s own demo experience The Lab (2016) and making it the most popular VR-only game on the digital marketplace.
You can download Waltz of the Wazard for free with support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive on Steam here.
