rift – Page 33 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

February 17, 2017

7 VR Horror Games to Look Forward to After Playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

The combination of technology and genre focus that led to the creation of VR horror games feel like a match made in Hell (for horror buffs, that’s a good thing). After all, horror games are most effective when you feel immersed in their dark, threatening worlds. And there’s no better way to immerse yourself in a game than to strap on a VR headset and just jump right in.

A number of fine horror games are already available, with Resident Evil 7 [Review: 9/10] being the most notable and recent. But maybe you’ve played through them all by now. Maybe you’re itching for another fright-fest you can dive into in VR. Luckily for you, a number of VR horror games are currently in the works. Here are some of the most promising ones you’ll be able to play in the near future.

Visage

Visage is a Kickstarted game from SadSquare Studio that wears its inspiration on its sleeve. That inspiration is P.T., Konami’s “playable teaser” for the doomed game Silent Hills. The difference is that you won’t be playing Silent Hills anytime soon (or P.T. for that matter, unless you downloaded it while it was available on the PlayStation Store). Visage, on the other hand, will actually materialize.

Like P.T., Visage promises to make chilling use of horror imagery, jump scares, mystery, and tension as you make your way through an abandoned house that’s been the scene of many gruesome deaths. As you progress, the stories of those who died will bubble up to the surface in all-too-horrifying ways.

The developers promise a single play-through of Visage will last between six and seven hours, with replay value added by way of certain randomized events. Look for Visage on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR sometime in 2017.

Don’t Knock Twice

Developed alongside the horror movie of the same name, Don’t Knock Twice is VR game based on an urban legend about a witch who resides in a decrepit old manor. You play as a mother searching the house for your daughter, who made the mistake of — you guessed it — knocking twice on the front door. As you soon find out, the house contains mysteries you’ll have to solve and horrors you’ll have to face before you can come to your daughter’s aid.

You can play a Don’t Knock Twice demo now on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The full game is set to launch in April on both headsets, as well as PlayStation VR and non-VR platforms.

Get Even

It’s hard to know quite what to make of Get Even, an upcoming VR game from Bandai Namco and The Farm 51. That’s because the trailers don’t make a whole lot of sense, and the developers are keeping their lips sealed. What we do know is that you play as Cole Black, a man apparently trapped in a run-down asylum, who has to save a teenage girl with a bomb strapped to her chest.

The terrifying things you see as you try to figure out what’s going on may or may not actually be happening. All you really know is that you have a camera and an array of weaponry on hand to ward back the forces of evil. Or do you?

Whether the developers can turn this mind-bending premise into a killer VR game remains to be seen, but it’s worth keeping an eye on. Look for Get Even around May 26, 2017 for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR.

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul

If you consider yourself a horror fan, you’re probably familiar with the Paranormal Activity movies. This game is based in that universe, which is to say that it brings demons into everyday settings. When we tried it last, we saw someone literally throw off their headset it was so scary.

Like many other upcoming horror titles, Paranormal Activity puts you in a spooky abandoned house and has you wander around, trying to figure out what’s going on. Meanwhile, a pall of terror and tension presses down on you as strange things begin to happen. Doors slam, lights flicker, bloody letters spelling out “Lucifer” appear on the wall. Basically, things start to get weird.

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul will land in Early Access on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive on March 14, 2017, with a final version landing a little later on those headsets as well as PlayStation VR.

Stifled

We’re used to controlling VR games using gamepads, motion controllers, and head movement. Stifled adds another method: sound. The game world is completely black until you either make noise into your microphone, or your character makes noise in the game. When that happens, your surroundings materialize thanks to echolocation. In other words, you experience the world like a bat. We were enamored with how it comes together when we went hands-on with the demo.

There’s a catch, though. You’re not alone in the darkness, and when you make sounds, enemies can hear you, too. It seems like a creative and unique setup for an intense horror experience. Watch the video to see it in action, and look for Stifled on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR (along with non-VR platforms) sometime in 2017.

Wilson’s Heart

If you have an Oculus Rift and an appreciation for Hollywood talent in your horror games, Wilson’s Heart deserves a spot on your radar. This black-and-white psychological thriller stars Rosario Dawson, Alfred Molina, and Peter Weller (yes, RoboCop himself) as characters in a mysterious hospital in the 1940s.

You play as Robert Wilson, a man who wakes up to discover his heart has been replaced by some kind of strange gadget. Your job is to make your way through a hospital filled with era-appropriate horrors to retrieve your vital organ. Wilson’s Heart is slated to release on Oculus Rift with Touch in 2017.

Narcosis

Haunted houses and abandoned asylums are scary and all, but few places on earth are more perilous than the bottom of the ocean. That’s where you find yourself in Narcosis, a game about an industrial diver who’s stranded on the seafloor, with nothing but a few tools, a flashlight, and a limited supply of oxygen. The goal is to find a way to the surface before you die — or go insane.

The idea behind Narcosis was to create a survival horror game using no supernatural elements. The enemies you encounter are actual deep-sea creatures, and the dangers you face are all too real for divers. Narcosis is scheduled to launch on Oculus Rift sometime this year, and other platforms later.

Tagged with: Don't Knock Twice, PSVR, Resident Evil 7, rift, Visage, Vive, VR, wilson's heart

February 16, 2017

Hue is a Heartbreakingly Beautiful VR Experience About Sadness and Color

Hue is very sad. I know this without a single line of dialogue, narration or exposition. The moment this tall, gangly young man appeared before me inside an Oculus Rift VR headset I could feel melancholy pouring out from every pixel of his black and white frame. Yes, Hue is certainly very sad, but with your help he might manage to feel just a little bit better.

Everything about Hue as a project exudes character and purpose. There’s an almost Tim Burton feel to the look of Hue himself, his environments and his friends. The art style embraces black and white imagery, a technique that is underemployed by VR studios today, to incredible effect. When you step into Hue’s world you are also transported into his emotional state by the incredible visuals.

The art was carefully chosen by Hue’s creators: Marry the Moon — a VR studio looking to make a splash. We got to meet some of the studio’s staff and try the experience for ourselves at a Unity press event in San Francisco. The event brought together many of the VR experiences that were selected to appear at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Hue is experienced on an Oculus Rift using its Touch controllers. Using your hands, you can grab Hue by the hand and lead him around his study to various points of interest as the story progresses via a piece of wonderful narration performed by David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck). Your goal is never explicitly stated, but in the presence of such a glum human being your motivations become naturally clear: let’s see if we can cheer this guy up.

Eventually, your efforts pay off and, with a little help from Hue’s own shadow and a couple of fuzzy friends, you are able to introduce a bit of happiness, represented by a very subtle yellow that leaks into the black and grey, back into his life.

It may be tempting to reduce Hue to a simple commentary on the realities of clinical depression but the project’s creator, director Nicole McDonald, made it clear during our demo that Hue is not a depressed person. He’s just a regular man in the midst of a very sad point in his life.

This difference between sadness and depression may seem arbitrary to some, but it makes the entire experience infinitely more accessible. Depression is an incredibly serious issue, but it is not one that affects everyone. All of us, however, have had a sad day. Tackling the mundane simplicity of sadness in such a creative, artistic and poetic way makes Hue’s story accessible to every person, and that makes the entire experience all the more impactful.

In addition to the striking visuals and deftly crafted narrative, Hue also features an incredible use of color. Being inside a VR headset and watching a black and white image start to fill with color is such an emotionally powerful moment. McDonald explained that color is perhaps the most important story tool for Hue. As his story progresses, more and more colors will be added until what was once a very morose world is converted into something bright and full of life.

The demo we saw was built specifically for Sundance and represents just a small part of Hue’s journey. Marry the Moon is currently seeking funding to complete the tale.

Tagged with: art, color, hue, marry the moon, rift, sad, sundance, touch

February 14, 2017

Oculus: 2017 Rift Lineup Will Bring the ‘Depth’ of AAA Console/PC Games to VR

The Game Developer’s Conference is right around the corner. For video game creators, both old and new, this means a lot of sleepless nights excitedly reading over the session list and carefully planning your trip. For journalists like us it means the PR wheel has begun turning, trying its best to crush us with emails, meeting requests, and potential demos.

Among the deluge this morning was a missive from GDC itself. Inside were several short interviews with some of the big companies attending the show this year. Included were chats with Steve Arnold, the head of studios at Oculus. Arnold’s job is to work with game developers to create top-quality content for the Oculus Rift VR headset. Most of what Arnold said in this piece is boilerplate “we’re excited for this chance to work with developers” GDC-talk. However, a few lines stood out as being particularly interesting.

Lone Echo from Ready at Dawn.

When asked what Oculus’ “big goals” for 2017 are, Arnold responded:

“We want to show the world a glimpse of the future of gaming and entertainment. Now that hardware is out there, the real interesting part is to see what developers will make. At this point, dev kits have been in the wild for a couple years now. Some studios have started shipping their second or even third game.

With that sort of time investment and knowledge base behind them, we’re confident that the 2017 game line-up is going to start showing the depth and engaging narratives that people have come to expect from existing games. Some of these will be reinventions of traditional genres in VR, while others will be explorations of new genres.

I’m personally most excited about the games get us even closer to what most perceive as AAA quality, especially those from top tier studios like Epic, Twisted Pixel, 4A, and Ready at Dawn. We can’t wait to help launch those games and see what people think.”

This coincides with the promise of “months of high profile rollouts” the company has talked about previously. What Arnold seems to be driving at here is that the Rift’s content library this year will bear a stronger resemblance to traditional, AAA console and PC titles. These are games like Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Call of Duty, etc. None of these properties are mentioned of course, but that’s the level of quality and production values that they appear to be shooting for.

Oculus has made it clear that they are committed to the creation of top-tier VR content. At last year’s Oculus Connect 3 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company had spent $250 million on the development of VR experiences and that it would spend at least that much again in the years to come. That amount of capital is certainly enough to create many unforgettable titles for 2017 and beyond.

We already know many of the games Oculus is touting this year including those being worked on by the studios Arnold mentions above. There is: Epic (Robo Recall), Twisted Pixel (Wilson’s Heart), 4A (Arktika 1), and Ready at Dawn (Lone Echo). All of these are promising games that we’ve tried at various shows. But, as Oculus’ head of content Jason Rubin is so fond of reminding everyone: this is just the beginning.

We know Oculus has had teams working in long-tail development cycles on bigger games that we’ve yet to see or hear anything about. GDC may be a time for Oculus to showcase it’s previously revealed heavy-hitters more thoroughly, but it could also be where we start to see just how much “depth” this young company is willing to provide.

Either way it should be quite a ride. We’ll be bringing you full coverage on the show floor and beyond at GDC beginning on February 27.

Tagged with: 2017, AAA, console, depth, Games, GDC, lineup, oculus, PC, quality, rift

February 14, 2017

Crytek Will ‘Look Into’ Oculus Touch Support for Robinson: The Journey on Rift

Robinson: The Journey [Review: 7/10] released on Oculus Rift last week through the Oculus Home Store and Steam marketplace. In the game, you control a young boy named Robin on an adventure through a strange, foreign planet overrun with dinosaurs. After crash landing, you’re tasked with finding your way off the planet with help from a robotic companion.

Crytek originally released Robinson on Sony’s PlayStation 4-powered PlayStation VR (PSVR) headset late last year to generally positive reception, although the length of the experience and utter lack of motion controller support have always been major sticking points. During the transition to the more powerful PC-powered Oculus Rift device, Crytek has improved the visual fidelity of the experience, making it more impressive to behold than ever. But in doing so, it still lacks the coveted motion controller support.

We decided to reach out to Crytek about the topic to see if they had any plans to incorporate support in a future update. Crytek’s PR Manager Hannes Knobloch responded:

We’re planning to look into Touch to see how it could enhance Robinson. The community wants it and if we find that motion controls add something to the game, we’ll see how we can implement it.

As of last week’s Thursday Robinson is also available on Steam for the Rift. Regarding PS Move and the Vive, I can’t share anything at the moment.

While this is far from a definitive guarantee the game will get motion controller support, it certainly sounds like something that is at least being worked on. After releasing their first game, The Climb [Review: 8/10], during the first part of last year, the studio later added in Touch support when the controllers launched. Since Robin holds motion controller-shaped objects (shown below) and uses them to interact with creatures, places, and things during his travels, the inclusion of motion controller support seems natural.

Vive and PS Move support on the other hand, we have no further information on apparently. At least it seems like Touch support seems like a major possibility, rather than a massive question mark. Would the inclusion of motion controller support make you more interested in the game as a whole? Let us know in the comments below!

Tagged with: Crytek, move, oculus, rift, Robinson, the journey, touch

February 13, 2017

Oculus Rift replacement accessories are finally available in its online store

Oculus VR now offers a full suite of accessories for Rift owners, letting them buy replacement controllers, face pads, and cables for their headset. These are now offered at reasonable rates alongside the headphones and camera sensors.

The post Oculus Rift replacement accessories are finally available in its online store appeared first on Digital Trends.

February 13, 2017

King Kaiju Review: Casual and Comical Sandbox Destruction

Some days the sun shines, birds sing and everything is right in the world. But other days, clouds loom, birds leave a mess and the world goes sideways and you feel like knocking something over. Boston-based developer Fire Hose Games made King Kaiju, which left Steam Early Access Jan. 31, for the latter kinds of days — when you want to break things.

King Kaiju is a first-person standing and room-scale sandbox that puts you in the hands and head of a Godzilla-sized monster in a fully destructible town filled with buildings, cars, pedestrians, and planes. You can smash houses, pick up objects, and throw things until the semi-urban landscape is destroyed, which offers moments of catharsis.

But King Kaiju is at its best when you play as Megacat, the game’s second character that you unlock after finishing every level, which should take around an hour.

And why is Megacat the best part of King Kaiju, you ask? The answer, my fellow gamer, is laser eyes. Yes, the behemoth kitty sports eye-born lasers, which — for reasons still unknown to science — are more satisfying with which to destroy things than the main character’s mouth-born fire. Someday, science will solve this laser > fire mystery. But until then, Megacat will reign supreme.

Whatever the character, King Kaiju supports the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift and works with both system’s tracked motion controllers. To move within the virtual world without walking in room-scale, you can teleport, which is point-and-click straightforward. Additionally, you can teleport onto pedestrians and cars directly to crush them, which satisfies.

However, you can’t change your orientation when teleporting like you can in games such as The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed or Arizona Sunshine, so playing King Kaiju sitting down or facing in the same direction is a bit of a challenge because when you teleport your point of view will always face the direction you are in the real world.

In-game, the controllers transform into your character’s hands or paws. But King Kaiju isn’t a hardcore simulation by any means. It’s more of a whimsical cartoon fantasy. For example, the game presents a bird’s-eye view of the action on the secondary monitor in a news-style presentation with comical remarks in a scrolling ticker.

“Experts say the monster is collecting ‘points’ like it’s in some kind of video game,” the ticker says.

Meta.

Additionally, there’s no story — just destruction. However, the game does offer four levels, three of which have score-based objectives. The last level is an open sandbox with no objective.

As for the graphics, the arcade-style textures won’t blow you away with their cartoony looks, but they fit the game just fine. The sound design, with screaming pedestrians, buzzing airplanes, and annoying ice cream trucks — oh, how I want to destroy those blaring ice cream trucks with their soul-grating music — also fits the game’s casual style.

The audio plays back in binaural virtual surround over stereo headphones, which makes pinpointing the location of attacking planes and fleeing pedestrians easy. However, the game outputs stereo only through surround speakers, which is a bit of a disappointment.

On the other hand, stability isn’t an issue because King Kaiju doesn’t crash on my Rift-based test system, which has two Oculus Sensor IR trackers, an AMD RX 480 graphics card and Windows 10. However, the Rift displays an otherwise game-breaking double image when anti-aliasing is enabled in King Kaiju. Thankfully, disabling anti-aliasing fixes the problem. I don’t know if this is also an issue with the Vive.

Final Score: 6/10 — Decent

King Kaiju offers an hour or two of casual motion controller-based gameplay in a destructible sandbox environment. If you’re looking for the second coming of Pacific Rim, then save your money and wait for Pacific Rim: Uprising. But if your world has gone sideways and you want to unleash your inner monster for an hour or two, then King Kaiju is worth a look.

King Kaiju is available on Steam for $4.99 with support for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.

Tagged with: destruction, Fire Hose Games, king kaiju, monster, rift, touch, Vive

February 9, 2017

Oculus’ New Accessories Store Sells Replacement Headphones And More

The Oculus Rift comes with a lot of extra accessories and, nearly a year on from launch, we could forgive you if you’d broken or lost one or two of them. But, don’t worry, you can now replace them without buying a new Rift.

Oculus has added a suite of new accessories available to purchase on its web page, which already featured the company’s branded earphones and extra sensors for room scale VR. The extra items are all included with the Rift itself. There’s the simple input Remote for $29, a 4 meter headset cable for $49, the facial lining for $29, and even replacements for the on-ear headphones fitted to the device for $39. None of those prices include shipping, however.

This is a long-requested feature that many will be happy to hear about. Previously if you’d broken a piece of Oculus kit you’d have to go through customer services and hope the company would be able to help you out in some way. The new face lining in particular is appreciated; owners will have been using the original for nearly a year now, and they can accumulate a lot of sweat over that time.

Rift’s rival, the HTC Vive, opened its own accessories store last year, and even allows customers to pick up spare controllers. Replacement Touch controllers aren’t listed in the Oculus store, but perhaps that could come later on once we’ve all had the chance to smash them against walls and televisions. You also can’t buy replacement Xbox One controllers on the store but, then again, you can get them pretty much anywhere else.

Elsewhere in the news, it was revealed yesterday that Oculus is pulling many of its Rift kiosks from Best Buy stores. The company says it’s due to “seasonal changes”, though there’s also speculation it’s due to lack of interest. We wouldn’t expect these accessories to start flooding into those outlets, then.

Tagged with: Accessories, oculus, rift, shop

February 8, 2017

Oculus Re-Focuses Best Buy Rift Demos On Larger Markets

Oculus is pulling demo stations for its Rift virtual reality headsets form certain Best Buy stores. While this might be seen by some as confirmation that VR and/or Oculus is struggling, it looks to us like an attempt to maximize success rather than run from failure.

Let’s start with the facts. Yes, Oculus is removing its demo stations from certain Best Buys across the United States. Business Insider puts that number at around 200. However, according to a statement released by Facebook/Oculus, this news may not be as catastrophic as it may appear.

“We’re making some seasonal changes and prioritizing demos at hundreds of Best Buy locations in larger markets,” the statement reads.

Oculus first started running these demos in May with 48 locations. This number then ballooned to 500 locations over the next six months. All of this is consistent with a marketing blitz that a company with significant capital would launch to test demand and explore consumer sentiment for a new product class. In fact, Oculus kicked off December with the Oculus Touch launch, meaning it had every reason to demo the Rift in as many locations as possible through Christmas. It stands to reason then that after this initial glut, said company would move on to focus on its best performing locations once it became clear where the expense of a demo station can no longer be justified.

The Best Buy locations losing their demo stations will also continue selling the Rift. It is not being stripped from anyone’s shelves. According to Facebook, there are still “hundreds” of Best Buys running Rift demos and “[At Oculus we] still believe the best way to learn about VR is through a live demo. We’re going to find opportunities to do regular events and pop ups in retail locations and local communities throughout the year.”

Those interested can visit live.oculus.com to find the closest demo.

Tagged with: best buy, demo, oculus, rift, startegy

February 7, 2017

Community Download: Was Constellation Tracking a Long-Term Mistake for Oculus?

The Oculus Rift is having problems…again. The issue is not on the operations side with shipping woes or on the marketing side with price complaints. This time the problem is actually within the product itself. The Rift is having trouble tracking some users in 3D space. For a VR company like Oculus, this problem is a lot bigger than any $500 million lawsuit. Therefore, our discussion question for you all this week is this: was the constellation tracking system a long-term mistake for Oculus as a company?

What is Constellation?

This may be old hat for some of you but bear with me while I briefly explain constellation tracking to those that may not know.

Constellation is the Oculus method of tracking a user throughout a room. This is what lets the computer know where your headset and hands are in 3D space. Basically, any time you lean forward or backward inside a Rift headset and the experience responds, that’s Constellation at work.

The system gets its name from a slew of infrared lights placed at strategic locations on both the Oculus Rift headset and the Oculus Touch controllers. These markers — laid out almost like a constellation — are picked up by the Oculus Sensors, which are designed to detect the light of the markers frame by frame. These frames are then processed by Oculus software on your computer to determine where in space you’re supposed to be.

So What’s The Problem?

Constellation tracking has two big problems right now. The first has been around for a long time now and is called occlusion.

Basically, if something like a desk, a wall or even your own hands get between too many infrared markers and a Rift Sensor, then the infrared markers will be blocked, or occluded, and tracking will be rendered impossible. This is why Touch ships with an additional camera, so that you can place them in different areas and keep your hands from occluding one another. However, multiple Sensors can’t solve everything.

Ever since Oculus released Touch it has allowed its users to create an experimental “room-scale” setup with three total Sensors placed strategically around the play space. What this should do is make it so no matter where you’re facing, at least one of the Sensors is able to see enough of the infrared markers on your headset and both Touch controllers. Instead, these larger Sensor formations have led to reports of tracking issues.

This issue seems to be centered on the software powering Constellation itself. In an effort to help with these issues, Oculus released a patch (1.11) but that patch has yet to fully alleviate all of the tracking problems. In fact, for some people it seems to have created new issues. With major content launches inching ever closer, the clock is ticking to restore the Rift’s tracking viability.

What Do You Think?

So was Constellation tracking a mistake? Would it have been a better long-term decision for Oculus to wait and develop a system like the SteamVR Tracking platform that powers its rival: the HTC Vive? Or are these tracking issues just a bump in the road of an otherwise successful platform? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Tagged with: community download, constellation tracking, mistake, oculus, rift, tracking

February 6, 2017

Roomscale VR is Great, But the Gamepad isn’t Going Anywhere

For many people, the end-all be-all of virtual reality is being able to get up and move around inside of a digital space with roomscale. With the HTC Vive, you set up lighthouse base stations in opposite corners of your play space and the system tracks your movement in 3D space around your entire room. With the Oculus Rift, you can accomplish something very similar with extra sensors and the Oculus Touch motion controllers.

There’s nothing quite like taking a step forward with your own feet and feeling yourself moving in a digital environment. For some genres of games, like first-person shooters, it’s nothing short of revolutionary. Even though roomscale is amazing, it doesn’t mean that something else isn’t just as impressive and exciting in its own way. Just because we have full movement in roomscale VR now, it doesn’t mean that gamepad-based VR experiences are dead.

History of Excellence

While the VR industry is still in its infantile stages, developers are constantly experimenting and seeking new ways of delivering exciting moments to players. The best horror game I played last year was a roomscale-only title called A Chair in a Room: Greenwater [Review: 8/10], the riveting Onward is an incredible shooter that immerses you in its action, and exploratory puzzle games and adventure titles like The Gallery [Review: 9/10] breathe new life into formerly dormant genres. I recognize the potential of roomscale, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of the gamepad.

The first VR game I ever played almost two years before it released was EVE: Valkyrie [Review: 9/10] and it blew my mind. Cockpit experiences and racing games feel great using gamepads and are arguably even more immersive than their standing, moving, roomscale counterparts. This is especially true while we’re still struggling with VR’s distracting wire problem and room size requirements.

But when it comes to gamepad games, the best practices of how to create a control scheme, what works for different genres, how to design a game world, what makes something fun, and all of the other guiding principles have been researched, developed, and iterated on for decades. Bringing those existing ideas into the immersive world of head-tracked VR is complicated enough without asking people to move around as well.

With so much potential and history in the game industry that’s rooted in the player holding a gamepad while seated, it feels like a disservice to that legacy to simply ignore it altogether. Some roomscale experiences have the potential to wrap us up in the power of their stories and innovation of their technology, but other times I just want to sit down with a controller in my hand and play a good game.

Iteration and Innovation

When I play a game like Lucky’s Tale [Review: 9/10] in VR, I’m reminded of Super Mario 64, but I feel closer to the action than ever before. Edge of Nowhere [Review: 9/10] reminds me of Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and The Last of Us, but the sounds of the world surround me. Resident Evil 7 [Review: 9/10] feels like the most immersive and terrifying game ever when you’re trapped alone inside the PSVR headset.

Damaged Core [Review: 9.5/10] is inventive and unique in a way that couldn’t work outside of a headset. These and other games we’ve seen over the past couple of years are proof that you don’t necessarily need to get up and move around in roomscale to enjoy a VR experience.

Landfall, which just had its free weekend beta, is a clever implementation of a top-down tactical game that uses a gamepad as the bread and butter form of controlling your unit. Updating a genre and re-imagining it in a new way doesn’t necessitate throwing out the gamepad in favor of motion controllers.

I love being able to look down at my hands and see them accurately represented with hand controllers, but depending on the type of game, that could be a poor form of interaction. If I’m playing a fast-paced shooter like Rigs [Review: 8/10], that cockpit isn’t conducive to using motion controllers. Third person games feel right at home while holding a gamepad and plenty of obscure or more niche genres work better with dedicated buttons and analog sticks.

Diversity of Options

At the end of the day, there is enough room in the industry for both gamepad and roomscale VR. There is a certain time, place, and mood that lends itself well to moving around a room in an immersive digital space. Getting physical with sports games, ducking behind cover in shooters, and exploring strange new worlds feels like a natural fit. But if you’re putting me in charge of an army, sticking me in a cockpit, or asking me to control a character in third-person, I’d feel more at home with a gamepad in my hand.

And finally, being perfectly honest here, sometimes I just want to relax on a couch. It’s the same reason that despite my love for VR as a medium and as a way to advance technology, I don’t want to give up traditional gaming either. Looking at a TV or monitor a few feet or yards away is satisfying in its own way and I don’t think everything needs to be in VR to be good, and just because it is in VR doesn’t mean it can’t use a gamepad.

The more options we have the better chances there are for innovation and simply good game design. I want to play and enjoy VR games because they are good games first and foremost, not because they are novel experiences.

Tagged with: gamepad, oculus, PSVR, rift, room scale, roomscale, touch, Vive, VR