The ongoing legal battle between Epic Games and Apple is only just getting started, potentially leading to lots of insider information regarding how the videogame industry operates. As part of the case newly released documents discuss Epic Games’ battle royale title Fortnite and Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) decision to block PlayStation 4 crossplay functionality in 2018. As part of Epic’s plan to persuade Sony, the company suggested making a VR launch title for its next headset.
As reported by The Verge, confidential emails between Joe Kreiner, Epic’s vice president of business development, and Gio Corsi, Sony’s senior director of developer relations (at the time) highlight Epic Games’ desire to enable crossplay, something Sony wasn’t keen on doing at the time. Inside a raft of proposals, Kreiner suggested: “Epic’s willing to explore more items – maybe we commit to a game at the launch of your next VR platform?”
As we now know SIE did eventually enable crossplay support for Fortnite on PlayStation but the documents don’t elaborate on whether that idea for a VR launch title went any further. A deal was obviously reached thanks to a cross-platform revenue share scheme which Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney reportedly corroborated in his recent testimony.
It’s been a while since Epic Games was last involved in VR. In the early stages the company released tech demos like Bullet Train before eventually releasing Robo Recallfor Oculus Rift in 2017 – the recent Robo Recall: Unplugged for Oculus Quest was handled by Drifter Entertainment. Since then, Epic Games has mainly supported the VR industry with updates to Unreal Engine alongside its Epic MegaGrants initiative, awarding grants to Varjo, Theia Interactive and others.
Considering PlayStation VR had only been available for a couple of years at the time of the emails, and was still going strong, Epic Games was really hedging its bets on SIE’s future plans. Especially as the first details of the unnamed PlayStation 5 VR headset have only just been released and that a launch will take place after 2021.
But it does take a few years to build the types of AAA-quality videogames Epic is known for so a project could well be in the works. In comparison to 2018, Sony and Epic Games are closer than ever, with Sony investing $250 million in Epic during 2020 followed by a further $200 million this year.
As further details of Sony’s new VR headset emerge and if Epic Games has anything to do with it, VRFocus will let you know.
Lies Beneath is an action-packed single-player survival horror game published by Oculus Studios and developed by Drifter Entertainment, the same team behind PC VR co-op shooter Gunheart and Robo Recall: Unplugged on Quest. Read our full Lies Beneath review below for more!
The Oculus Quest has a great selection of VR games. But what you might notice when browsing the Store or looking through your Library of content is that there is certainly a lack of narratively-driven single player titles. Other than Vader Immortal, Apex Construct, Moss, Virtual Virtual Reality, Journey of the Gods, and a handful of others the vast majority of content on the Quest is designed to be briefly picked up and played for a few minutes or focused on multiplayer. Thankfully Lies Beneath is here to help alleviate the issue a bit.
Lies Beneath tells the story of a young woman that gets into a car accident while visiting her family in a small Alaskan town. She’s driving in a car with her father when a mysterious figure steps out in front of the vehicle, causing her to swerve off of a bridge and crash, getting flung from inside. By the time you make your way back to the scene, your father is gone with nothing but a trail of blood leading away.
Thus, the mystery begins.
It’s a good hook for a story and the way Drifter Entertainment unravels the threads is very interesting and well-done. Everything in Lies Beneath is presented as if it were a dark, noir-style comic book. The beginning of each “Issue” has you flip through a giant, floating comic complete with panels, descriptive box out text, dialogue bubbles, and more. After getting up to speed, you essentially live out the events of the book.
The art style feels just like a comic come to life. It reminds me a bit of Mad World on the Nintendo Wii, or the similarly-styled VR shooter Dimension Hunter. The main difference here is how well the overall package sells the window dressing. It’s more than just a superficial coat of animated paint. When you do things like hit boxes with your axe, tiny sound effect blurbs like *crack* pop up for a split second and clicking things in the menu show a brief *click* sound blurb. It does a great job of further selling the aesthetic.
As stylish and pronounced as it is, it takes a while before the environments feel very interesting. You spend quite a while lumbering around in the snow where everything looks extremely samey. The foggy blizzard restricts your vision so the game rarely renders anything in the distance and darkness requires using your small lighter to see just a foot or two in front of you. This all helps build suspense, but ends up making it feel truncated in terms of actually being immersive. Hopefully the Rift version that releases in a couple of weeks can sidestep some of these issues.
I also noticed some performance issues on Quest in the form of stuttering here and there, most commonly when approaching comic panel narration in between level sections. For example, every Chapter has comic panels positioned as sign posts inside the levels that articulate your character’s thoughts rather than using voice over dialogue and each time I approached this (every handful of minutes or so) there was usually a brief jitter of frame drops.
Since your lighter can be used to point you in the right direction if you look at where the embers are pointing off the tip of the flame, you’ll never get lost — not that you would have anyway since Lies Beneath is a pretty linear game. Most of the time you’ll walk from one end of a chapter to the other, interacting a bit with objects as you go, running from big bad guys, and shooting your way past ghouls.
In terms of actual scares and building up a sense of horror, Lies Beneath is one of the lighter efforts in its genre. Since you almost always have weapons on-hand there is a lot more combat here than in something like The Exorcist: Legion VR, Face Your Fears 2, or other recent horror games. Rather than forcing you into a state of helplessness you can and will fight back in Lies Beneath quite often.
All told the game is about 6-8 hours long depending on your play style spread across 20 chapters. It takes a while to reach some environmental variety, but once you do the art style becomes more pronounced and visually pleasing. I’m really not a fan of sticking players in a snowy blizzard for the first chunk of the experience, it was a bit of an underwhelming opening for that reason.
There is a good assortment of weapons here from revolvers and hand axes to shotguns and more. When you have your lighter fully lit and out in one hand you can see an aiming reticule where you point and weak spots on enemies are highlighted. It’s a cool system that adds some strategy to tense fights.
Coming off of weighty PC VR games like Boneworks, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Half-Life: Alyx, and even Asgard’s Wrath and Stormland, combat in Lies Beneath doesn’t feel very reactive. Most objects in the game are static, not physics objects at all, and melee attacks usually pass through enemies and objects without making contact. Even gunshots result in mostly canned animations it seems, which is a bit of a bummer.
The scariest moments in Lies Beneath are purely atmospheric. Hearing the sounds of beasts in the forest, just beyond your view, feasting on corpses. Spotting red, glowing eyes peering at you from around a corner only to disappear once you reach the next area beyond the trees. The constant feeling that you’re being watched, at all times, everywhere you go. It’s tense and unnerving and slowly builds over the course of the game.
There were a handful of jump scares, but they’re not super common. Instead, Lies Beneath relies more on a sense of stress and anxiety to justify its horror label. The atmosphere is foreboding, the narrative is dark, and the imagery is often creepy, so when you get overwhelmed by enemies and are fumbling to reload or running low on ammo, that’s when the hairs start to stand up on your neck and arms or you flail in desperation right before death.
Trust me, I speak from experience.
Lies Beneath Review Final Verdict
While Lies Beneath doesn’t pack enough true terror to be considered a new peak for VR horror, it does manage to craft an intriguing story in a stylishly formed world with mostly satisfying combat and palpable tension. It’s exciting to see a developer that was so previously rooted in the fast-paced action shooter category branching out to something more slow-paced, narratively-driven, and visually unique. The gameplay certainly leaves plenty to be desired in the wake of Half-Life: Alyx, but in terms of its story and setting there is enough here to make it worth a recommendation — especially in comparison to similar experiences already available on Quest.
So you’ve spent your hard earned cash on a nice new Oculus Quest headset and now you need some awesome content to put the headset to good use. There’s certainly plenty to get your teeth stuck into, whether that’s action, horror, comedy, relaxation or to work up a sweat. The difficulty in choosing is what to purchase next, so VRFocus is here to guide you on the best videogames to add to your library.
None of these recommendations will feature the free content available such as YouTube VR, VRChat, PokerStars VR or Rec Room as they’re free, so should be the first ones you download anyway.
What we’re interested in are the ones that cost you cash as they range from £7.99 GBP all the way up to £22.99. There are some instant standout titles ported over from Oculus Rift, plus some brand new originals which have arrived just for the headset launch.
So in no particular order, the 10 best videogames to buy are:
Beat Saber – £22.99
The highly popular rhythm-action title has taken the VR world by storm over the past year and shows no signs of letting up. With thumping music and addictive gameplay, Beat Saberwill have friends saying ‘just one more go’ as they try again on Expert+ level. This is one videogame where you will work up a sweat and burn some calories, and enjoy doing it at the same time.
Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series – £7.99
This isn’t a videogame, instead Vader Immortal: A Stars Wars VR Seriesshows you the future of VR entertainment. Mixing cinematic design with interactive gameplay, this first episode slots you into the Star Wars universe between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. While you don’t necessarily need to be an avid fan to enjoy the roughly 50-60 minute experience, it certainly doesn’t hurt – especially when the lightsaber comes into play.
SUPERHOT VR – £18.99
Another title that has an avid fan base much like Beat Saber, SUPERHOT VR is one of those delightfully simple yet gloriously engaging VR experiences where the screenshots struggle to capture the gameplay. Essentially a first-person shooter (FPS), the trick here is that time only moves when you do, allowing for all sorts of Matrix-style bullet dodging.
Apex Construct – £14.99
One of VRFocus’ favourite bow shooters when it first arrived on PlayStation VR, Apex Constructby Fast Travel Games doesn’t seem to have suffered from its port to Oculus Quest. Somehow the studio has managed to cram in all the action or the original whilst maintaining the all-important bow features. A great adventure for all players.
Robo Recall: Unplugged – £22.99
Another reason why VR FPS videogames are the best, Epic Games’ Robo Recallstunned when it arrived for Oculus Rift. All out action that showcases VR at it’s best, whether that’s shooting robots or getting in close to get your hands dirty, the Oculus Quest version has lost none of the excitement, all it lacks is some of the visual fidelity of the PC original.
Journey of the Gods – £22.99
Turtle Rock Studios has released two new videogames for the launch of Oculus Quest. While Face Your Fears 2hasn’t made this list, stylish action-adventure Journey of the Gods has. Offering a large world to explore with fantastical creatures to fight, you chose to fight with a crossbow, sword and shield or mix between the two. Along the way, there are secrets to be discovered and upgrades to be had to the boss fights a little fairer.
Moss – £22.99
Easily demonstrating that all VR content doesn’t need to be first-person, Polyarc’s Mossis an adorable third-person puzzle title featuring a little mouse named Quill. She doesn’t say anything but knows you’re there guiding her, with you and Quill able to talk to each other through sign language. The studio has updated the videogame for the launch adding further content for players.
Creed: Rise to Glory – £22.99
Float like and butterfly and sting like a bee in one of the more realistic experiences for the standalone headset. Creed: Rise to Gloryby Survios puts you in the film, able to train with the likes of Rocky Balboa, before heading into the ring to see if you’ve got the skills to last. Another high energy videogame, this will definitely feel like a workout.
Shadow Point – £14.99
Coming from British VR studio Coatsink Software, Shadow Pointis a nice relaxing puzzler that’s all about light and shadows. Great for first time VR players, don’t be deceived by the cartoon design work, the challenges start off easy but do become more complicated as the gameplay develops. Plus there’s the added bonus with Sir Patrick Stewart doing the story narration, which is nice.
Job Simulator – £14.99
Finally, VRFocus finishes with an oldie but a goldie. Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulatorhas supported almost every VR headset released and done well on all of them. The quintessential pick-up and play VR experience that’s all about using your hands, everyone who likes VR needs to have played this at least once. It’s bizarre, funny, and difficult to put down.
Here at UploadVR we’ve had access to most of the Oculus Quest launch library for quite some time. In fact, we already have reviews for games like Superhot, Dance Central, Virtual Virtual Reality, Creed, and more. And now that the Quest is officially launching to the rest of the world today, we thought we’d collect a list of the top 10 best Oculus Quest games available on day one.
This list is written from the perspective of being able to apply to anyone even if you haven’t used VR before. Here is a livestream where we show off a bunch of the games on this list:
Worth noting we’ve left off free apps like Rec Room and VRChat because you should definitely have those downloaded regardless and since they don’t cost anything they didn’t seem useful to include in terms of recommending purchasing decisions. You should definitely install YouTube VR as well for all of the great and free 360 video content.
And we’re leaving off some games we haven’t gotten to try yet on Quest to confirm port quality (like VR horror game The Exorcist: Legion VR) or games we haven’t sunken enough time into yet (like VR MMO OrbusVR) but if preliminary indications are any value then both should be worth your hard-earned dollars if you enjoy those genres.
Without further ado, here’s the list of the best Oculus Quest games to buy at launch! They are all listed alphabetically.
As one of the few “full” games launching on Quest with beautifully rendered stylized visuals, killer bow and arrow mechanics, and a solid multi-hour campaign, this should be the feather in the cap of every Quest owner. It’s got a sense of scale and narrative consistency that few VR games have, let alone VR games on portable standalone devices.
If you are reading this article then you have probably seen or heard of Beat Saber at some point. This is the rhythm-based box-slashing VR game that’s sold over a million units and helped put VR on the map for tons of people. Now, it’s portable and plays just as good as you’d hope.
There aren’t many shooters on Oculus Quest at launch, but the few that are there are really fun. Drop Dead: Dual Strike is an expanded version of a game that originally launched on the Gear VR and now features excellent dual wielding mechanics, melee weapons, a horde mode, a decent-sized campaign, and full co-op. It’s hard to go wrong with this much zombie-slaying action.
One of the most popular VR games is making its way to Quest and it plays better than ever. Removing the tether frees you to walk around the office cubicles if you’d like and spin about without worries. It looks great too and is easily the most accessible and fun to play version yet.
Journey of the Gods ($29.99)
Watch Our Gameplay Video Above
Journey of the Gods from Turtle Rock is a Zelda-inspired action-adventure VR game that has you slashing your sword, blocking with a shield, and firing your crossbow at enemies across large, sprawling levels. If you’re a fan of larger adventures, similar to Apex Construct in scope, then this is a great one to pick up.
Robo Recall: Unplugged ($29.99)
Watch Our Gameplay Video Above
As one of the most anticipated games for Quest, Robo Recall does not disappoint. The Unplugged version ports the entire experience over from the Rift with the only downgrades coming in the form of lower graphical power. The whole game is here complete with its tight gameplay and arcade-style fun.
Even after over three years, Space Pirate Trainer is still my go-to VR game when I am showing someone VR for the very first time. It’s dead simple to play but has a ton of layers and complexity if you’re willing to dig deeper. It nails that “just one more try” feeling and the high score board makes it perfect to pass around at parties.
It’s difficult to overstate just how fantastic of a game Superhot is in VR. In this part shooter and part puzzle game time only moves when you do. That means you can freeze and contemplate your next action — a power that the game forces you to master quickly. It’s exhilarating, challenging, and really forces you to think outside the box. And now it’s without any wires!
Even though it’s immediately clear that Vader Immortal: Episode 1 is just the start of something much larger, it’s still absolutely worth the entry fee. You get a nearly hour long story that feels like an authentic part of the Star Wars universe and an addictive Jedi training dojo full of replayability. Highly recommended.
Finally this is the most meta game on our list. And by that I mean that it’s part commentary on what VR actually is and what it could be, as well as what it can do. It’s a really great story that’s full of humor, charm, and memorabe moments that everyone should experience at least once.
There’s a considerable gap in the VR market that the new Oculus Quest – set for a Spring release at $399 – is looking to fill. Designed for people who want a headset geared towards a gaming experience but lacking the high-end PC and are unwilling to part with a hefty chunk of change, the Quest is an all-in-one wireless solution that features room-size VR and motion controls but without these restrictive costs. It’s an impressive bit of kit, with Oculus talking about cross-play with Rift owners andcross-buyy across both products, but at the same price as the new Rift S, set to be released at the same time, is it a neutered experience when stripped of the need for a monster PC?
We had the chance to try out the headset, playing Robo Recall, an arcade style FPS that came out in 2017 to fair acclaim, and the results were pretty impressive. Epic Games was behind the original Recall, but Gunheart dev Drifter.
As one of the more graphically impressive titles on the VR marketplace, there’s an expectation to see some of this visual fidelity would be stripped away to ensure it ran at a solid clip on this headset, but nope – Robo Recall looks pretty damn good running on the Quest. We had previously seen a snippet of the game that looked pretty blurry, but since-released images promise more of a visual feast.
There’s a few minor graphical changes to keep things ticking over on the headset, however. Lighting and other effects appear to have been dialled back a bit, and during the first stage there appears to be a little bit less going on in the background of the city than in original, PC-based release. It’s a similar trick that PSVR titles utilise, like Gran Turismo – a loss of fidelity in areas where you’re not paying close attention to, to keep the areas you’re forced to pay attention to looking their best.
It’s still an extremely fun shooter. Robo Recall is a game that focuses on providing a thrill-a-minute experience rather than attempting to simulate a real firefight. Pistols are perpetually strapped to your belt so there’s no need to reload, just chuck your current pair away (or, at an enemy, if you’re going for some galaxy brain thinking) and grab two fresh ones! You always have a sub weapon strapped to your back and reaching over your shoulder for a shotgun makes you feel like the actual Terminator. Plucking bullets out of the air and throwing them back at enemies like you’re some kind of darts-playing Neo just doesn’t get old.
The real stars of Robo Recall, perhaps unsurprisingly, are the enemy robots themselves. With enough variety to keep them interesting and keep you – literally – on your toes, they provide you with a bunch of targets that feel really, really satisfying to take out. Pinging one with a headshot from distance and sending their dome clean off, using a shotgun blast to evaporate a few leaping spider-robots that got a bit too close or juggling an enemy repeatedly on a hail of gunfire, racking up a multiplier bonus with every successful keepie up.
Robo Recall’s cherry on the combat cake, however, is when one of these enemy robots has the audacity to get right up into your personal space. You then have the ability to grab them and tear them apart with your bare hands. Grab a leg and an arm and pull them in two! Grab them by the handle on their torso and bash them into the ground! Actually RIP their face right off! It’s such a fun feature and makes you feel great – the real thing you want from a VR action game.
It’s all very much a continuation of the arcade lightgun shooter genre – a genre that has sadly been forgotten in recent years due to the need for big old CRT screens in order for the lightgun to actually work, and it’s great that as their reliance on an old technology threatens to condemn them to the history books, they find a potential new home in some cutting edge new one.
It takes a bit of getting used to. This game is running ON the headset. Similar all-in-one VR products, like the Google Daydream or Samsung products for smartphones offer a similar setup, but the quality of visuals just isn’t a patch on the Quest.
Like those headsets, however, there’s a few concerns. First of all, it’s a heavier piece of kit than the Rift S. Completely expected due to the added components needed to allow for an all-in-one VR solution and with clear ergonomic design to negate as much of this as possible. It also heats up, due to the battery powering the device, there was some discomfort with prolonged use.
The $399 price point is competitive – it’s easy to forget how much a smartphone actually costs when most people take contracts out – and is all you need to get started with Oculus Quest. There’s no hidden extras. It is still expensive, but the pick up and play nature of the Quest is going to attract those who want a VR experience free of a gaming PC. With the store being curated by Oculus rather than the wild west approach on the Rift store (which allows for a lot more early access titles and experimental bits and pieces, admittedly) Oculus are making every effort to position this as a quick and easy way to jump into the VR world. It’s a large market – if anything can capture it, it will be something like the Quest.
Im offiziellen Oculus-Blog wurden neue Informationen zum kommenden VR-Titel Robo Recall für Oculus Quest veröffentlicht. Auf den vorgeführten Bildern wird deutlich, dass die gewohnt hohe Grafik der PC-Version deutlich reduziert wird. Die Portierung wurde von Entwicklerstudio Drifter Entertainment übernommen.
Robo Recall für Oculus Quest – Neue Informationen und Bilder veröffentlicht
Entwicklerstudio Drifter Entertainment übernimmt die Portierung der kommenden Quest-Version von Robo Recall. Im offiziellen Oculus-Blog beschreibt Ray Davis, Co-Gründer des Studios und Executive Producer von Bullet Train (damals bei Epic Games), den Entwicklungsprozess des beliebten VR-Titels:
“Mein Hintergrund bezieht sich auf eine Mischung aus AAA-Titeln und futuristischen/VR-Technologien. Entsprechend möchten wir nicht nur fantastische Spiele machen, sondern fantastische Spiele für VR und XR entwickeln.”
Image courtesy: Drifter Entertainment
Aufgrund der Erfahrung mit dem Medium VR, sowie der Freigabe der PC-Version des Spiels beim damaligen Studio, war es seiner Ansicht nach ein logischer Schritt, nun die Portierung von Robo Recall für die kommende Oculus Quest zu übernehmen.
Image courtesy: Drifter Entertainment
Doch die Entwicklung kam mit einigen Herausforderungen daher. Der PC-VR-Titel wurde 2017 von Epic Games als Vorführtitel für die Oculus Rift und die dazugehörigen Touch-Controller präsentiert und ist entsprechend grafisch höchst anspruchsvoll. Die Aufgabe bestand darin, die einzigartige Spielerfahrung auf die leistungsschwächere Quest zu übertragen.
“Es wird die Grenzen der Plattform enorm ausreizen. Aber damit ist es auch eine fantastische Gelegenheit, um zu verstehen, wie die Hardware funktioniert. Also was für Herausforderungen anstehen und was für Kompromisse man für eine Umsetzung eingehen muss. Eines unserer Kernprinzipien war dabei: “Auf keinen Fall das Gameplay verändern”. Wir wollten volle Parität bei Rift und Quest erreichen.”
Image courtesy: Drifter Entertainment
Dennoch musste man in der grafischen Darstellung abspecken, um dies zu ermöglichen. Mit verschiedenen Tricks und Kniffen, wie der Multi-View-Technologie zum Rendern der Inhalte wurde nun Abhilfe geschaffen, um den fotorealistischen Stil aufrecht zu halten.
Image courtesy: Drifter Entertainment
Doch trotz einiger Zweifel während des Entwicklungsprozesses sind die Entwickler heute von ihrem Werk überzeugt. Besonders dank der autarken Oculus Quest und der damit verbundenen kabelfreien Erfahrung, soll die Portierung eine einzigartige Spielerfahrung offenbaren.
When Oculus Touch arrived at the end of 2016 there were a few decent titles to show off the controllers. It wasn’t until Epic Games released free experience Robo Recallin early 2017 that the controllers truly shone, with the title becoming one of the standout VR videogames of the year. When Oculus announced standalone headset Quest during Oculus Connect 5 (OC5) one of the first titles confirmed for launch day was an intense first-person shooter (FPS). Now the first screenshots have been released showcasing the incredible work porting the title across.
The port isn’t the work of Epic Games, instead, it has been entirely handled by Drifter Entertainment – best known for 2017 FPS Gunheart. Not a simple undertaking due to the quality of Robo Recall, a recent interview with Drifter CEO and Co-Founder Ray Davis on Oculus Blog reveals the importance of bringing the exact same gameplay to Oculus Quest.
“It’s going to push the platform extremely hard,” said Davis, going on to stress: “Our core principal was, ‘Do not change the gameplay,’ We want complete parity on Rift and Quest.”
“When I told [Epic Games Technical Director] Nick Whiting we were taking on the project, he said, ‘You are fucking insane,’” Davis adds. “Four months later, here we are. It’s totally a viable, awesome experience—and it also speaks to our culture at Drifter. We’ve all had the past experience of really pushing forward on new platforms and seeing what can be done, so this is the perfect project for us.”
Looking at the screenshots the team look to have created a mobile version worthy of the original, from the detail on the guns and the enemy robots to the vast cityscapes Robo Recall is known for. But it was easy, with the veteran team using as many tricks of the trade as possible.
“Early on, everybody had some skepticism,” admits Davis. “But once we got Robo Recall playable on Quest, more and more people were like, ‘Wow, this is how the game was meant to be played.’”
The Oculus Quest has yet to receive a specific release date with an announcement expected soon. The line up of titles has been growing ever larger of late, so customers should have plenty of choice on launch day. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Drifter Entertainment, the studio behind Gunheart (2017) and Ready Player One: Rise of the Gunters (2018), is taking the reigns of porting Epic’s impressive arcade shooter Robo Recall (2017) to Oculus Quest. In an Oculus blog post today, the studio showed off a bevy of screenshots, and gave a peek into just how difficult it was to bring the PC VR game’s photorealism to the standalone headset platform.
Epic’s Robo Recall is by all accounts a fun game, but the robot-smashing arcade shooter also played a big part in showing just how good games can look and feel in VR, setting a visual bar that few have approached even two years after its release on Rift.
“It’s going to push the platform extremely hard,” says Drifter CEO and co-founder Ray Davis, speaking about the task of bringing the title to Quest.
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Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
While Oculus maintains the gameplay experience is set to be identical to the PC VR version, albeit with the ability to gank robots in it full untethered, 360-degree glory, there’s undoubtedly going to be some sacrifices in the visual department.
“Our core principal was, ‘Do not change the gameplay,’” Davis maintains. “We want complete parity on Rift and Quest.”
Bringing the game to Quest required methods such as lowering polygon counts, and utilizing Multi-View, a rendering technique typically used to lighten the load of CPU-bound applications on Oculus Go and Gear VR; this is done by rendering objects once to the left eye buffer, then duplicating them to the right buffer automatically with appropriate modifications for vertex position and view-dependent variables such as reflection.
The studio says addressing the game’s photorealistic style, bloom effects, and depth of field all proved to be especially challenging.
“We had to find ways to bring back the feel of those things while still hitting our performance targets,” Davis says.
Robo Recall is set to be a day-one launch title for Oculus Quest when it releases at some point this spring. Drifter worked closely with the Platform Team at Oculus and Epic Games to bring Robo Recall to Quest.
Five new images of Robo Recall for Oculus Quest were revealed today on the Oculus blog. The blog also revealed that the game was ported by Drifter Entertainment.
Drifter’s co-founder Ray Davis was Executive Producer for Bullet Train when he worked at Epic Games. Bullet Train was a VR FPS tech demo and prototype that eventually “evolved” into Robo Recall itself.
Robo Recall was the Rift’s flagship game for 2017. Developed by Epic Games and funded by Oculus with an estimated budget of up to $10 million. The graphical quality pushed the bounds of what was possible in VR games with action and physics.
That’s why when Mark Zuckerberg announced on-stage at Oculus Connect 5 that the game would come to Quest, the entire VR industry was rightly skeptical. Could a mobile GPU really play this game, or would this be a port beyond recognition?
“Early on, everybody had some skepticism,” David claimed in the blog. “But once we got Robo Recall playable on Quest, more and more people were like, ‘Wow, this is how the game was meant to be played.’”
While the game’s graphics required significant reduction, the gameplay apparently did not. From the blog post:
Throughout development, Drifter was adamant that the gameplay experience should be identical. “Our core principal was, ‘Do not change the gameplay,’” stresses Davis. “We want complete parity on Rift and Quest.”
Proving Quest’s Potential
Of course, images and videos don’t come close to representing how a game will feel in VR. The distances these shots were taken at may also hide low detail areas. So Drifter will be letting members of the press get hands-on with the game running on Quest this week.
Oculus Quest opens up a new frontier for VR- fully untethered room scale with tracked controllers without needing a PC. While we know its mobile processing hardware can play games like Beat Saber or Job Simulator, questions have been asked about what more it can handle.
Oculus Studios now tells its developers to build for Rift and Quest, but will Quest truly get the types of full scale games these developers have delivered in the past? If Robo Recall truly does have the same gameplay as Rift just with reduced graphics, that may be an indication of the answer.
We knew that Robo Recall was coming to Oculus Quest and we assumed that it would have to be a heavy downgrade, but seeing it in action today for the first time was still a bit of a shock.
This link is timestamped to the exact moment Robo Recall is about to be shown in today’s sizzle reel video, but don’t blink because it’s only there for literally two seconds right after Superhot VR:
After seeing how similar Dead and Buried 2 looked and not noticing much difference at all while playing Beat Saber I was holding my breath for some development magic, but this is the first evidence we’ve seen that Epic’s intense tech demo that originally debuted on Rift was too much for the Quest to handle at full-scale. I’m assuming this won’t be the full game either and is probably an abbreviated version instead.
The decision to show only a single robot in the trailer, rather than a swarm, feels deliberate. When playing Robo Recall I can’t remember facing off against a single enemy very often to be honest. Usually you’re facing large numbers of enemies all at the same time. This calls into question not only the visual fidelity, but how many enemies it can handle at once as well.
We reached out to Epic Games and Oculus regarding the differences we noticed in the trailer above such as the downgraded visuals and lack of enemies on-screen and an Oculus spokesperson responded:
“Robo Recall on Quest looks and feels great. There are—of course—differences graphically, but the gameplay is as satisfying as what you remember on Rift…now with no wires.”
They also provided a single high-resolution screenshot directly from the game that is, reportedly, more in-line with the visuals you can expect to experience inside the headset itself. That’s the one embedded up above and included again here. Notably, the one single image they decided to officially send doesn’t have any enemies in it, so it’s hard to use it as a real frame of reference.
Nevertheless, you can click to enlarge it here:
For comparison, we’ve included some additional images of the Quest version taken from the trailer embedded up above. Keep in mind that these likely don’t do the game actual justice and it will probably look much better inside the headset itself since the footage was encoded and optimized for YouTube. The footage in the video is also reportedly of an older build of the game that isn’t fully representative of the final product.
Click to enlarge:
And here is a video of Robo Recall on Rift, plus screenshots taken from that video to try and show something similar rather than grabbing doctored up marketing photos. However, keep in mind, these are still higher-quality by nature.
Click to enlarge:
What do you think? Robo Recall should still be free on Quest and will undoubtedly maintain the fast, frenetic, and fun gameplay of its older, bigger PC-based ancestor, but it does appear to have gone through a hefty downgrade in order to fit onto the Snapdragon 835-powered standalone Quest headset as was expected. The most important bits are that the gameplay is still fluid and the physics still work as designed.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Editor’s Note: We added more context regarding the Quest footage.
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