Owners of the PlayStation VR may well wish to boot up their consoles and take a peek at the PlayStation Store. With little fanfare or announcement, three virtual reality (VR) titles for the console have had their prices quietly dropped in the UK/EU region.
Though you won’t be able to download a PlayStation Aim controller to go with it, on the PlayStation Store right now, sci-fi shooterFarpoint is available with a huge 50% discount, bringing the price down to a respectable £24.99 (GBP). Since the Cryo Pack DLC is free, users can also pick that up to extend their outer space shooting adventure a little further.
Also knocked down to £24.99 is Starblood Arena, the unique arena shooter that sees players piloting individualised space ships all with their own unique weapons and attributes, such as soldier Elsa in her versatile ship Mandible, or fast but fragile assassin Blade and his ship Raptor. For users who are keen to try out the 6DoF controls, this is the perfect opportunity.
For those who want to experience what its like to drive a high-end sports car in immersive VR can have a look at DriveClub VR, which has also been dropped to £24.99. DriveClub VR offers most of the best features from the non-VR version, along with some of the packs from the rather extensive collection of DLC packs. Users will be able to race over 80 cars on over 100 tracks.
VRFocus will continue to report on the latest offers and deals on VR hardware and software.
WhiteMoon Dreams launched its six degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) shooter StarBlood Arena in April for PlayStation VR. Today the studio has announced it’ll be releasing a demo version for free, allowing headset owners to get a feel for the title before buying it.
Being a demo WhiteMoon Dreams only wants to give you a little taster of this frantic, inter-galactic bloodsport. So it includes one arena and one pilot, Alice. You’ll be able to see all nine pilots and their various attributes but you can only play as Alice, who has a grenade launcher launcher as her secondary weapon.
Really the demo is designed to see how you’d get on with 6DoF controls in virtual reality (VR) as not everyone may find it comfortable. Being inside a cockpit usually helps to mitigate simulator sickness but that’s not always the case, especially if you’re in multiplayer combat dodging every which way trying not to get shot.
For EU PlayStation VR owners the demo should be available through PlayStation.Store today, while US gamers will need to wait until tomorrow.
For any further Starblood Arena updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Starblood Arena might look like it owes a debt to Descent, but it’s actually far more concerned with being VR’s very own Overwatch. Instead of a sprawling, maze-like campaign that pays tribute to the dormant six degrees of freedom (6DOF) shooter, WhiteMoon Dreams’ PlayStation VR (PSVR) exclusive creates class-based war zones that provide immediately satisfying, though occasional anarchic combat. If you’ve been starving for a successor to RIGS: Mechanized Combat League or EVE: Valkyrie, this might well do the trick. That is if you can find a match.
Starblood has players take part in ramshackle arena tournaments that wouldn’t look out of place in the Ratchet & Clank universe. Aiming is assigned to your head while piloting your ship is done with the DualShock 4. Being a 6DOF game, your ship doesn’t perpetually fly forward like it does in EVE, but instead allows you to move forwards, backwards, up, down or strafe left and right at any time. Swerving around the game’s tight, sometimes claustrophobic maps is as much of a joy as it is in similar games like Overload and Sublevel Zero, and it’s a great way to sidestep VR’s current locomotion issues.
But let’s get this out of the way; those looking for a solid single-player VR shooter in Starblood will come away disappointed. The game’s Burn Circuit mode barely passes for a campaign, offering a handful of missions — identical for each of its nine characters — that introduce you to three of the four modes you’ll encounter online on the exact same maps. WhiteMoon should be applauded for letting you play all of the game’s modes with some pretty challenging bot A.I., but this is still a multiplayer-only affair.
The cast of playable characters, a selection of humans, cyborgs and aliens that seemingly take inspiration from Monsters Inc. all the way up to Metal Gear Solid, are as diverse in their playstyles as they are their looks. There are the obvious mainstays: a standard all-round gunner named Buck brings full-frontal firepower that’s accessible for new players, while the mad scientist-looking Dregg provides a uniquely mobile take on the sniper.
More interesting are the creative classes that have you doing more than holding down the fire button. Apollonia has a shotgun that won’t prove too useful against speedy opponents, for example, but secondary time bombs and harpoons root the enemy to the spot, allowing you to get in close and take them out.
Like any class-based multiplayer game, balance is critical to the experience. The game’s already seen some tweaks, but I’ve found myself to be pretty effective with most of the cast, and those I faltered with I found were more demanding in areas I struggle with like low defensive capabilities that require you to keep your distance. Cyborg ninja-esque Elsa does seem a little overpowered with a secondary weapon that bites through the enemy’s health, but I ultimately settled with a Tik Tak Toh, three little Toy Story aliens that excel in close quarters and have the shields to sustain it.
No matter what your play style is, though, chances are you’re going to spend most of your time in multiplayer circling round an enemy, biting your lip as you throw everything you’ve got at them and hope that they die first. And you’ll have a lot to throw; every character has two primary weapons, a missile, a heavy weapon and a generic mine to leave floating around the map. It takes a fair bit of acclimatisation to remember to use everything in your arsenal, especially as locking onto an enemy for missile attacks takes two seconds that will an opponent will rarely stay in your cross hairs for.
In fact it can often be hard to tell how much of an impact you’re making on an enemy. While everyone has a clearly visible health bar, the game moves at such a pace with so much happening on screen that it’s often impossible to keep track of what’s incoming and what’s outgoing. Most of my deaths would come from out of nowhere and that could be frustrating. You can limit the chaos by going with team deathmatch over the unwieldy free-for-all mode, and a Quidditch-like take on capture the flag also provides a little more structure.
But the real thrills of Starblood are in the chase. Coming under fire and ducking into a rocky cavern in a map set inside a cave has a wonderful fluidity to it, as does weaving around pillars and corners and leaving a bomb behind for anyone on your trail. It’s in these moments that you feel like an ace pilot, and it’s much more preferable to the many moments where everyone meets in the middle of the map to unload their ammunition, and the winner likely the one lucky enough not to be noticed. Starblood can often feel like a crapshoot in that respect, and I suspect many players will be alienated by that while the pros literally run circles around them.
Thankfully, competitive multiplayer isn’t all that’s here. Starblood’s co-op offerings are frankly my favorite part of the game (though admittedly not worth the $39.99 price point alone). You and up to three friends can defend three bases from waves of increasingly difficult enemies that you won’t find in any other mode. There’s a sense of structure here that I haven’t been able to pin down in the game’s main modes yet; the coordination it took between me and a friend to survive as long as possible had me holding my breath as I quickly boosted out of frag fests and then seconds later heroically swooped back in with a charged shield to clear our the scraps and revive my ally. It felt great.
There’s a lot to like here, if you’re willing to devote time to get used to it. But what’s really holding Starblood back is its server issues. We’ve had real troubles trying to find a game, so much so that it wasn’t until a week later that we’d felt like we’d played enough to officially rate it. WhiteMoon says its working on updates, but we can’t help but question how many people are really playing Starblood, especially with its hefty price tag. It’s a chicken and egg problem, but it’s difficult to recommend a product that might not ever grow to get the player base it needs.
Final Score: 7/10 – Good
Starblood Arena isn’t a profound expression of the power of VR, but it’s hard not to appreciate a rock solid shooter that will provide hours of multiplayer battles for those willing to put the time in. Ultimately it’s a little too niche to become the definitive multiplayer PSVR game, and the struggles to get into matches aren’t going to please people that threw down $39.99 to play it. But if you’ve got the patience the game will regularly ask of you, you won’t come away disappointed.
It’s been a busy week for virtual reality (VR) and a bit of a party week as well. VRFocus video correspondent Nina Salomons steps out of the ongoing EVE Fanfest to bring you the lowdown on all the big stories of the last seven days for this week’s edition of VRTV. Which includes details of a certain brooding billionaire playboy slipping the confines of the PlayStation VR to bring vigilante justice to PC VR.
Both Star Wars and Star Trek fans have had something VR to celebrate this week as well, although one is decidedly more official than the other. PlayStation VR has had a number of releases confirmed and there’s also a new haptic vest is being released for VR player from D&E Tech. How comfortable would you be with being able to feel bullets and explosions though?
PlayStation VR title Starblood Arena has gone gold and developer WhiteMoon Dreams has revealed some of what players can expect from the upcoming title.
Starblood Arena allows the player to take control of one of nine available ships, each with its unique pilot, features and weapon loadout. So players can choose the pilot and ship that suits their preferred style of play.
Each ship comes equipped with protective shields, two gun systems, missiles and mines as well as powerful engines. The ships have slightly different variants to bring an element of strategy into the experience. Mods can also be unlocked to further customise the ship’s loadout to the players liking.
Alongside the Gold announcement, the developer highlighted three characters. Balanced soldier Elsa in her ship Mandible, who comes supplied with Stasis Mines and a Heavy Hyper Cannon. Then there’s fast but fragile assassin Blade and his ship Raptor, equiped with Swarm Missiles and the Black Death heavy weapon. Lastly there’s Dregg the sniper in his ship Deadeye, sporting the Singularity Missile and the Ghost Gun which shots through walls.
Multiplayer can feature two to eight players, either in team play or in a multi-way brawl. A leaderboard will show the progress of those who choose to play in Ranked matches.
As was previously announced, Starblood Arena is due to launch in the US on 11th April, and in Europe on 12th April.
You can watch the new Starblood Arena features video below.
VRFocus will continue to keep you updated on Starblood Arena and other PlayStation VR titles.
There’s a decent chance that when you read the title of this article you were confused about what exactly a 6DOF mech shooter is. To explain simply, imagine all of the directions you can move your hand in the air. You can go forward, backward, left, right, up, and down — a total of six directions, not counting diagonally and other movements, or six degrees of freedom (6DOF). Most standard shooters, like Call of Duty or even Rigs, let you move forward, back, left, right, and only by jumping and down by crouching. Cockpit shooters usually don’t let you move backwards, at least not quickly, and you’re almost always thrusting forward, like in Eve: Valkyrie.
The best example for a modern 6DOF shooter would be something like Descent: Underground (which actually does have VR support). Nothing like that really exists on PlayStation VR (PSVR), at least not yet, until the release of StarBlood Arena on April 11th. StarBlood Arena is in development by Sony’s San Diego Studios and Whitemoon Dreams. It’s a fast-paced, frenetic, and intense 6DOF mech shooter with tons of customization, different classes to try, and game modes to enjoy. Earlier this month we visited Sony’s headquarters to demo upcoming PSVR titles — one of which was StarBlood Arena.
I got to play through a single round of Carnage, Starblood’s take on standard Deathmatch. The mech I chose had a focus on dealing damage with powerful rockets and lots of splash damage. With nine different characters to choose from, there’s plenty of diversity in the game right from the start.
The match started with each player in a different spawn point around the level (I was playing against other actual humans, one of which was UploadVR’s Editor-in-Chief, Tal Blevins) where we were free to move however we wanted. I could go forward, backward, left, and right using the thumbsticks, then increase or decrease my elevation using the L1 and R1 buttons. Since aiming was controlled via head movement, it was sort of like having a third analog stick. The control scheme is going to take some getting used to, but it felt a bit like a combination of Rigs and Eve: Valkyrie with a bit more freedom of movement.
It took me a minute or two to get the hang of everything, but before long I was blasting enemies out of the air with ease. I had a handful of different weapons I could toggle between using the DualShock 4’s face buttons, so it was easy to adapt to my situation. I’d open up my assault with a standard machine gun firing from a distance, then once their shields were down I’d finish them off with a barrage of rocket blasts. Any time an enemy was near a wall I focused on splash damage.
I only got to try this one character, but based on the descriptions and loadouts they all seem dramatically different. The character diversity isn’t as enormous as in a game like Overwatch, but it’s still a nice mixup when compared to other more traditional shooters. The sense of freedom and speed granted by the liberating 6DOF configuration gave StarBlood a unique feel that’s unlike anything else in VR right now — PSVR or otherwise.
When StarBlood Arena releases it won’t just be Carnage (deathmatch) multiplayer though. There will also be Team Carnage, Gridiron, which is a goal-based mode, similar to the matches in Rigs of the same name, and Invaders, which is a co-op wave-based survival mode. Multiplayer matches can be played privately and ranked. On top of all of that, each character has their own skirmish mode and you can engage in per-pilot tournaments.
All of the mechs (referred to as Battle Pods) are fully customizable as well with gear that can be unlocked through all of the multiplayer and single player game modes, including paint schemes, visual attachments, and gameplay-altering modifications.
StarBlood Arena releases exclusively for PSVR on April 11th for $39.99. For more information, make sure to watch the game’s trailer and our in-depth interview above. You can also find out more information on the game’s official website.
PlayStation VR (PSVR) didn’t have a big showing as last year’s PlayStation Experience, with just one game announced during Sony’s press conference. We didn’t even think much of that game, Starblood Arena, at the time, but a fresh look at it today provides reason to be excited.
WhiteMoon Dreams, the developer behind this PSVR exclusive, this week posted a far more in-depth look at the game than previously seen, explaining many of its modes and mechanics. Even if you turned your nose up at the reveal of this six degree of freedom (6DOF) shooter the first time, it’s worth taking another look; Starblood is shaping up to be a competent multiplayer game with plenty of content on offer.
We definitely get some Overwatch vibes from the colorful cast of characters featured in the game, no matter how unintentional that is. Each character has their own set of weapons and abilities so you’ll be able to find one that suits your own play style. Gundo, for example, is a cyborg pilot that’s described by the team as “great at any range”, while Buck is a giant blue alien that’s fitted his ship with even bigger guns. There are nine pilots overall, and if you pre-order the game you’ll get access to some exclusive skins.
The game is comprised of both competitive and co-op modes. Based on the trailer we’re hoping it lands somewhere in the middle of RIGS: Mechanized Combat League [Review: 8/10] and EVE: Valkyrie [Review: 9/10], mixing the color and style of the former with the made-for-VR comfort and intense combat of the latter. If Starblood can pull that off then it could be a big new release for Sony’s headset.
Finally, we have a date for the game, or rather dates: it hits the US on Apil 11th and EU on April 12th. That’s a lot sooner than we were expecting given it was only announced in December but, seeing as PSVR has been going through a bit of a dry spell of the late, the sooner the better.
December’s third annual PlayStation Experience didn’t showcase many virtual reality (VR) titles for PlayStation VR, but one experience that did debut was StarBlood Arena. Developed by Whitemoon Dreams, StarBlood Arena is an intense first-person shooter (FPS) multiplayer which is now scheduled for release in April.
Taking control of one of nine available pilots, players will engage in six degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) firefights across a variety of map sizes and game modes. Matches can feature anywhere between 2 – 8 players, with Carnage mode an all out PvP battle, whilst Team Carnage allows groups of four players to fight it out. Other modes will also be available and they can all be played in either Ranked or player created unranked matches.
Pre-orders for StarBlood Arena have now opened and of course there’s a special bonus available. Gamers that do pre-order will get the StarBlood Arena Legends Pack which features: the Steel Hercules skin for The Baron, the El Diablo Azul skin for Buck, and the Granny Granny Boom Boom skin for Alice.
The release date of StarBlood Arena will depend on the territory you live in with the US PlayStation.Blog listing an 11th April date while the EU site lists 12th April. Whitemoon Dreams also released a newly update trailer for the title, with the studio’s Creative Director, Scott Campbell giving some further details about StarBlood Arena.
For any further StarBlood Arena updates, keep reading VRFocus.
