UK based Supermassive Games has made a name for itself in the field of virtual reality (VR), debuting with two titles for the PlayStation VR launch, Tumble VR and Until Dawn: A Rush of Blood, and subsequently doubling their output in 2018 with The Inpatient and Bravo Team. Today, the development studio moves onto a new platform, Google Daydream, with the release of Shattered State.
Shattered State: Leading A Brave New World
Shattered State is a story led adventure videogame, in which the player takes on the role of a new government body, the National Intelligence Agency, during a time of unrest. The fictional country has been torn apart by civil war, with the north and south at political and economical odds. The people in each of the new democracies feel they haven’t been treated fairly by the other side, and so when a terrorist attack hits your capital city it’s up to you to determine who is responsible, and how to deal with the fallout during a state of emergency.
“We give you the role of the director of the National Intelligence Agency, which is a fictitious federal security organization in a fictitious country,” states Steve Goss, Director of Design and Technology at Supermassive Games, in an interview with VRFocus. “It’s a country driven by political disagreement; it’s a country with nationalism and liberalism, and minorities. It reflects a super view of what the world – of what countries – can feel like.
“We put you into a political situation of this country’s worst ever day, and we ask you to make decisions on the fate of the nation.”
Developing for Google Daydream
Developing Shattered State for mobile VR after having spent years working on high-end PlayStation 4 projects was certainly a challenge, Supermassive Games readily admits. “We’ve worked with very high-end platforms, very popular platforms, like Sony’s VR platform, and doing something on a mobile VR platform is a big challenge. Bringing our production values into that space; that’s been something we wanted to try and do,” says Goss. “We wanted to make a story – an experience – that could be consumed on a mobile device.
“For lots of creative reasons and technical reasons, it was a challenge we really felt wanted to go for, and we came up with a story and an idea which I think sits well on the platform.”
Shattered State Now Available for Google Daydream
Shattered State is now available for Google Daydream compatible devices exclusively, downloadable via the Google Play Store. The videogame is priced at £7.99 GBP, and you can watch the full interview with Goss in the video below. Stay right here with VRFocus for more on Shattered State coming soon.
We may just see a new VR game from the makers of Until Dawn: Rush of Blood and Bravo Team yet.
In an interview with Russian site 4PDA, as translated by Google, Supermassive Games executive director Pete Samuels apparently stated that the developer was “working on several unannounced PS-exclusives.” Samuels wouldn’t give any details about these projects, though.
We’ve got our fingers crossed that this means Sony and Supermassive are continuing to explore VR gaming together. Supermassive developed one of PSVR’s best launch titles in Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, though it somewhat stumbled this year with the good-not-great The Inpatient, which was a prequel to the horror series it made its name on. It also released military Bravo Team, a game which got a critical kicking at launch but vastly improved with a recent patch.
It’s also possible that the team is finally working on a full sequel to the original Until Dawn, which didn’t support VR. If that’s the case, we’re hoping that some sort of optional support is included at the very least.
Currently, Supermasive is working on its first multiplatform game in a while, The Dark Pictures. That’ll be an ongoing development for some time, but the studio is capable of developing more than one game at a time. Hopefully, its next VR game will accumulate everything it’s learned in the field thus far to create something truly memorable.
Another weekend and another chance to find yourself a new opportunities within the immersive media industries. As always VRFocus are here to help you out, with another entry of The VR Job Hub.
Every weekend VRFocus gathers together a number open position from across the virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industry, in locations around the globe, to help make finding the ideal job easier. Below are a selection of roles that are currently accepting applications across a number of disciplines, all within departments and companies that focus on VR, AR and MR.
Don’t forget, if there was nothing in this week’s feature that was a good fit for you, you can always look at the previous edition of The VR Job Hub.
As always, if you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to myself at keva@vrfocus.com and also pgraham@vrfocus.com.
Check back with VRFocus next Sunday at the usual time of 3PM (GMT) for another selection of jobs from around the industry.
If you are looking to find yourself a new job in the world of immersive technology then allow VRFocus to help you out, with another entry of The VR Job Hub.
Every weekend VRFocus gathers together a number open position from across the virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industry, in locations around the globe, to help make finding the ideal job easier. Below are a selection of roles that are currently accepting applications across a number of disciplines, all within departments and companies that focus on VR, AR and MR.
Don’t forget, if there was nothing in this week’s feature that was a good fit for you, you can always look at the previous edition of The VR Job Hub.
As always, if you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to myself at keva@vrfocus.com and also pgraham@vrfocus.com.
Check back with VRFocus next Sunday at the usual time of 3PM (GMT) for another selection of jobs from around the industry.
Ahead of its launch last month, PSVR exclusive Bravo Team looked like a promising VR FPS, bringing PS Aim support and a fully cooperative campaign to the table. But critic and player reactions turned out to be overwhelmingly negative. Speaking with Eurogamer, anonymous sources from the studio behind the game explained how the ambitious title turned into a flop.
Speaking “under condition of anonymity to protect their jobs,” staff from Bravo Team developer Supermassive Games claimed their team was understaffed for the scope that studio leadership wanted to achieve. Eurogamer’s Tom Phillips reports:
“We had fewer resources than promised,” one person told me. “It felt like we would fail, and mock reviews in September confirmed this independently. But the delay from November to March didn’t help because the sole focus was frame rate and most of the team were moved off. This ‘optimisation’ work made the game worse than when we had the mock reviews – we stripped visual effects, reduced enemy numbers, lost behaviour and inserted loading screens.” “The team was begging for change,” another person told me, “more resource or reduced scope, and no action was taken. And then it was, and everything needed to be torn to shreds.”
In Phillips’ Eurogamer report, a statement from Supermassive Games CEO Pete Samuels addressed reactions to Bravo Team and promised that a patch is in the works:
We were disappointed by the reception to Bravo Team at launch. Since then we have been reviewing all the feedback and have been working on a patch to address a number of the issues raised. We plan to release this in the near future. Our number one priority is to satisfy fans and create compelling gaming experiences. We were thrilled by the response to Until Dawn and Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, and this compelled us as a studio to move forward with a number of projects exploring different concepts, skills and techniques. We have learned a lot from these experiences, and will be putting all of these learnings into practice as we refocus the team and move on to new projects. As a studio we appreciate all the feedback we receive from fans – both good and bad – and we’re all hugely excited about the future.
So far we have no details on when the patch will come or what it might include, but it’s doubtful that anything short of a complete revamp could do much to change the game’s fundamental flaws.
Its the start of a new month as April rolls in bringing with it the joys of Easter and plenty of chocolate. Why not start your month off with a new exciting job opportunity with another entry of The VR Job Hub.
Every weekend VRFocus gathers together a number open position from across the virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industry, in locations around the globe, to help make finding the ideal job easier. Below are a selection of roles that are currently accepting applications across a number of disciplines, all within departments and companies that focus on VR, AR and MR.
Don’t forget, if there was nothing in this week’s feature that was a good fit for you, you can always look at the previous edition of The VR Job Hub.
As always, if you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to myself at keva@vrfocus.com and also pgraham@vrfocus.com.
Check back with VRFocus next Sunday at the usual time of 3PM (GMT) for another selection of jobs from around the industry.
When I first played Bravo Team back at E3 last year it immediately reminded me of the classic arcade game, Time Crisis. The comparisons are obvious: you pop in and out of cover shooting at bad guys and the game predetermines your path through levels. And for better and for worse, that comparison holds true for the final product as well.
In Bravo Team you take control of a military officer after a terrorist attack that results in the assassination of a key political figure. You and your partner have to fight your way across a city to get extracted, killing countless soldiers and enemies along the way. The majority of the game gives you a trusty assault rifle with a red dot sight and a pistol sidearm. Occasionally it mixes up things with different weapons (like a sniper) and some intense set piece moments.
In the video above you can see me play through the entire Prologue and the first Bridge mission. All in all the entire game takes only about 3-4 hours to complete when playing alone with an AI partner, but that time would likely be even less if you were playing with a real human ally.
The AI partner does a good enough job of feeling useful, taking out a few enemies here and there, and attracting some attention when you send them out into the middle of a firefight. But overall there isn’t really a good replacement for having another real person by your side.
When you’re both using PS Aim controllers, crouched down behind a busted up car, poking your head out or blind firing from cover, it really does start to feel like you’re at war a bit. These are the special moments when all of Bravo Team’s moving parts fall into place just right. However, those moments of brilliance are few and far between.
The reality of Bravo Team is that it’s a very thinly veiled wave shooter that lets you move from cover point to cover point with little actual control over your character other than where he aims his gun to shoot. Once you choose a new cover spot during a mission, your character then runs forward as you have an out-of-body experience and can no longer control anything. Instead, you sit back and watch your soldier run forward to the spot you marked.
I get the need to cater to those that suffer from motion sickness, but this does not feel like the right solution. It’s been attempted in other games, like Front Defense: Heroes and From Other Suns, but it never comes across as a competent solution. The issue is that it totally ruins the immersion by literally removing you from the body of your character. You can’t really earn back a believable sense of presence after that.
It’s also extra jarring in Bravo Team because, unlike in those other two games, you can’t control anything once your character starts moving in third person. This means that even if you get shot during movement and wish you could cancel the movement and retreat, you can’t — they just keep moving forward with no regard for the world around them. It can be infuriating.
It’s also extremely common for your orientation to the world around you to shift and change between cover points meaning you may turn to your left to select a cover point, but then end up facing a different direction entirely once you arrive.
Each of the game’s missions occur one after another and are almost entirely linear. There are some branching paths in how you approach a few of the convergence points, but the experiences won’t vary much in any case.
You’ll start out at one end of the level, be tasked with clearing out enemies as you make your way to the end, and then just rinse and repeat until completed. The second level, Alleys, introduces some stealth-gameplay elements, but they never get expanded on and the lack of agency/control over your character makes any stealth moment even more frustrating than it would have been otherwise.
The Score Attack mode is an effort to expand the game’s replayability, but the stages are basically just rehashes of the campaign’s levels. Even the voiceovers from your in-ear navigation NPC is the same. The only difference is you’re trying to kill enemies more quickly to rack up points.
It’s worth mentioning that technically you can play Bravo Team with a DualShock 4, but I don’t think I’d recommend it. This game was designed from the ground up for the PS Aim and that’s really the only way it should be played. That’s the whole reason they’re bundling the two together, for example. Playing with two PS Move controllers is slightly better, but it doesn’t really feel the same as holding an actual physical rifle peripheral like the PS Aim.
When Farpoint released last year as the PS Aim controller’s launch bundle, it showed us a bold future of first-person shooters in VR. The level designs weren’t overly creative, but it offered a real, legitimate shooter experience with a solid campaign, addictive challenge levels, cooperative multiplayer, and then eventually competitive multiplayer as well. It felt like a real, complete package.
Bravo Team on the other hand doesn’t even let you freely move around levels. And in terms of Supermassive Game’s VR projects, it’s a significant step back from the exhilarating Until Dawn: Rush of Blood and innovative designs of The Inpatient.
Final Score:5/10 – Mediocre
When Bravo Team was announced at E3 last year it looked like an exciting, tactical shooter that would let players navigate environments in cooperative multiplayer. It more or less looked like the PSVR’s very own Onward or Rainbow Six. In reality it’s just another wave shooter, even if it uses a nifty gun controller. If you’re waiting on a more fully-featured shooter for PSVR, then keep an eye on Firewall: Zero Hour instead.
Bravo Team releases today exclusively for PSVR. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.
Upcoming virtual reality (VR) first-person shooter Bravo Team has released a new trailer ahead of its release next week.
Developer Supermassive Games has been hard at work on first-person shooter (FPS) Bravo Team for some time now, creating an action-packed immersive experience for PlayStation VR owners. After being delayed from last December to March of this year, Bravo Team is only a few days away from release so it’s just the right time for a new trailer to drop. Players will be trapped in hostile territory and using the titles buddy system will need to work with their teammate in order to survive.
The new trailer, titled ‘Immersion‘ focuses on how players will be able to experience a heart-pounding, action packed adventure thanks to the PlayStation VR headset and the PlayStation Aim controller. Together, the two will allow players to feel right there in the thick of the action as Bravo Team fight through all manner of situations that can only be solved with bullets. With a variety of weapons at their disposal and complete freedom to move around the battlefield as they wish, making anything count as cover, players will feel their heart rate rising. It has already been confirmed that the title will be bundled with the PlayStation Aim controller meaning players will be able to experience the title as it is intended from the get go.
VRFocus‘ Senior Staff Writer Peter Graham went hands-on with Bravo Team when it was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2017, saying in his preview: “Bravo Team feels like a safe bet. A by the numbers approach to VR FPS titles, offering more interactivity and tactical opportunities than the stationary John Wick Chronicles, but lacking that special something that makes these early reveals one to watch. The main draw of Bravo Team is going to be its buddy system, whether that’s enough for players remains to be seen.”
Bravo Team will be a PlayStation VR exclusive, arriving on 6th March for the US market and the 7th March for Europe. The latest trailer is available to watch just below.
For more on Bravo Team in the future, keep reading VRFocus.
While the trailer below is on the PlayStation Japan YouTube channel, all of the original interviews were performed in English and their voices remain, so English speaking viewers can watch without concern. There are, of course, Japanese subtitles overlaid for the viewers it is intended for.
As the developers and team at Supermassive Games talk about the videogame in the interview, the edit of the video makes them appear to move quickly and unnaturally, highlighting the creepy tension one should expect from a VR horror experience. In Japan, the videogame is called The Inpatient: Dark Ward.
When previewing the videogame, we said; “The Inpatient looks set to offer an experience completely different to its predecessor Until Dawn – they’re both set in the same universe – a far more tactile tale, where exploring the story is much more key. It might be because of the hospital theme but playing the demo instantly feels very reminiscent of Wilson’s Heart for Oculus Rift and that’s no bad thing. If Supermassive Games can create an engaging storyline and gameplay to go with the impressive visuals then PlayStation VR might have another hit on its hands.”
You can of course see the full trailer below, offering viewers a look behind the scenes at development and giving those not yet able to play the videogame a chance to understand what they can expect. For more on The Inpatient, make sure to keep reading VRFocus.
The Inpatient is finally out for PSVR. You can read our full review to see what we thought, but we’re also going to dive into the game again for your viewing pleasure in a just a short while.
In The Inpatient, players take on the role of someone locked up at the Blackwood Pines Sanatorium unsure of who they are or why they’re in this place. You’ll be tormented by horrific nightmares, voices in your head, and terrifying hallucinations. It’s just a swell time.
We’re aiming to start the livestream around 2:30PM PT and will go for about a half hour to an hour — we don’t want to spoil too much! You can watch the stream right here when it’s live and afterwards once it’s archived:
Embedded livestream coming soon
Now that we’re in the new year we’re going to get back to streaming much more often. For past game streams, you can check out our archived videos all in this one handy Livestream playlist over on the official UploadVR YouTube channel (which you should totally subscribe to by the way).
Let us know which games you want us to livestream next. Comment with your feedback and let us know what you think down below!
Update: We’ve updated the start time of the stream, listed above!
