Everyone loves a bit of healthy competition right? And what better way of showcasing two of the best music infused virtual reality (VR) titles than a jam battle. That’s exactly what YouTube channel Splitverse did this week with Survios’ Electronauts and Beat Games’ Beat Saber.
The channel invited DJ Nicky to record a remixed track via Electronauts which was then tracked mapped on Beat Saber for pro player SkyKiwi – who also created ChromaToggle which adds features like dual sabers – to try his hand at completing.
Showcasing great skills from both DJ Nicky and what you can do with Electronauts to SkyKiwi’s mastery of 2018’s VR sensation Beat Saber, the piece is one of the best mixed reality (MR) videos VRFocus has seen.
If you happened to be sleeping under a rock for 2018 then you’ll be excused for missing the release of Beat Saber in May for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. With a simple mechanic of slicing coloured blocks to music, the title captured the imagination of VR gamers everywhere with a whole modding community growing up around it.
This helped sustain the title as Beat Games worked on the PlayStation VR version which arrived towards the end of last year.
Electronauts , on the other hand, was designed by Survios to allow anyone to remix and play with tracks, no matter their skill level. Using its Music Reality Engine, players can alter and put in new sounds and beats which will always be perfectly in time to the music. The videogame achieved a full five stars in VRFocus’ review which said: “Survios has managed to do what few VR developers have done, secure a hat trick of quality titles that should be in everyone’s library. Electronauts combines a wonderfully elaborate yet perfectly simple gameplay design alongside some of the best dance tunes from around the world, making for a videogame that will have you playing for hours and wanting ‘just one more go.’”
Check out the jam battle video below, and for more updates on either title, keep reading VRFocus.
For the full list of all of our livestreams scheduled for this week, as well as archived footage after the stream has happened, check out the schedule right here.
I don’t consider myself musically gifted at all. In fact, I used to have a guitar and I never got much further than learning Smoke on the Water. That being said, I love music video games. I consider myself quite good at Rock Band and Guitar Hero, able to play guitar and drums on expert difficulty for most songs, as well as a big fan of Beat Saber. But Electronauts isn’t that type of music game at all, this is something else. More than a game it’s actually a DJ simulation that makes you feel like Daft Punk without you actually needing to do very much at all.
We’ll be playing Electronauts on Rift using a two Touch controllers. We’re starting right around 12:45 PM PT and we’ll aim to last for about an hour or so. We’ll be livestreaming to the UploadVRTwitch page where you can interact with us directly and chat among yourselves. Streaming is something we’re going to double down on doing more often very soon so you should get in on the ground floor of our Twitch community early! You can see the full stream once it’s live right here:
Survios, a veteran VR game developer, shared fresh insights into the health of the company’s out-of-home business activities, a sector of the VR industry which has been increasingly heating up in the last 18 months.
While the consumer VR space is still waiting for its inflection moment, 2018 has seen increasing interest in both VR enterprise and commercial sectors. VR Location-based entertainment (LBE), as the commercial out-of-home VR sector is called, is largely divided into two major categories: ‘VR attractions’, bespoke and novel VR experiences that are infeasible in the home for size or cost reasons (like The VOID), and ‘VR arcades’, which more-or-less offer pay-per-use VR experiences that harness consumer-grade hardware and software.
Survios, the veteran VR game developer behind titles like Sprint Vector (2018) and Creed: Rise to Glory (2018), has in recent years been steadily expanding into the VR arcade space. The company owns and operates its own VR arcade location in Los Angeles, licenses its own content for use in other VR arcades, and acts as a publisher of third-party content.
Photo by Road to VR
Last week at VRX 2018 in San Francisco, Survio’s Co-head of Marketing, Hunter Kitagawa, took to the stage to share lessons the company has learned from its LBE VR deployments, and offered a look at the traction the company has seen year over year.
This time last year Survios’ VR arcade content was in 200 locations across 36 countries. This year that number has grew to 500 locations across 42 counties. In terms of content licenses sold, Survios jumped from 2,000 one year ago to 12,000 today. None of those figures include China, Kitagawa said, where the company has since announced a joint venture with Chinese tech giant NetEase to bring the company’s VR content to China.
Survios expects the growth in their VR arcade business to continue to grow through 2019, and possibly trend even further upward.
As the VR arcade sector has grown, Kitagawa offered a simplified look at the sector’s value chain, breaking the space down into ‘game developers’, ‘arcade platforms’, ‘VR arcade chains’, and ‘customers’.
He also identified a handful of key players therein, citing Survios, Vertigo Games, Beat Games, and Big Box VR among top VR arcade game developers; SpringboardVR, Synthesis VR, and Private Label VR as top VR arcade platforms; as well as Ctrl V, VR Junkies, and MontVR as top VR arcade chains.
Kitagawa said that Survios reaches 10 times as many people through its VR arcade business compared to its in-home content. He compared the ‘scale of opportunity’ of VR arcades by contrasting the number of VR arcade locations against major US location-based entertainment chains Chuck E. Cheese’s and Dave & Buster’s, claiming that there are 1,500 VR arcades in operation against some 600 and 110 locations, respectively, of the aforementioned.
Among paying customers going to VR arcades, Survios has found that the demographic is more balanced between male and female (60:40) compared to in-home VR which leans more male. 80% of Suvrios’ VR arcade customers are younger than 35 years old, and 66% are playing multi-user content, Kitagawa said. Meanwhile, 33% of customers come to VR arcades as ‘parties’: group scenarios like birthdays and corporate events.
When it comes to content performance, Kitagawa shared a few lessons.
Image courtesy Survios
“You have 30 seconds or less to onboard players,” he said. With player sessions lasting only 30 minutes or so in many cases, users need to start having fun right away if they’re going to be compelling to come back.
He also advised that developers and VR arcades leverage recognizable intellectual property to bring customers in the door. With Survios’ VR title Creed: Rise to Glory, the company found that appealing to the fantasy of being part of the Creed universe was a more potent marketing message than the common approach of showing imagery of people in VR headsets.”Don’t sell VR,” he stressed.
VR boxing game Creed: Rise to Glory from Raw Data and Sprint Vector developer Survios is getting a free DLC update this month on November 27th. The update will add antagonists Viktor Drago and Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler from the upcoming Creed sequel, Creed II starring Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone, which is due out in theaters on November 21st.
Creed II continues the story of Adonis Creed, son of original Rocky series’ Apollo Creed. The climactic fight at the end of the film is a battle with Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago, otherwise known as the man that killed Adonis’ father, Apollo, in the ring during the events of Rocky IV. In a way, this is a familial rematch that’s been building for decades.
Later this month, players will be able to reenact the films battle in VR and take on the roles of Adonis and Viktor Drago for themselves. Both Drago and Wheeler will be available in the Freeplay and PvP game modes across all platforms (PSVR, Steam, and Oculus Home.)
We praised the gameplay in Creed for our review, but had some reservations about the general lack of content. Overall, it’s still an excellent VR boxing title — especially for fans of the film franchise.
CREED: Rise to Glory (2018), the VR boxing game from Survios, is about to launch its first free content update soon, which is bringing two new characters to all supported platforms.
Coming November 27th, the free content update is bringing competitors Viktor Drago, son of Ivan “The Siberian Express” Drago, and Adonis Creed’s old Delphi Gym rival Danny Wheeler, portrayed in the films by real life professional boxer Andre Ward.
Image courtesy Survios
The content update is set to release a few days after CREED II debuts in theaters (November 21st), a story that again follows Adonis Creed on his quest to become the light heavyweight champ, this time facing off against Viktor Drago.
If you’ve seen Rocky IV (1985), you’ll probably familiar with Viktor’s father Ivan Drago (“I must break you.”), the Soviet boxer who killed Adonis’ father Apollo Creed during an exhibition bout.
Both new characters will be available in both PvP mode and freeplay mode, which lets you choose and go up against any fighter on the roster.
CREED: Rise to Glory supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PSVR, is available on Steam (Vive, Rift), the Oculus Store (Rift), and the PlayStation Store (PSVR), priced at $25.
While you wait, check out our in-depth review to find out why we gave a solid [7.7/10].
Later this month Creed II will arrive in theatres, continuing the boxing saga. Virtual reality (VR) developer Survios released movie tie-in Creed: Rise to Glory a couple of months ago, and for the release of the movie will be updating the title with new content.
The storyline for Creed II sees Adonis Creed finally face off against his old Delphi Gym rival Danny Wheeler as the leadup to a much larger showdown with his past: Viktor Drago, son of Ivan “The Siberian Express” Drago, the Soviet boxer who killed Adonis’ father Apollo during an exhibition bout.
In the free update for Creed: Rise to Glory players will be able to fight as, and fight against, Viktor Drago and Danny “Stuntman” Wheeler in the Freeplay and PvP modes.
Supporting Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR, Creed: Rise to Glory proved to be one of the best boxing simulators for any VR headset. Receiving 4-stars in VRFocus‘ review, we said that: “Survios has once again done an outstanding job, with Creed: Rise to Glory helping cement the studio as one of VR’s premium content developers. You don’t have to be into boxing to enjoy this title, and for those who enjoy VR fitness it certainly ticks all the boxes.”
Alongside the Freeplay and PvP modes, Creed: Rise to Glory has its story-driven, single-player campaign where Adonis Creed looks to ascend from scrappy underdog to world-class fighter, making a name for himself in his own right, leaving his fathers shadow. Being the film tie-in that it is, Creed: Rise to Glory will enable you to train with Sylvester Stallone’s iconic character, the legendary Rocky Balboa, in gyms from the franchise, including Mighty Mick’s and Front Street Gym.
The Creed II update for Creed: Rise to Glory will arrive via Oculus Store, Steam and PlayStation VR on 27th November. For further updates and announcements, keep reading VRFocus.
Here we are again everyone. Another Sunday and another selection of roles from here, there and most definitely everywhere that involve any and all aspects of the immersive technology spectrum. Whether it’s doing engineering with a firm that make augmented reality (AR) smart glasses, brand management at a videogame company that do virtual reality (VR) titles or demoing things for one of the big names in headset manufacture. There’s usually something for everyone.
Let’s see what the end of October 2018 brings. Check out this week’s listings below.
That’s all for this week, but don’t forget if there’s nothing here for you this week you can always check out last week’s listings on The VR Job Hub.
If you are an employer looking for someone to fill a VR, AR, MR, XR or related technology role – regardless of the industry you’re a part of – 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 edition. As always, please send details to both myself (keva@vrfocus.com) and also Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).
We’ll be back next week on VRFocus at the usual time for more jobs from around the world.
LA-based developer Survios has been prolific in its virtual reality (VR) releases in 2018, with the launch of Sprint Vector at the start of the year and Electronauts this summer. That would usually be enough for any team but that’s not stopped them rolling out quite possibly their biggest title yet, movie tie-in Creed: Rise to Glory.
From past experiences most gamers will know that videogames based on movies tend to have a troubled history, trying to mimic and usually failing at capturing the wow factor of the silver screen. So can Creed: Rise to Glory break that mould and provide an exhilarating experience that puts you in the shoes of Adonis Creed? It sure can.
There are a wealth of options to choose from right at the start but it’s the career mode that forms the core of Creed: Rise to Glory. Here you play Creed, still a young upstart who’s trying to make a name for himself and leave the shadow of his famous father – hopefully you’ve seen the Rocky films. To do this you need to train and fight through underground matches, learning not only how to punch but to defend as well.
Creed: Rise to Glory is very much a mix of arcade and simulation gameplay, you can go in all guns a blazing and probably win, taking a more methodical approach however will reap greater rewards. Before you step anywhere near a ring you’ll need to train, with punching bags, speed balls and all the other boxing equipment you’ll need. Depending on how well you train will then denote your stamina for the upcoming fight.
A number of controls schemes work in unison in Creed: Rise to Glory aside from purely punching. On Oculus Rift (reviewed) you hold down A and X then swing your arms to walk forward, and then spin them left and right to walk in that direction when fighting. It’s a system that takes a moment to get used to whilst dodging and punching, working perfectly well after a few tries. What’s great about it is fact that fights aren’t stationary you can move around the ring for a more natural experience – just make sure your play area is clear or something will get punched.
Like any boxing videogame the punching mechanic has to work flawlessly or the whole experience becomes a chore. This is thankfully something Survios has quite clearly mastered, offering virtually any noticeable latency so that the actual power put into punches has an effect. What this also means is Creed: Rise to Glory is a solid workout that’s going to make you sweat, soon upping that heart rate after a few rounds.
Adding to the realism is Virtual Stamina, where your character starts to tire, so you’ll need to block and properly dodge to avoid those incoming blows as it regenerates. Get hit too many times and you’ll of course go down, at which point Survios has introduced a novel out of body experience where you have to run back to the ring. The more often you go down the longer the distance becomes, further adding to that energy expenditure.
The career mode offers a reasonably decent amount of gameplay, if maybe a little short. But to keep you coming back for more there’s the Freeplay and PvP options. Freeplay is still single-player, this time letting you choose all the various facets of Creed: Rise to Glory. Whether that’s more training, redoing past fights or selecting the different fighters you previously faced to see how they stack up.
And then there’s PvP mode, where you can go online and fight anyone around the world with any character. Up until this point Creed: Rise to Glory has been pretty much flawless in its gameplay mechanics and visual design. However did suffer several hick ups for this review, with a couple of matches suffering so badly from lag they had to be abandoned. When it did work PvP wasn’t quite up to the career 1:1 standard but not too far off. With Survios’ previous online record with the likes of Sprint Vector being good hopefully this is quickly ironed out for all those fighting fans.
Survios has once again done an outstanding job, with Creed: Rise to Glory helping cement the studio as one of VR’s premium content developers. You don’t have to be into boxing to enjoy this title, and for those who enjoy VR fitness it certainly ticks all the boxes. You may lose interest in the story but there’s enough to keep most players involved for quite some time.
From Knockout League to Thrill of the Fight and a litany of exercise-focused apps, there are plenty of ways to get your VR boxing fix right now. If you like slamming your fists into punching bags and beating virtual enemies into a pulp, then you have plenty of avenues to pursue that. But there isn’t a reliable way to strap on boxing gloves and go toe-to-toe with another real person in VR — at least, not until Creed: Rise to Glory from Survios.
Once upon a time there were a couple of Rocky boxing games on the PS2 and Xbox (Rocky and Rocky Legends) both of which were lackluster at best. Before those we of course had Punch-Out!! on the NES and SNES, which Knockout League replicates well, similar in ways to the Ready 2 Rumble series. When I first played Creed VR back at GDC 2018 the first comparison that came to mind was Fight Night with the mixture of realistic graphics and sim-lite gameplay. What I actually found isn’t that deep, but still left me satisfied.
In Creed: Rise to Glory you take control of the titular character, Adonis Creed, in a hodge-podge experience that’s part prequel to the first movie and part bridge to the sequel that releases later this year in theaters. The Campaign mode is really more like a bare bones Arcade-style experience that has you fighting a gallery of foes back-to-back that get increasingly more difficult as time goes on. You’ll even notice a few boxers that were featured in the original film.
Freeplay is a bit like Campaign, but you can just hop into whatever ring against whichever opponent you want. There were a lot more rings to pick from than I expected, but honestly you only look around at the environment before the match starts. Once that bell rings your eyes are locked on your opponent. Make no mistake though: the real highlight of Creed VR, interestingly enough, is the PvP multiplayer. That feature wasn’t even revealed until very recently but it was by far my favorite part of the game.
Fighting against AI is fine, but eventually it just boils down to pattern recognition and timing. The easier boxers won’t have as many combos and won’t block as much and even the hardest ones have certain tells to look out for. But when you play against real life human opponents, everything changes. People are unpredictable, they can try and bait you, or fake you out, or even taunt you over the mic. You can see a couple bouts of me fighting against Ian Hamilton up in the video above.
Regardless of game mode the mechanics are always the same. You’ll need two motion controllers for whichever platform you choose (I played on Rift using Touch) and plenty of space. Like, a lot of space. It’s tempting to just make sure you have enough room to stand up and stretch your arms out, but that’s not enough space. You need to be able to lean back, duck, bob from side-to-side, and take at least two steps in either direction if you want to really experience all that this game has to offer.
Creed VR does a great job of actually tracking your hand movement well and translating that into the game. Punch speed and strength does make a difference, as does where on the body your hits land. Grazing the side of their head or just slamming into their blocking fists isn’t going to do anything — you need to make solid contact with their face or body to do damage. That means a mixture of body movement, straights, uppercuts, hooks, and everything else. The more you treat Creed VR like a boxing simulation, the more success you’ll have.
Since the body animations and IK for your avatar’s simulated body all work well, it really does feel like your bobbing and weaving around inside the ring. Notably, I can’t recall many moments in which I wasn’t able to accurately do what I wanted because of tracking or control limitations. However, the one exception to that is it seems like during PvP most people are vulnerable over the top of their block on the crown of their head. If you just do a hammer fist maneuver or seven sweep your hand quickly over their block it will register as a hit even if you’re not really punching. Of all sports, boxing feels like the perfect match for VR and adding multiplayer just makes it even better.
Survios also developed what they’ve dubbed a “Phantom Melee” system to help simulate stamina loss, becoming staggered, or getting knocked down. Obviously those are all real things in boxing that need to be addressed, but if you’re playing a VR game, the developer can’t reasonably restrict your character or remove you from control. So instead, “Phantom Melee” is a bit like a mime system.
For example, if you get winded and over-exert your arms, they’ll turn red and you’ll have to bring them up to your face to regain stamina by resting. This also helps prevent people from just flailing around wildly because their character will get winded too fast, not be able to block well, and get dropped very quickly. Then if you get nailed really hard and become staggered (basically meaning stunned) then the game will show silhouetted versions of your fists in the air that you have to match the pose of to regain control. In this way, it forces you to pretend like your hands are flung upward as a result of a big punch.
Finally, if you get knocked down, Creed VR actually has you drumming your fists as fast as possible as if you are sprinting back to your body. It’s sort of like an out-of-body experience, like you got punched so hard your opponent sent your soul flying out of your body and you’ve gotta get back to it before the countdown is over.
All of these systems add up to matches never having much downtime, which is great, and it maintains the experience in multiplayer so that you can still do things like knock down your opponent or stagger them like you can against AI enemies without breaking immersion. I just wish the posing and miming bits weren’t quite as finicky, because sometimes it was a little frustrating not being able to regain control fast enough.
The final piece of the Creed VR puzzle are the training mini games. When you’re waiting on a PvP match to start or just wandering around the main lobby area, you have the entire floor of the gym open to explore. There are heavy bags you can use to practice flurry punches, dummies for combo training, moving directional bags for dodging, and more. All of the little mini games are fun and actually do a decent job of helping you hone actual tactics that you can apply inside the ring.
I don’t have any real boxing experience, but I used to go to a boxing gym for my workout and the trainers would have us do a lot of similar drills before we sparred and it’s really clever to see how those concepts are gamified and established inside VR. My biggest issue with them though is that the hit detection seems a bit off, especially on the combo dummies.
Final Score:8/10 – Great
Creed: Rise to Glory is the best all-around boxing game VR has seen yet. While its serviceable campaign mode lacks the depth and variety that we’ve come to expect from Survios releases and some of the controls are a bit finicky, it more than makes up for it with a litany of training mini games and an addictive PvP mode. Trading blows, ducking shots, and scoring a powerful knockout against someone in immersive VR is about as close to an actual boxing match as you can find from the comfort of your own home.
Creed: Rise to Glory is available starting today on Steam, Oculus Home, and PSVR for $29.99. And read our Content Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.
CREED: Rise to Glory is a boxing game that aims to get you up and sweating with what promises to deliver the Rocky-style underdog victory that couch jockies like me have always dreamed about. While the campaign is both shorter and lighter on story than it probably could have been, it delivers some heavy-hitting game mechanics that do pretty well considering you’re effectively punching at air.
Developer: Survios Available On: Steam (Vive, Rift,), Oculus Store (Rift), PlayStation Store (PSVR) Reviewed On: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive Release Date: September 25th, 2018
Gameplay
There’s not much to know about the story behind Creed: Rise to Glory. Like in the films, you follow series protagonist Adonis “Hollywood” Creed, the son of Apollo Creed, and fight to become the champ.
Story elements are told through a radio program playing in the gym, which serves as your sanctuary where you can train before fights and hear a little bit about the boxing world outside of the gym’s four walls. A single flashback of you punching out a bouncer and presumably losing a love interest are light padding to the game’s main event: dodging and making sure your stamina isn’t too low so you can land effective punches during matches. And while I felt the story definitely could have played out to a grander, more dramatic effect with a longer arc than what its six primary enemies provided, the most important things are strong fundamentals and being engaging enough to revisit, which is clearly the case in Creed: Rise to Glory.
Image courtesy Survios
As someone who’s never boxed before, I can’t really say with much certainty how true Creed VR is to the actual sport, but it appears to have been game-ified well into arcade territory. The Rocky films, and by extension the Creed films, are fantastical fights that probably could never happen in reality anyway. Like with many sports films, the technicality of the sport is mostly lost in those big dramatized moments that challenge the main character, and help them come to a hard-won resolution. Stepping into the ring with the lights, the crowd, and the announcer, it easily matched up to my already warped expectations of how boxing is portrayed in film—that much I can say with confidence; I felt like I was in a movie, and it was awesome.
Iconic training montages with Rocky Balboa, voiced with a convincing-enough impression of Sylvester Stallone, prefaced most fights, giving you that all important cinematic touchstone.
Image captured by Road to VR
Introducing what Survios calls ‘Phantom Melee Technology’, Creed uses a sort of body desynchronization when either your stamina is low, or when you’re staggered from a powerful punch. Low stamina is indicated by the color of your gloves, which will flash red to make sure you know your punches will be slower than your actual physical ability to shadow box. This keeps you on the guard more than you might otherwise be, as the only way to recuperate stamina is by holding you hands still. Enemies will also dodge and block your hits too, making them more than just simple punching bags.
Getting staggered happens in two stages. A powerful punch can put you in a quick out-of-body experience that requires you to match up your hands to two targets, allowing you to pop back into the fight.
Image captured by Road to VR
More devastating punches can knock you way out of the ring, requiring you to ‘run’ back and jump back into your body. These are fun and truly creative ways of making you feel like you’re hanging on to a bare thread in the more difficult matches.
Image captured by Road to VR
A few methods of activating slow motion sequences really drive home the cinematic nature of the game, as you dodge a punch or land a big hit that places temporary target’s on your opponent’s body.
All of these systems work extremely well, but the learning curve is somewhat steep. There is no visible HP or stamina bar, so spending some extra time in training is probably a good thing so you can start to really feel out how many hits you can take and how many you can give before throwing yourself at the actual matches.
I beat the campaign mode in about an hour an a half on normal difficulty, although that was stretched out over several sessions simply based on my own admittedly out-of-shape cardio abilities. It’s easy to see using Creed: Rise to Glory in an actual cardio routine to get less than active people (like me) up from the chair and getting their heart pumping. I felt enemies weren’t terribly varied in the attack styles, as it seems difficulty is mostly based more on the NPC’s individual punch strength and HP.
While I was left somewhat disappointed by the shortness of the campaign mode, thankfully you can mix and match enemies, gyms, and boxing locales in free play. Another big addition recently announced to arrive on all platforms is PvP online multiplayer. Online multiplayer presents a good opportunity to really turn the technical difficulty up, as live players exploit tactics that NPCs simply can’t think of, like running around the ring and going for a drive-by punch. These online battles are intense, and provided some of my most tiring battles.
While at times on the cartoonish side, character models and their animations are very well-done and can be genuinely intimidating too. Seeing a near seven foot-tall guy trying to hit me in the face isn’t something I’m really used to, and even though nothing bad can happen outside of accidentally punching a wall/TV/monitor, there are some moments before the fight when you subconsciously size up the competition.
Image captured by Road to VR
Impressive and realistic set pieces help ground you in the world, although it’s clear Creed: Rise to Glory is definitely bucking up against some of the inherent limitations of the current state of VR. Without any bodily feedback outside of the controller’s haptics, it’s difficult to completely immerse yourself in the act of dodging and blocking, two things that require more than visual cues to accomplish. Oftentimes I had my gloves up, obscuring my vision, and without force feedback (which at this point isn’t possible), you just have to rely on the controller’s buzzy haptics and the game’s visual cues to tell if you’ve hit your opponent or pulled your punch too early. That said, it’s great to know that Creed VR has entirely bypassed the ‘waggle simulator’ trend of earlier titles, as it not only requires you to punch quickly, but do it accurately for the sake of lost stamina.
The game’s AI is pretty darn good. At moments I could feel the AI sussing out my head’s position and aiming accurately for my noggin despite I had dodged an earlier punch. NPCs feel mostly solid, although you can actually run through them if you want.
Image captured by Road to VR
While based mostly on room-scale movement, there are moments when you need to artificially move from point A to point B, including when you square off at the beginning of the fight and during moments when you’re knocked out and have to run back to your body to continue the fight. Moving in the game is accomplished by swinging your arms while holding down the applicable buttons on each controller, which sends you sliding forward. Artificial locomotion is generally useless during fights, so it usually comes down to standing in place and punching it out like rock’em sock’em robots, albeit with a little more finesse and dodging/blocking abilities.
Both room-scale and the game’s only other locomotion scheme, detailed above, are extremely comfortable ways of moving around VR.
That said, this is a very physical standing game that will get your heart beating, and definitely get you sweating through the padding on your headset if you’re not careful. That’s not so much a knock on the game’s comfort rating as it is an advisory to plan ahead. Pop on some gym shorts for an extended session, because you’ll soon be huffing and puffing with all the dodging, bobbing and punching you’ll be doing.
Like with many more physical VR games, there’s a risk of hyperextending your arms alla tennis elbow, so it may be best to take frequent breaks if you have some pre-existing joint issues.
