Usually, at this time of year, you’d expect quite a few videogames to arrive as developers cash in on the festive season. November wasn’t too bad but the start of December is a little light on big hitters. Nevertheless, there are still a few virtual reality (VR) titles on their way and maybe some will pop up out of the blue?
Haunted House Escape: A VR Experience – MEPTIK
A classic haunted manor escape room experience, Haunted House Escape drops you in this seemingly abandoned building with one goal; find the hidden keys and try to escape.
It’s time for PC VR players to find out if this homage to air guitar really does rock! Originally created with Oculus Quest’s hand tracking in mind, to play the Steam version of Unpluggedyou’ll need Valve Index controllers to detect all those fingers. If you do, then you’ll be able to step into a world where Steel Panther’s frontman Satchel is your rock mentor, teaching you all the skills to play songs from The Offspring, Weezer and Ozzy Osbourne.
It’s hunting season all year round with Virtual Hunter, and you don’t have to endure the elements. Coming to Steam Early Access next week, Virtual Hunter will feature a 4x4km open map, a bow, shotgun and rifle, and two animal species: red deer and European hare to begin with. The developer aims to fully release the shooter in 2022, Adding more animals, weapons, items and other features.
Halfbrick Studios’ Fruit Ninja VR was a big hit in 2016, offering a great entry point for VR newcomers thanks to its intuitive gameplay. Next week sees the early access release of the sequel, Fruit Ninja VR 2, promising even more fruit-slicing mayhem along with new features including a bow and an explorable environment.
Want a unique way to rock out in virtual reality (VR)? Then Unplugged is probably just what you need, if you have an Oculus Quest 2, of course. However, next week that headset exclusivity will end as developer Anotherway and Vertigo Games have announced a PC VR release date – with one small caveat. Plus, the Quest version is getting passthrough support and a new song is on the way.
As you may already be aware, Unplugged is about emulating air guitar by utilising Oculus Quest’s hand tracking functionality. At no point do you need controllers which makes porting to other platforms a little bit tricky. Anotherway has managed to though, supporting all Valve Index Controller compatible headsets on Steam.
And then there’s the new Oculus Quest passthrough feature. You may already use passthrough as your background (rather than an Oculus Home environment) but in Unplugged it allows you to blend the virtual stage with your physical environment.
“We always knew that blending a virtual stage with your real place would be a super interesting feature for Unplugged. Getting to see your friends or family cheering you while you play… that’s a perfect combo! Now, thanks to the Quest Passthrough, we can make this kind of experience possible,” says Anotherway in a statement. “On the list of venues, you’ll be able to select a new mixed reality one, which can be your own living room, your kitchen, or wherever space you feel like rocking!”
As for the new song, the developers once again worked with Steel Panther with the rock band creating a tailor-made song called Unplug Yourself, a teaser of which you can see below.
All of this free new content as well as the PC VR release will all land on 2nd December 2021. The Steam version will retail for $24.99 USD/€24.99 EUR. For further updates on Unplugged, keep reading VRFocus.
Unplugged brought its Rock Band-style gameplay to Quest back in October thanks to the standalone headset’s optical finger-tracking, letting you essentially play ‘air guitar’ instead of using a plastic peripheral. A SteamVR version of the game (Index controllers only) was slated to arrive today, however the studio says it still needs a few more days to prepare the game for release.
Update (December 2nd, 2021): Vertigo Games and developers Anotherway announced that Unplugged will not be releasing on December 2nd as previously planned, but will be delayed by nearly two weeks as the team still needs to “finetune the SteamVR release and MetaQuest update.”
The new release date on PC VR is set for December 14th. The original article announcing its release on PC VR follows below.
Original Article (November 23rd, 2021): Anotherway announced that Unplugged is coming to PC VR headsets on December 2nd (see update), providing support for SteamVR headsets that have the ability to use Valve Index controllers.
That essentially narrows its down to any headset using the SteamVR tracking standard, which includes Valve Index, HTC Vive, Vive Pro, Vive Pro 2, Vive Cosmos Elite, and Pimax headsets. The reasoning behind it: Index controllers provide five-finger tracking; only four are required to register the individual finger positions you need to perform specific chords.
To celebrate the PC VR release, the studio is tossing out a new Steel Panther song, which will come as a free update to both Meta Quest and PC VR. A Quest Passthrough option is also coming to the Quest version of the game which will let users blend the virtual stage with their living rooms.
We noted that Quest’s sometimes unreliable hand tracking really killed a lot of the fun of Unplugged, which is partly why we gave it a somewhat middling [6/10] in our review on Quest when it launched back in late October. It will certainly be interesting to see how it improves with the addition of Index controllers, since we know those are rock-solid.
All of Unplugged’s songs are now unlocked and available from the start of the game, removing the progression system that the game launched with. A new system replaces it that sees players completing challenges to unlock new venues instead of songs.
At launch, Unplugged’s fantastic tracklist was used as the main incentive for progression — you started with just one ‘record’ (the game’s name for a collection of 5 songs) and completed challenges for each record that allow you to unlock more records/songs gradually.
However, many players – including myself – encountered some difficulty with the challenges as the complexity of the songs ramped up, making the game feel quite challenging, frustrating and for some, not possible within the constraints of the hand tracking technology, especially when trying to unlock the final record.
Some players also expressed disappointment that not all songs were available from the outset.
The latest Unplugged update addresses all of this in a big way. All of the songs are now fully unlocked from the beginning of the game. Instead of progression unlocking more songs, it now is linked to venues — record challenges still exist, but have been tweaked and now work towards unlocking the different venues, from small to large.
The initial system of tying venues to songs/records was a fun way to emulate the career of a rock star, but now you’ll instead be able to play any song at any venue you’ve unlocked, using a new venue selector.
There’s also been some difficulty adjustments – the percent of notes required for a gold score is now lower, and it’s harder to fail when playing on easy difficulty.
Minor bug fixes have also been made, along with volume adjustments to make some songs slightly louder. There’s also been changes to the number of fans required to unlock new guitars.
Overall, these changes seem like a step in the right direction — not only do they address concerns around the difficulty and hand tracking, but they also make all of the songs accessible to players from the get-go. That should make it easier to demo the game to new players and let people jump in with little-to-no experience.
What do you think of these Unplugged changes? Let us know in the comments.
Unplugged is working on a fix for the difficulties some players are experiencing in unlocking all of its songs, particularly with some objective conditions on Hard difficulty.
We have got that feedback from several players. We will fix it soon
The news was prompted by Twitter user YoJayWatsUrName, who expressed frustration at difficulty unlocking all the game’s songs:
I REALLY love this game. With that being said I’m going to be honest. I don’t think hand tracking is quite there for the precision this game wants on hard difficulty. I think objectives need to be removed in exchange for experience to unlock songs. – @YoJayWatsUrName on Twitter
The Unplugged account responded to that tweet, noting:
We have got that feedback from several players. We will fix it soon – @UnpluggedVR on Twitter
It’s unclear exactly what the fix might entail, but it’s likely either changing the requirements of certain objectives to unlock records or removing certain objectives altogether. In our review, we noted that the difficulty curve felt fair but that the hand tracking took some consideration to get working at an ideal level, particularly in the opening few hours of the game.
At first, I personally struggled with similar problems in unlocking records but once I started to understand the conditions under which Unplugged’s hand tracking worked best, I had less problems overall and was able to unlock records and new songs much faster. At the time of writing my review, I had yet to unlock the final record and needed just one last objective completed in order to do so — get a Diamond score on a song on Hard difficulty. While I hadn’t reached a Diamond score, I got very close and it certainly didn’t feel impossible or the fault of the game/hand tracking — if anything, it was just time limitations. It will be interesting to see what changes are implemented to adjust for feedback — hopefully, people will be able to more reliably and easily unlock the songs soon.
Have you tried Unplugged? What do you think? Let us know in the comments. You can read our review here.
Unplugged is like Guitar Hero, although instead of picking up a dedicated peripheral and jamming away, it relies on Quest’s native hand-tracking to let you shred on an air guitar without controllers. It’s a fun idea that can work really well at moments, however the headset’s optical hand-tracking still isn’t super reliable, which adds a layer of frustration on top of what could truly be a great game.
Unplugged Details:
Available On: Oculus Quest (coming soon to PC VR) Release Date: October 21st, 2021 Price: $25 Developer: Anotherway Publisher: Vertigo Games Reviewed On: Quest 2
Gameplay
Unplugged plops you down, tells you to physically roll up your sleeves, clean the grease from the four camera lenses on your Quest, and start jamming away on an air guitar to an unlockable catalogue spanning 50 years of rock—no dedicated peripherals or Touch controllers required, just hands.
The rhythm game’s launch setlist tosses 23 rock hits your way, and includes an awesome selection of music from bands like The Offspring, Tenacious D, Ozzy Osbourne, Rush, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and more. As a rock fan, I really love the selection here:
Image courtesy Vertigo Games
Each song is playable in easy, normal and hard difficulty modes, which is determined by the number of different finger positions thrown at you. Each of the game’s five venues contain around five unlockable songs you can play through until you make it to the final gig, an arena packed with an adoring crowd.
Unlike Guitar Hero or Rock Band, which feature dedicated controllers with five buttons placed in specific spots on the guitar’s neck, Unplugged turns the formula on its head by making you perform different fingering positions on a literal air guitar while matching them to four zones on its neck. Like all of those guitar-based rhythm games, you’ll have to strum on the beat to hit each note correctly.
Thankfully you don’t have to constantly stare at the front of the neck itself, as the side also features small indicator lights showing both your current finger position and hand position relative to the four target zones. I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever be able to build the sort of muscle memory that you gain with controller-based rhythm games simply because of how transitory the whole air guitar experience is—and that’s irrespective of Quest’s less than perfect hand-tracking.
And the lack of 100 percent precise hand-tracking is a shame, because everything else about Unplugged is legitimately awesome. The tutorial, which is led by the infectious and suitably glam Steel Panther guitarist ‘Satchel’, teaches you all of the skills you need to get jamming away at your own pace. The music available is all really well known stuff too that is a real joy to jam out to. Ok, I kind of hate Satchel because he’s mean and called me a nerd, but the ’80s douchebag vibe totally fits.
Image captured by Road to VR
Scoring is pretty typical for rhythm games, and it measures hits in ‘awesome’ and ‘perfect’, with perfect combos netting you more points. It also has what I’d consider a pretty generous buffer before the fail state so I could get through most songs on normal without seeing the dreaded ‘GAME OVER’ screen. One really cool touch: at the end of a particularly good set the audience will toss stuff on stage that you can grab mid-air for extra points.
I still haven’t gotten good enough to do most on hard difficulty though, but that may also come down to hand-tracking throwing me for a loop, which I talk more about below.
Immersion
At first I thought the inherent lack of haptic feedback would stymie the game and make it less fun than a similar controller-based game like Rock Band VR on Rift. Conceptually at least, that’s not true for me. If hand-tracking were more solid I would put it nearly equal to a controller-based rhythm game in the amount of fun and skill you can build. Simply put: when it works, Unplugged is awesome.
And although haptics would undeniably help the game, Unplugged does a good job filling in the gaps with its array of expressive visuals. The game’s beat map follows the neck of your guitar, which means you’ll always have the neck front and center, making it easy to not only tell what finger position you need and where it has to go. Strumming on the other hand (no pun intended) is a binary action that has to be done with a enough force to register.
Image courtesy Vertigo Games
But even in optimal lighting conditions with a high contrast background, you’re bound to see some jitter and experience some latency too when it comes to hand and individual finger position, which can be super annoying to deal with when you’re trying to build the physical skillset required to hit notes just right.
It feels a bit like having a button on your controller that works 90 percent of the time. That’s more than enough to get you through the experience, and probably even enjoy it, but not enough to inspire confidence in your actions. Here I go through finger counting on both hands just to show how off Quest can be at times. Notice how it hangs on three.
Here’s a few tips to get best case scenario hand-tracking input—if you don’t mind babying Unplugged into having a good time, that is. You have to be very deliberate in your finger positions to make sure they not only register correctly, but also register in enough time for whatever latency there is to resolve itself before you strum to the beat. Definitely take the time to setup your environment so you have a high contrast background and adequate lighting, and you’ll be able to hit that 90ish percent accuracy you’ll need to play and have fun.
Granted, a PC VR version is coming at some point this year, although it will only support controllers with full-fingered tracking like Valve Index. I would much rather play it that way than dealing with the jumpy inaccuracies of Quest’s hand tracking.
Comfort
There’s no artificial locomotion at all, so it can be a really comfortable experience provided you aren’t prone to neck strain.
At first I played Unplugged sort of curled up to get a good view of the guitar’s neck, sort of like a weak impression of Kurt Cobain at MTV Unplugged in New York, circa 1993. You should resist the urge to look down a bunch though and instead position the air guitar more upright so you don’t need to crane your neck so much. Neck muscles aren’t made to deal with off-center weight for long periods of time, so just make sure not to push yourself.
With support for Meta’s Hand Tracking 2.0 update, Unplugged is more responsive than ever, surpassing everything other hand tracking game on Quest. Here’s our updated Unplugged review.
Note: This review was originally published on release in October 2021. In May 2022, we updated the review to reflect the recent changes in technology and gameplay since launch, including a section below addressing the improvements specifically.
Unplugged is essentially VR’s spiritual successor to classic rock games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
But gone are the days of bulky, plastic peripherals; you only need your hands to play Unplugged. This lets the genre move towards something more immersive and thrilling, keeping the same spirit of those classic titles while also doing something completely different and new.
But before getting into further detail, let’s get one thing straight about Unplugged: the feeling of using your hands to act out air guitar moves is a completely unmatched experience and technical accomplishment on Quest 2. No other hand tracking experience comes even remotely close in terms of sheer thrill and innovation.
This isn’t a one-to-one simulation of real guitar, but instead it embarks on a fantasy-fulfilling journey to make you feel like a true rockstar, shredding through air and playing to a pumping crowd. In its best moment, it feels absolutely unparalleled.
Rocking Out With A Killer Setlist
While the experience is wholly unique, Unplugged’s core gameplay loop is fairly simple — make chord shapes with the fingers in your left hand, strum in time with your right. The more consecutive notes you land, the bigger combo you’ll build and the higher you’ll score. Think Guitar Hero crossed with Tap Tap Revenge and Beat Saber.
The track mappings may not be quite as complex or technical as rock games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band just yet, but they do push Quest’s hand tracking technology much further than you would expect.
While Unplugged was still a fantastic experience at launch, it was also nonetheless slightly limited by the Quest’s hand tracking capabilities at the time. However, recent leaps in technology with Hand Tracking 2.0 have significantly improved the experience on Quest 2. There’s still the occasional hiccup, but fast movements and strumming are more dependable than ever.
This has also allowed Anotherway to go back and re-map the entire collection of tracks, adding increased nuance, complexity and notes. This increased challenge also brings with it a higher skill ceiling, and Quest 2’s hand tracking is able to keep up with a degree of speed, reliability and accuracy that we’ve never seen before.
There’s a solid tracklist of well-known rock songs to work through, especially for a debut rhythm game. You’ll recognize tracks like Say It Ain’t So by Weezer, Bohemian Like You by The Dandy Warhols or Should I Stay Or Should I Go by The Clash, just to name a few. Even the lesser known tracks have clearly been picked with care — each one feels distinct and offers a slightly different style of mapping, matching the feel of the songs themselves.
Songs are divided into groups, or ‘records’, which roughly ascend in difficulty and complexity. All songs are unlocked from the start with three difficulty levels each – Easy, Normal, Hard. Each record has three associated challenges – completing those will help you unlock bigger venues to play in, starting in a small bar and working up to an arena. There’s also passthrough support, which lets you to play in a stylized version of your real surroundings.
Learning the Ropes
Unplugged isn’t an easy game – there’s lots of challenge to be had, especially on the higher difficulties. The novelty of the concept means there’s a bit of a learning curve to work through as well. Luckily, the state of the game post-launch makes that smoother than ever for beginners.
It’s also essential to give the game the best possible conditions for optimal hand tracking. As you’ll be told in the tutorial, led by Steel Panther’s Satchel, roll up your sleeves, play in a well lit area with high contrast between your hands and the background, and wipe the headset’s camera lenses before playing.
Follow those rules and you’ll find the hand tracking to be extremely reliable and responsive. It’s now rare to encounter significant tracking errors while playing, which means it’s much easier to tell how and why you’re at fault when you make mistakes mid-track.
Once the initial acclimitization is over, you’ll quickly start to improve and feel more and more like a rock god. Anotherway is aware that some finger shapes and chord changes are harder to nail than others, so Unplugged’s collection of tracks is cultivated to smartly adapt the mapping across the records, easing players into the action and gradually turning up the complexity.
The first few records focus on simpler shapes and use just a few fingers at a time, sticking to very straight, on-beat rhythms. As you get into the latter records, the mapping becomes more melodic, finger shapes more complex and chord changes more frequent, with less straightforward rhythms. When you miss a note or play something incorrectly, the game will play a cracked guitar tone and cut the audio for corresponding section you missed – a very welcome change added post-launch change.
There are also slide notes, which don’t require any strumming, and vibrato sustained notes that grant extra points for shaking your fingers up and down the fret. Solos are the highlights of each map, which tend to focus on slide and vibrato notes as well as special shredding sequences that let you go wild with ad-libbed, mindless air shredding. It’s an unbelievably satisfying feeling when you manage to nail every note in a solo perfectly.
The mapping doesn’t exclusively replicate the guitar lines of each track either. In sequences where guitars are minimal or missing from a track, you’ll play notes representing other instruments as well, such as vocals of bass.
There’s a sense of manageable challenge across all the tracks – as you become more acquainted with each, you’ll probably find yourself replaying favourites over and over just to get a higher score. In short, it’s disgustingly addictive.
Pressure Points
Even with the recent hand tracking improvements, there remain just a few caveats to keep in mind. There is still a tiny – but sometimes noticeable – amount of latency between your hands’ actions and them being registered in-game. It’s an issue inherent with the technology, not the game itself, but it can nonetheless mess with your timing on complex sequences here and there. Focusing on the beat of the music itself – and looking slightly ahead of the fret – lessens the latency’s impact.
Likewise, there remain a few transitions that feel a little too quick and difficult to land reliably, especially on Hard. Moving from one position on the fret to another while also changing chords seems to be a pressure point and one of the only remaining areas where hand tracking can feel ever so slightly inadequate.
Tracking aside, Unplugged doesn’t always do the best job of accurately representing its more complex rhythmic sequences. Visually, the gaps between notes and chords often look equally spaced, even when the actual rhythm the game expects you to play is not. This can make it hard to interpret fast and irregular sections, especially if you’re not already familiar with the song. Trial and error will often clear this up, but it’s an area for improvement nonetheless.
Mini Games, Modes, Modifiers
Higher difficulties also introduce some mid-track mini games, such as ‘cursed’ flaming notes that have to be hit perfectly. Missing a flaming note will send a string out of tune – time slows down and a guitar neck will appear floating in front you, prompting you to quickly re-tune before you can resume playing. It’s an interesting idea, but feels more tedious and distracting in practice.
You can also boost your score by hitting combo cubes with your guitar neck as they appear mid-song. Advanced players might be able to hit these with dramatic rockstar swings, but I found it difficult to pull off without introducing tracking problems or missing notes.
You can also amp up the audience after a good run by the horns and catching undergarments thrown from the crowd. This gives you points to spend on cosmetic guitar models to use in-game, but the selection a bit underwhelming. The biggest and most iconic brands like Fender and Les Paul are missing – perhaps understandably, given how new the franchise is.
Unlike many other rhythm games, there’s also no modifiers or alternate modes just yet, which feels like a missed opportunity. Giving players more options to play the way they want, like you can do in Beat Saber or Pistol Whip, would be a fantastic addition.
Post-Launch Improvements with Hand Tracking 2.0
The difference between Unplugged at launch and now is close to night-and-day – and that’s saying something, given the baseline was already very impressive. Everything has been improved and the experience is better now than I ever thought it would be on Quest 2.
Previously, some sessions with Unplugged used to feel like you were wrestling with the hand tracking just to find the perfect conditions for the game to operate in. Now, it’s much less fussy and infinitely more reliable in a wider range of settings. Optimal conditions remain important, but you’ll spend significantly less time adjusting everything and more time rocking out. The aforementioned quick transitions are the only area that remain an occasional hang-up, but that’s forgivable given the huge leaps elsewhere.
Other smaller changes – unlocking all songs from the start, cutting out audio when notes are missed, re-mapping tracks to account for Hand Tracking 2.0 – are more than welcome and push the experience closer to in style to classics like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
Unplugged Review – Final Verdict
Unplugged feels like the first app to take Quest’s hand tracking to a new conceptual and technical level, using the technology to breathe life into the imaginary and fulfil a fantasy of every rock fan.
At launch, the concept felt just slightly ahead of the technology, perhaps a few years behind developments that could take it to the next level. But only seven months later, it’s shocking how quickly Meta’s software has caught up and improved the experience from all angles. The baseline was already strong, but the game is now more accurate and responsive than ever.
Though there’s still room for improvement, Anotherway and Vertigo Games have landed on a concept that is addicting and completely unique. There’s really nothing else quite like Unplugged on the Quest platform – or any VR platform, for that matter. It’s a shining example of how VR and AR technology can offer totally unique experiences, previously thought unimaginable.
It sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. For that reason alone, every Quest owner should give Unplugged a try.
UploadVR recently changed its review guidelines, and this is one of our new Essential review labels. You can read more about our review guidelines here.
There has been some virtual reality (VR) filled months in 2021 but October definitely looks like it’ll be taking the crown. This past week’s hardware reveals have been quite intense and next week there are more videogames to get excited about, one, in particular, is returning from the grave.
Viro Move – Fit Reality
For those that love getting fit in VR, Viro Move aims to have it all, combining a selection of rhythm action styles in one experience. Designed to help improve stamina, agility, and cardiovascular fitness, Viro Move features separate sword, punching and shooting gameplay modes or the Weapons Master mode that switches between them all.
Coming to Oculus Quest’s App Lab next week is PowerBeatsVR, another VR fitness experience that was originally launched last year on Steam. Box, dodge, and squat to loads of energetic music, with professionally designed workouts, multiple difficulty levels and calorie tracking.
Supported platform(s): Oculus Quest/Quest 2
Launch date: 20th October
Unplugged – Anotherway/Vertigo Games
Oculus Quest videogames feature heavy next week and none are more unique to the platform than Anotherway’s Unplugged. Utilising the headset’s hand tracking capability to the max, Unplugged is all about unleashing your inner air guitar rock god, playing classic tunes like The Kids Aren’t Alright by The Offspring and Ozzy Osbourne’s Flying High Again; all with your hands. Strum and play a virtual guitar, trying to impress the crowd with your axe skills.
Resident Evil 4 caused quite the commotion when it was announced earlier this year. Not only for the fact that one of the biggest entries in the series was getting a VR edition but that the title would be the first Oculus Quest 2 exclusive. Armature Studio has rebuilt Capcom’s classic with immersive VR controls, manual reloading on the guns, dual weapon handling, seated and standing support, and much more. The 2005 entry took players deep into rural Spain, tasked with rescuing the U.S. President’s daughter from a cult called the Los Illuminados.
A Viking-inspired rhythm action title from French team WanadevStudio, Ragnarock hit PC VR headsets during the summer followed by an App Lab release for Quest. Next week is the official Oculus Quest launch of Ragnarock, a drumming videogame featuring a mix of metal and Celtic songs from Alestorm, Gloryhammer, Saltatio Mortis, Wind Rose and more.
Looking for the new VR games October 2021 list? We’ve got you covered with our full rundown.
October is a frankly daunting month for VR releases with an enormous number of new games to talk about. From yet another new version of Resident Evil 4 to the launch of the final Oculus Rift exclusive, there’s sure to be something for you in this month’s selection. Let’s take a look.
As always you’ll find most of these titles on the Quest, Steam and PSVR stores.
New VR Games October 2021
Men in Black Arcade (October 1) – Dreamscape LA
Get down to Dreamscape in LA to be one of the first to experience a new Men in Black location-based VR experience. We don’t know what the experience involves but we’re guessing aliens, suits and hopefully some Noisy Crickets.
Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey (October 5)
Classic color matching gameplay comes to PSVR in a new version of Puzzle Bobble that reimagines the timeless series for 3D. Shoot bobbles with the Move controllers, take part in competitive multiplayer and, if you’re so inclined, join in on flatscreen too.
Song in the Smoke (October 7) – Quest, PSVR, Rift
17-Bit’s promising VR survival game will have you hunting for food, crafting resources and adapting to an advanced ecosystem with intelligent creature AI. We’re hoping that Song in the Smoke will offer a deep survival experience anyone can enjoy.
Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife (October 7) – PSVR
Having already launched on Quest and PC, Fast Travel Games’ spooky survival horror brings the World of Darkness universe to PSVR early in October. Become a Wraith, avoid horrifying Specters and try to solve the mystery behind your death.
Shadowgate VR: The Mines of Mythrok (October 7) – Quest
A fantasy adventure game exclusive to Oculus Quest, Shadowgate is actually the first VR entry in a very long-running series that dates back to Macintosh PCs. You’ll wield magic, ride minecarts and explore ancient dwarven mines in what’s intended to be the first part of a new series.
Loco Dojo Unleashed (October 7) – Quest
Mario Party for VR, anyone? That’s pretty much Loco Dojo’s pitch, pitting up to four players head-to-head in frantic minigames. Unleashed is a revamped version specific to Quest, but it thankfully still features Brian Blessed and cross-buy with the Rift version.
Lone Echo II (October 12) – Rift
After numerous delays, the final Oculus Rift exclusive is nearly upon us. Lone Echo is a gorgeous, story-driven sci-fi series with a deep focus on exploration, platforming and puzzle solving. We can’t wait to catch up with Jack and Liv’s zero gravity adventures later this month.
Eye of the Temple (October 14) – PC VR
Eye of the Temple has been a long-time coming, but we’re still excited for this room-scale-based platformer. Navigate an ancient temple using moving tiles and crack your whip to avoid deadly traps. Just make sure you have the space to play before diving into this one.
Unplugged (October 21) – Quest (PC later)
Think of Unplugged as Guitar Hero… just without a guitar. This VR rhythm game uses finger-tracking for a unique air guitar experience. The tracklist includes the likes of The Clash, Rush, Weezer and Ozzy Osbourne. But will it actually work? We’ll find out later this month but don’t miss our Access coverage for more details.
Resident Evil 4 (October 21) – Quest 2
The immortal survival horror hit gets a brand new version designed exclusively for the Oculus Quest 2. Relive Leon’s journey through the horrors and try not to get your head cut off as you undertake a mission to save the President’s daughter. How will the game translate to VR? We’re eager to find out.
Do Not Open (Ocotber 31) – PSVR
PSVR fans have a real Halloween treat with Do Not Open on October 31st, a horror game announced last year where you’ll face plenty of scary puzzles as you try to escape the house. Heads up – puzzles, riddles and events are meant to change with each subsequent playthrough.
Iron Rebellion (Possibly October) – PC VR
This is a tentative date but the developers of promising VR mech game, Iron Rebellion, say that Early Access is just weeks away. We’ve had our eye on its immersive combat for some time, so fingers crossed this one delivers.
And that’s the list of New VR Games October 2021! What are you looking forward to? Let us know in the comments below!
Anotherway and Vertigo Games today revealed the full Unplugged tracklist, confirming a host of new songs for the upcoming VR rhythm game.
You can see the full tracklist below, which adds artists like The Clash, Rush, T. Rex and Tenacious D to the game. Previously we knew that The Offspring, Weezer and Ozzy Osbourne would all appear, along with some smaller, lesser-known bands like Bumblefoot and Freak Kitchen.
Full Unplugged Tracklist Revealed
Notable tracks from the full 23-strong tracklist include Should I Stay Or Should I Go by The Clash, Roadie by Tenacious D, Spirit In The Sky by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Hate To Say I Told You So by The Hives. Steel Panther’s Eye Of The Panther is also included, which is fitting given that the band’s guitarist, Satchel, serves as your virtual mentor in the campaign.
Unplugged is played entirely using hand-tracking technology. That means you don’t hold a real or plastic guitar but instead air guitar your way through the game’s songs. Aside from the lack of a peripheral the game works pretty much like Guitar Hero, getting you to match colored notes to the corresponding fingers as they stream towards you. We were skeptical that the hand-tracking on Oculus Quest could keep up with the game but came away cautiously optimistic from our first hands-on session.
Unplugged launches on Oculus Quest on October 21. It’s also coming to PC VR headsets with finger-tracking capabilities (including the Valve Index controllers) later on. Check back later today for a video Q&A with Vertigo Games producer, Marcus Henderson, live from our weekly Gamescast.
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