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Everything announced at PlayStation’s May 2024 State of Play
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PlayStation State of Play, May 2024: How to watch and what to expect
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Community Download: What’s Your Scariest VR Horror Moment?
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want you to close your eyes and think back to the scariest VR horror moment you’ve experienced in a headset.
Horror and VR go together perfectly. Usually when playing a good, atmospheric horror game I’ve been known to turn off the lights, put on headphones, and try to limit all outside distractions so I can get properly immersed. That’s the best way to make sure the scares really hit home and get under your skin.
If you’re not getting goose bumps with chills down your spine, then what even is the point?
There are lots of great VR horror games and now with last week’s release of the new game mode in Affected: The Manor as well as Layers of Fear VR on Quest, and now this week’s release of Five Nights at Freddy’s VR on Quest, we’re due for a bit of spooky summer thrills.
In terms of scariest moment though, It’s hard for me to pick just one moment. I’ve reviewed many of the best VR horror games out there, from Resident Evil 7 VR and Until Dawn: Rush of Blood to A Chair in a Room: Greenwater, The Exorcist VR, and more. There’s a lot of great moments.
To this day though, the thing that sticks out most in my memory is from Resident Evil 7 on PSVR when, I’ll just say “she” to avoid spoilers, lunges at you near the beginning of the game, with her deformed and rabid face, and stabs you with a knife. It was so up close and personal it honestly made me uncomfortable. Then she chops off your hand and for a split second my heart sank and I really think it convinced me I was in actual physical danger.
It’s still the only VR game to literally give me nightmares because of how visceral it all felt.
What about for you? What’s the scariest moment you’ve had in VR?
The post Community Download: What’s Your Scariest VR Horror Moment? appeared first on UploadVR.
The 15 Very Best VR Shooters For Rift, Vive, PSVR, and Windows VR
Over the last two and a half years we’ve gotten a lot of VR shooters. From zombie-slaying adventures and sci-fi romps through the stars, to hardcore military simulations and hunting dinosaurs on a lonely island, there’s been something for just about everybody.
Now with quite a few promising VR shooters on the horizon we’ve decided to round up our list of the very best 15 VR shooters that you can play right now on Rift, Vive, PSVR, and Windows VR headsets while you get ready for the next wave of intense FPS action.
All entries are listed alphabetically, any past entries that may have been removed are listed at the bottom before the “Coming Soon” section.
Arizona Sunshine (Rift, Vive, PSVR, and Windows VR)
Vertigo Games’ zombie-killing adventure, Arizona Sunshine, is still the best game featuring the walking undead. It’s got a solid campaign, cooperative multiplayer, and an addictive horde mode. Everything is ultra-polished and it’s just a joy to play. Can’t recommend this one enough.
Compound (Rift, Vive, Windows VR)
Your eyes are not deceiving you: that video above is actually what Compound, a 2018 VR shooter, looks like. It’s honestly like you’ve set foot inside of a classic 90s-era PC FPS like Wolfenstein or Quake. From our preview: “[Compound] recaptures the revelatory 3D thrills of sneaking around Castle Wolfenstein, hugging a pixelated wall and quickly poking around a corner for a few pot shots at unsuspecting enemies, opening a door and leaping in fright at the sight of an armed goon opening fire, or the relief that comes with discovering a cache of health. But there’s renewed enthusiasm in unearthing the core of the first-person shooter that takes Compound far further than a faithful love letter.”
Farpoint (PSVR Exclusive)
Farpoint was released as the flagship title for Sony’s PSVR Aim Controller and it does a great job of showcasing the device. We wouldn’t recommend playing it without the controller, in fact. What you’ll get is a decent campaign, 1v1 PvP maps, solo challenge maps, and co-op wave-based maps to play with a friend. It’s a lot of content and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a VR shooter that just feels better to play than Farpoint.
Firewall Zero Hour (PSVR Exclusive)
I’ll just quote my review here: “Firewall Zero Hour defies the odds by delivering a multiplayer-focused VR shooter that actually lives up to its potential. If you don’t have a PS Aim controller yet, then you should buy one for this game even though it technically supports DualShock 4 as well. If you don’t have a PSVR headset yet, then you should buy one for this game. With a few improvements and additions, First Contact could turn what is already a must-have PSVR game into a genre-defining one.”
From Other Suns (Rift Exclusive)
Imagine if you took the ship management aspects out of something like FTL then married it with a procedurally generated roguelike with a Star Trek Away Team-style skin. That’s basically From Other Suns. It’s a blast on co-op and is basically infinitely replayable.
Gunheart (Rift, Vive, and Windows VR)
This is about the closest you’re gonna get to something like Borderlands in VR right now. The drop-in, drop-out co-op works great, missions are fun and replayable, and there’s a ton of stuff to unlock in terms of guns, weapon mods, and cosmetic items. The movement features a mixture of free locomotion, teleporting, and excellent floaty jumps. Oh — and there’s PvP!
Island 359 (Rift and Vive)
Hunting dinosaurs is terrifying, but it’s also fun. That’s the underlying premise that Island 359 was founded on. Think of it as a survival shooter that drops you into a jungle and asks you to hunt deadly dinos for survival. With a lot of weapons and game modes to pick from, it’s the kind of VR game that keeps on giving.
Onward (Rift and Vive)
Read More About Its Development Here
While still technically in Early Access, this was really the original hardcore VR shooter to put competitive FPS games on the map for the immersive medium. It’s got excellent mechanics, a strikingly realistic gameplay feel, and it does a great job of making you really feel like you’re in the middle of a war. Highly recommended.
Pavlov (Rift and Vive)
Read Our Impressions
Pavlov is what you get when someone looks at a game like Onward and says, “What if that, but a little less hardcore?” That’s the long and short of it. Pavlov is basically Counter-Strike VR and it totally works.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PSVR Exclusive)
About a year and a half after its release, this is still hands-down the scariest experience I’ve had in VR to date. Everything from the slow-building narrative, perfect shooter-based gameplay, gorgeously grotesque world, and horrifying violence make this a must-play for all PSVR owners.
Sairento (Rift and Vive)
If Raw Data and Robo Recall are a bit too tame for you, then Sairento may be able to scratch that itch. It’s got more high-flying action, time-slowing powers, and an excellent mixture of ninja elements to make you both look and feel like a badass superhero.
Serious Sam 3 VR: BFE (Rift, Vive, and Windows VR)
Croteam’s Serious Sam series is one of the longest-running pure adrenaline-based action shooter franchises on the market. It’s all about pure action with tons of enemies on-screen and lots of back-pedaling. Serious Sam 3 VR cuts no corners and even features online multiplayer.
Stand Out: VR Battle Royale (Rift, Vive, and Windows VR)
I don’t like rip-offs. That’s a blanket statement that covers my feelings on the topic…for the most part. In the case of Stand Out: VR Battle Royale I’m willing to make an exception. For all intents and purposes, this game is a rip-off of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) by taking that exact premise, art style, and even many minor rules and mechanics, and just adapting it for VR. In fact, even the logo looks about the same. It’s shameless, but damn if it isn’t a ton of fun despite the lack of polish.
Superhot VR (Rift, Vive, PSVR, and Windows VR)
Calling Superhot a shooter isn’t really accurate, but we had to include it on this list since it does feature lots of guns. In Superhot time only moves when you do, so it’s actually more of a puzzle game as you figure out how to take out all enemies without getting hit in this cerebral thriller.
Until Dawn: Rush of Blood (PSVR Exclusive)
This was a launch title for the PSVR and remains as one of the platform’s very best in terms of fun you can have behind a pair of dual-wielded guns. It’s actually just one 3-4 hour long roller coaster ride full of jump scares and bad guys waiting to be filled with lead. Beyond featuring some of the best sound design we’ve seen in a horror title yet, it’s also just a treat to play through.
(9/11/18 Update): This is a living, ever-evolving list. As of September 11, 2018, we’ve bumped Raw Data, Robo Recall, and Killing Floor: Incursion off of the list to make room for Stand Out: VR Battle Royale, Firewall Zero Hour, and Compound.
Coming Soon
Zero Killed (September 26th, Rift and Vive)
PC VR users already have Onward and Pavlov and PSVR users now have Firewall Zero Hour, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more realistic military shooters out there. This one is shaping up to be a mixture of Rainbow Six and Counter-Strike with tactical combat that still leans heavily on fast and intense gameplay. We’ll have impressions of this one very soon on the site.
Evasion (October 9th, Rift, Vive, and PSVR)
There are lots of single player-focused shooters on this list and the handful of multiplayer ones are mostly all about slow-paced tactical warfare — but not Evasion. Described as part co-op VR shooter and part “bullet hell” game, this one is all about staying mobile, leveraging your class abilities, and dodging enemy fire. The PSVR edition will support the Aim controller as well so this is one worth keeping your eye on.
Echo Combat (2018, Rift Exclusive)
Since it’s already gone through Open Beta, we imagine it’s not far off from release. Echo Combat takes the innovative movement system from Lone Echo and Echo Arena and marries it with Overwatch-style payload-moving FPS action.
Space Junkies (2018, Rift, Vive, and Windows VR)
Having just come off of a Closed Beta last weekend, Space Junkies is likely not far off from release either. This one feels a bit like the VR spiritual successor to Unreal Tournament with lots of zero-G jetpack flying action.
Defector (2018, Rift Exclusive)
If you’ve ever wanted to feel like the star of your own Mission Impossible film, then Defector could be the perfect game. Like, seriously. That’s what this is.
Zero Caliber (Early 2019)
We don’t know much about this one yet, but it already is on our list of most-anticipated VR shooters for sure. The art direction is beautiful and the co-op action looks like a great implementation of the sci-fi setting.
We undoubtedly missed some of your favorite VR shooters. Let us know what they are down in the comments below!
Tagged with: arizona sunshine, Compound, Evasion, Farpoint, Firewall: Zero Hour, onward, raw data, robo recall, serious sam, Until dawn, Zero Killed
The post The 15 Very Best VR Shooters For Rift, Vive, PSVR, and Windows VR appeared first on UploadVR.
The Inpatient Review: A Terrifying Trip Down Memory Lane
I’m typically not a fan of the “amnesiac protagonist” trope because it feels like a cheap way to force feed the player narrative details without any creative thought. But in the case of The Inpatient by Supermassive Games, a slow-paced psychological about a mental sanatorium in the snowy, Canadian mountains, the main character’s lack of memory is an essential part of the premise and story.
The Inpatient takes place on the same snow-covered mountain as Supermassive’s original Until Dawn (2015), just several decades earlier. Your character is a patient at a dark, creepy sanatorium in which archaic and painful experiments are just as common as the nightmares that follow. Knowledge of the successive game isn’t necessary to enjoy The Inpatient, but it certainly enhances and refines the experience.
While completing my stay as a patient, I briefly had a roommate that was convinced something more sinister was going on. I also interacted with an oppressive doctor that interrogated me, a few nurses that ranged from caring to suspicious, and a handful of other characters peppered throughout it all.
The main issue with The Inpatient is that, in its attempt to make you feel like the center of the story, it loses sight of the game’s supporting cast. What made Until Dawn so great is how expertly it juggled half a dozen characters and made you care about (or loathe) them all. But in the case of The Inpatient, you never spend long enough getting to know anyone to develop a relationship or see any progression of their motives or personalities.
This lack of real meat to the characters is amplified by the fact that the sense of presence and immersion is at its best when you’re talking to those same characters. The facial animations aren’t as good as Until Dawn’s or LA Noire VR’s, but they’re a step above most other VR games. And when you speak to characters and make dialog selections, you can do so by using your actual voice. As in, you literally speak the dialog choice out loud instead of picking it with the controller. Pressing X is still an option, but I opted to speak all of my choices. As long as there wasn’t a lot of background noise it understood me every time.
Honestly, every VR game needs this feature. Hearing a voice actor’s voice emanate from my face while I’m standing there in my character’s shoes in VR is one of the fastest ways to break immersion for me. By speaking things out loud, it sells the illusion that much more.
Sprinkled throughout the first half of the game (in total it’s about three hours long) are brief scenes rife with hallucinations and jump scares and I found myself tensing up in preparation for each of these moments. The slow-building tension, audio cues to guide your perspective, and esoteric imagery are all pitch-perfect on PSVR and it really underscores how much Supermassive must have learned while working on Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. The Inpatient is easily one of the creepiest VR games I’ve played.
There are also several moments in which the screen goes completely black and lets you hear some creepy voices in your head, which I assume is to do some quick behind-the-scenes loading, but it starts to get old near the end. Full loading screens with progress bars also happen far more often than I’d like to see in a VR game.
It’s really a shame that the controls aren’t better either. When using a DualShock 4 controller you can move forward with the left stick and rotate the camera with the right (either smoothly or in increments) but pressing back on the right stick is how you turn around and if you press diagnolly at all, it triggers the 180 turn, which means it will happen a lot when you’re just trying to rotate your view.
Using the Move controllers was a bit worse in my experience. You hold the Move button to go where your head is pointing and twist the right Move to rotate, but it was difficult to walk and look in a different direction at the same time. The result was that I felt like a tank that had to stop and pivot to turn anywhere — the sensation isn’t quite as bad with the DualShock 4. You lose hand presence, but the game has so few interactive moments as-is it wasn’t that big of a deal for slightly more tolerable controls.
True to the formula established in Until Dawn, The Inpatient utilizes a “Butterfly Effect” system once again. Every now and then choices that you make will display an animation of butterflies fluttering away to let you know that you just progressed down a fork in the narrative road, so to speak. If you replay the game and make different choices then different things play out.
From what I could tell these divergent narrative moments were far less pronounced in The Inpatient as opposed to Until Dawn, but I did pick up on a few differences here and there, especially with regard to the ending.
If you played it then you might recall that 2016’s PSVR-exclusive pseudo-sequel, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, also took place in the same universe, but it used a much looser approach to the concept. Other than a few character names and some imagery here and there, Rush of Blood actually had very little to do with Until Dawn from a narrative perspective. By the time the credits roll in The Inpatient on the other hand (and make sure you stick around for the post-credits scene too, by the way) the story threads are very clearly connected.
Final Score: 7.5/10 – Good
The Inpatient has a great premise with excellent production values, but its hampered by poor controls and lackluster character development. As a prequel to Until Dawn, it does a great job of fleshing out the lore a bit more, but it’s a bit short to really stand on its own. That being said, the moments that are there and the scares that they produce are totally worth experiencing. Plus, more games should absolutely adopt the voice recognition dialog feature going forward.
You can get The Inpatient on PSVR for $39.99. You can read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrive at our review scores.
Tagged with: Supermassive Games, The Inpatient, Until dawn
PlayStation VR: The Inpatient erhältlich [Update]
[Update] Es ist so weit: The Inpatient ist für PlayStation VR (PSVR) erhältlich und lädt zur Reise im Horror-Sanatorium ein. Der VR-Schocker lässt sich für 40 Euro im PlayStation Store erwerben.
Originalmeldung vom 15. Januar 2018:
Bisschen Geduld muss man noch mitbringen: Der Sanatorium-Horror-Thriller The Inpatient sollte ursprünglich letztes Jahr erscheinen, der Entwickler hat den Titel aber zusammen mit Bravo Team auf dieses Jahr verschoben. Zumindest das Horrorspiel soll schon nächste Woche am 24. Januar 2018 erscheinen und dem virtuellen Insassen in der Psychiatrie die Haare zu Berge stehen lassen. Ein neuer Trailer für das PSVR-Spiel regt schon mal die Gänsehaut an.
The Inpatient: Horror und Grusel im Sanatorium
Als eines der ersten lang erwarteten Spiele in diesem Jahr für die PlayStation VR (PSVR) dürfte The Inpatient den Reigen qualitativ hochwertiger VR-Kost eröffnen, bevor einen Monat später die Maus Moss die Sony-Konsole erobert. Sony will bis Ende des Jahres 2018 den VR-Spielekatalog nahezu verdoppeln und 280 Titel im Programm führen.
Bereits im August 2017 konnten wir auf der gamescom in Köln Hand an das Spiel der Until-Dawn-Entwickler legen und waren von der Atmosphäre des Spiels angetan. Besonders die Inszenierung überzeugte und erinnerte eher an einen interaktiven VR-Film, der mit gelungenen Schockeffekten aufwarten kann.
Einzig die Steuerung mit den Move-Controllern kritisierten wir seinerzeit, was aber nicht an den Entwicklern liegt, sondern den Limitierungen der Sony-Steuerelemente. Insgesamt soll man bei The Inpatient auf drei Stunden Spielzeit kommen, die Veröffentlichung ist für den 24. Januar für PlayStation VR (PSVR) geplant. The Inpatient lässt sich bereits jetzt im Sony PlayStation Store vorbestellen und kostet knapp 40 Euro.
Der Beitrag PlayStation VR: The Inpatient erhältlich [Update] zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!