Nostos, an upcoming open world RPG from China-based tech company NetEase, made its Western debut at Gamescom this year with something that appears to be heavily influenced by the popular anime series such as Sword Art Online.
I got a chance to pop into the NetEase booth at this year’s Gamescom in Cologne, and while there are some clear ‘wow’ moments thanks to the overall beauty of the world, it’s clear the studio has a ways to go before Nostos can be considered a true VR success.
Here’s the pitch: players live in the world of Nostos, a post-apocalyptic, but verdant place littered with the remnants of long-abandoned cities and artifacts that help you survive. Including deserts, grasslands, and mountains, players fight off enemies as a natural timer counts down, an ever-expanding destructive force called ‘Coralsea’. The game is supposed to be an online multiplayer, but it’s uncertain if the ‘M’ for ‘massive’ is applicable at this point.
According to a statement by NetEase, “[t]eamwork is key as players gather resources, build a clan they can trust, and fight to pull the world of Nostos back from the brink of utter desolation.” The game is slated to arrive some time in 2019 for PC via Steam, and for VR headsets via Steam, Viveport and the Oculus Store.
Strapping into a Vive, I got the chance to do a few basic tasks; drive a very Miyazaki-inspired pickup truck, shoot a giant bug-type baddie attacking the base (and loot him for treasure), and walk around to soak in a bit of the world that both NetEase and production studio ShuiGe have created.
In terms of its VR implementation, it’s clear at this point that the game is still in its earliest phases, possibly even too early to really be shown to the public without a healthy dose of disclaimers, something I unfortunately didn’t receive throughout my demo experience. While the game’s UI was serviceable, which is based on selecting options from your wrist-mounted watch, most everything was not stellar at this point.
Image courtesy NetEase
Besides some basic problems with low frame rate, there’s also the issue of a distractingly-close render distance, which resolves finer details like plants at only about a two meter circle around you. This takes away somewhat from the looming structures in the middle and far distances like mountains, large trees, and a cool looking center structure that reminds me of The World Tree from Sword Art Online.
Image courtesy NetEase
The demo’s overall object interaction still needs a lot of work too. Simply put, you clip through everything. Example: one aspect of resource gathering relies on you ability to fell trees with your trusty axe, which you then use to build houses, craft items, etc. Despite only working in half of the dozen-or-so times I tried, it never quite felt right because my axe would oftentimes clip through my target at not register on the tree at all—something PC players certainly won’t have an issue with. Even something as simple as getting into a truck didn’t seem to work in a VR-native way, as you would have to remember to press a hotkeyed controller button to enter and exit the vehicle, and not simply walk up to it and open the door.
At this point, Nostos‘ VR version feels like a shoehorned implementation, and I genuinely hope NetEase looks around at true VR natives such as Rec Room, Orbus VR, and Echo VR for inspiration moving forward. It’s still early days, and there’s definitely some good bones here that would be grand in VR if properly fleshed out.
Image courtesy NetEase
A few positive points: as a VR-capable game with standard PC support, the potential pool of players is likely to be higher, giving the possibility of a pretty good start in terms of raw player numbers.
The game is also supporting Improbable’s SpatialOS, a cloud-based server platform that allows for persistent online worlds that continue their physics simulations even if no one is there to interact. This wasn’t available during the demo, but I was told by a NetEase spokesperson that the implementation would be available at launch.
Mr. Mercedes, the AT&T Audience Network mystery thriller TV series based on the titular Stephen King novel, is getting a VR escape room soon.
Dubbed Mr. Mercedes: Lair Escape, you step into the basement lair of one of the scariest killers from the mind of Stephen King, Brady Hartsfield (aka ‘Mr. Mercedes’). The VR escape room tosses you into the photorealistic recreation of the psychopath’s lair where you’ll have to solve various puzzles to find your way out. The title is said to incorporate footage directly from the set of Season 2 of the series.
Mr. Mercedes: Lair Escape was created by VR Playhouse, Double A Labs, and AT&T AUDIENCE Network, and was developed with Unreal Engine and Nurulize Atom View, a tool for volumetric data processing, color management, and delivery.
The title is headed to Viveport, HTC’s digital storefront for HTC Vive games, on July 22nd.
Mr. Mercedes: Lair Escape is currently available for demo at San Diego Comic Con, lasting from July 19th to July 21st. RSVP is required, so if you’re at Comic Con this weekend, click here to sign up.
Super Puzzle Galaxy (2018), a physics-based puzzle game from Vive Studios and 2Bears Studio, has just existed its seven-month stint in Early Access. To boot, the studios have also launched the game’s second DLC pack today, dubbed ‘Warp Ball’, which adds 24 new levels and two new obstacle types.
Super Puzzle Galaxy is a physics sandbox based in outer space that lets you sculpt sand across 16 challenge levels (base game) in effort to get the ball to the goal.
Image courtesy Vive Studios, 2 Bear Studio
Players use the new Warp Ball ability to solve 16 more additional puzzles. A new ice trap and rotating obstacles are available in Create Mode. You’ll also be able to use the Warp Ball ability to solve the eight challenge levels and see if you can collect all galaxy gems—making for 56 levels with both the base game and Warp Ball DLC.
The game is available on Steam and Viveport. Priced at $2 extra, the Warp Ball DLC is offered separately from the base game on Steam, and as an in-app purchase on Viveport.
Indie VR developer Mixed Realms, creators of badass VR ninja simulator, Sairento, announced this week plans for their next chapter, coming in the form of Sairento Reborn. Described as “bigger and better,” SairentoReborn hopes to open up the title, allowing cooperative hack & slash fun for both VR and PC players.
Speaking this week at the HTC’s Vive X demo day in San Francisco, Singapore-based indie studio Mixed Realms said that their first title, Sairento, has turned a significant profit, to the tune of a claimed “3,000% ROI” on an initial development fund of $30,000 (which would work out to $900,000); the developers tell us they’ve sold about 40,000 units so far.
Sairento, which plays like a mashup between Raw Data (2017) and Superhot VR (2017), offers players the chance to become an agile super-ninja, wielding swords, guns, bows, and more. The game has been released across all major VR platforms (Steam, Oculus, and Viveport), and holds respectable ratings across the board. The title began its life in Early Access on Steam in late 2016 and claimed its full launch in February, 2018.
Image courtesy Mixed Realms
Aiming to springboard off of their initial success, developer Mixed Realms said during the Vive X event that they’re planning to raise $3 million for the production of the next chapter, Sairento Reborn. From the description offered by the developers, the new title sounds more like a reboot, with a much larger scope than the original, and one major goal being to open the door to PC players as well as VR players, allowing both to play with and against each other.
The plan, the developers say, is to offer the same kind of first-person action as the original, for VR players, while PC players will play the game in third person. The studio plans to balance each side fairly, but uniquely. Mixed Realms says they plan to sell Sairento Reborn at a lower price than the original, but will monetize further with subscription and microtransaction options—they pointed to Overwatch (2016) as a game successfully monetizing with this model.
During the event Mixed Realms also affirmed plans plan to bring the original Sairento to PSVR, and expect it to hit the platform in 2018.
Update (3/30/18): An earlier version of this article mistakenly transposed some digits and stated that Sairento had earned $9,000,000 in revenue instead of $900,000; this has been fixed accordingly.
The American Dream is set to launch on March 14th, and the moment, most unfortunately, couldn’t be more timely. The game’s gun-fueled gameplay takes US gun culture to the extreme, examining a world where babies are born packing heat and guns are the answer to everything. In the wake of a string of tragic mass shootings in the US, the nation is embroiled in debate, pitting the loss of innocent life against the constitutional right to bear arms. At the same time, part of that conversation has seen renewed finger pointing at violent video games as part of the problem.
Having started development back in 2016, The American Dreamlaunches this week, March 14th, on PlayStation VR, SteamVR, and Oculus Rift, priced at $20. The game’s new launch trailer gives an idea of how it takes gun culture to a comedic extreme, and shows “just how simple it could be to live American life to the fullest, where guns are an integral part of being a good and patriotic American and can be used for familial bonding, cleaning the house, preparing delicious meals, dancing, gardening, fine dining, delivering sweet newborn American babies and so much more.”
Developer Samurai Punk promises “more than 20 heartwarming, pulse-pounding, brain tingling, action-packed stages—each featuring a key moment in the average American life. For every task you encounter in your life chock full of Freedom, there is a gun that can help—from pistols to tactical sporting rifles, you’ll get to try them all.”
A deft hand is required to navigate the fine line between commentary and offense, especially when the backdrop is painted with real blood. In many ways, the game’s portrayal of US gun culture is funny, but, with three major mass shootings in the US in the last six months alone, also strikes a number of decidedly not funny chords.
Image courtesy Samurai Punk
For one, America’s debate about gun rights has reached a fever pitch that hasn’t been seen in some time. Gun rights in the US have been historically very difficult to change because, to an extent, the right to own guns is protected in the country’s constitution, and powerful lobbying groups work hard to that right. In the wake of recent shootings, the renewed calls for gun rights reforms seem to be gaining more steam that in the recent past, but the debate about solutions to mass shootings rages on.
One of the common rebuttals against violence in video games is that they are protected as a form a free speech, and are also an important expressive medium. Indeed, it’s the free speech protection that allows games like The American Dream to parody important topics and help foster discussion about them.
Image courtesy Samurai Punk
And one, perhaps unintentional, element of The American Dream is a revelation of what US gun culture looks like to outsiders. The game’s Melbourne, Australia based studio, Samurai Punk, are offering up an external perspective for all to see; a depiction through the eyes of another can sometimes be more helpful than just looking in the mirror.
In the end, the game appears to be just a handful of fun shooting mini games for VR, but its release at this particular moment could hardly be considered without looking at the broader picture. We’ll find out if and where it fits into the discussion (and whether or not it’s worth playing) when it launches on Wednesday.
Having announced ‘Vive Studios’ at the end of 2016, HTC is steadily building up its first-party VR content offering. After a number of relatively well received titles launched under the umbrella of Vive Studios, we take the latest, Front Defense VR, for a test drive.
What is it that makes the HTC Vive special and different from the other VR platforms on the market? It depends who you ask. It used to be the tracked motion controllers, but that is no longer the case. Is it the room-scale? That’s a huge plus for sure, but with a little jiggery-pokery the Rift can get close enough for some people. Is it the tracking? This at least is still best in class, for my money. Content? While you might argue that Rift and PSVR with their exclusives rule the roost here, there’s still much to recommend the Vive ecosystem.
Crawling around on hands and knees behind the virtual sandbags of Front Defense VR, there’s no need to wonder how HTC would answer the question. With its first release from internal developer Fantahorn Studio for the Vive, we find that the answer is resounding: room-scale. Specifically a play area so large that no competing platforms can come close. Hope you’ve got a nice big play space, people, because anything less than three metres square just ain’t gonna cut it with Front Defense VR. Time to build that underground VR bunker in the garden.
Front Defense VR Details:
Publisher: HTC / Vive Studios Developer: Fantahorn Studio Available On: HTC Vive (Viveport, Steam) Reviewed On: HTC Vive (Steam) Release Date: June 27, 2017 (Viveport), July 7th (Steam)
Gameplay
Front Defense VR is a World War II shooter spread over three (yes, just three) stages, and your position is entirely static so there is no question about methods of locomotion or anything like that—it’s completely ‘real’ locomotion within your room-scale playspace. For the vast majority of the time you’ll be hunkered down within your small sandbagged enclosure to avoid being riddled with bullets. You’ll pop up occasionally to start thinning out the waves of enemy troops that will swarm the area in increasing number as the situation escalates from foot soldiers to motor vehicles, mortars, armoured cars, tanks, and strafing runs from squadrons of enemy planes.
Standing against this tide of enemy combatants are you and a motley crew of anonymous friendly soldiers that appear around you, there to provide the illusion of a cinematic battle just like all the other militaristic shooters of the last two decades. There’s not much going on in their heads though, and the stilted animation fails to convince. Likewise with the enemy soldiers, their behaviours much more in line with arcade classic Operation Wolf (1987) than anything more contemporary. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in an arcade shooter.
There’s nothing to link the three stages, they exist as standalone entities and entertain to varying degrees. There’s no attempt at real depth aside from score attack leaderboards, but it really does scratch that score attack itch—it’s fun to go back into the stages and eke out a little more progress, to see the scenario escalate another notch, to survive against increasingly ridiculous odds.
My favourite is actually the first scenario, a relatively simple setup on some classically European back streets, with enemies appearing on balconies, from side streets, around corners and through distant archways. While the second encounter—defending an HQ inside a church that opens onto a town square—adds in the ability to call in an airstrike, it lacks the focus of the first. The rail yard of the third encounter, with its strafing aircraft, introduces move overt destructible scenery and acts as a challenging climax.
The weapons at your disposal are drawn from predictable stock: a pistol, a rifle, a bazooka, some grenades, and the odd fixed emplacement, like a mounted machinegun. Each is enjoyable enough to fire, with a convenient red dot projected onto enemies for the pistol and rifle making it easier to pick off distant targets. The fact that fixed emplacements are located near to the edges of the play space means that if your physical area is hemmed in by walls or furniture then you won’t be able to fully interact with and aim these elements so easily.
Most weapons are picked up by reaching into them and picking them up with the trigger which then locks the weapon to your hand while the trigger reverts to its traditional firing role. Reloading the rifle is as simple as ripping out the old clip, grabbing a new one from your side, and ramming it home. This is the best of the bunch, and feels as intuitive as some of the best games in the genre. The pistol uses a press of the touchpad to release a clip but you can’t fully slide the new clip in because you’d crash the two controllers together, so you’re left with the unsatisfying act of holding it near the bottom of the gun and releasing it to reload.
Not that loading the rifle is easy all the time; the game does its best to guess where your waistline is based on head and hand positions, but all too often the ammo belt actually appeared ‘inside’ me as I was crouched down, making it impossible to retrieve ammo without committing accidental seppuku with my Vive controller. Even aiming the fixed weapons can be fraught: if you move your hands too far away from the handle you become detached, and it’s often a second or two before you realise what has happened.
How Front Defense VR handles grenades must have sounded awesome in the planning meeting… “Guys, I’ve had a great idea! Let’s get the player to pull the pin out with their teeth before throwing the grenade!” Sadly the reality—after a few aborted attempts at punching oneself in the face—is that you sort of hover the hand grenade in front of your nose for a second until you hear the pin eject. It gets the job done, but it’s a far cry from the marketing vision. The bazooka suffers a similar fate, with the loading of a rocket into the rear of the weapon reduced to simply holding it in the rough vicinity and letting go, whereupon it instantly disappears into the tube. It’s pragmatic, but not exactly immersive.
Actually, the whole experience falls well underneath the expected bar for quality in mid-2017. It’s a small scale, uninspiring setup in a fairly crowded genre, riddled with some of the hoariest clichés of VR interaction and a strangely ugly 2D menu system with incongruous blue floating buttons. The visuals can’t be configured in any way, so supersampling isn’t an option for people on more capable machines. As a result, prepare to squint at distant, muddy pixels as you try to figure out which burnt out window frame the enemy soldier is occupying, or which piece of cover they are hunkered down behind.
Note: we’ve asked the developers to confirm that the lack of any graphical settings isn’t just a limitation of our review copy, and will update when we hear back. It’s possible some auto-setting of detail is in play, but if so my 980Ti was still sadly underutilised.
Mostly it’s just more of the same that we’ve seen before. There are occasional moments where the game’s own blend of enemy waves and the excitement of being hunkered down in such a large play space combine to truly immerse you in the moment, but it doesn’t last long. There’s never a sense of danger. Death often comes as something of a surprise, usually via an enemy soldier with a bayonet that manages to evade attention and puncture your spleen.
The biggest missed opportunity of all is that the developers have doubled-down on the large play area, but then only really used half of it. Only the area in front of the player is meaningfully utilised, with no threats ever coming from behind. It suits the nature of the game—defending fixed entrenchments, which logically would be set up to defend against one direction—but does seem at odds with a clear mission to promote the awesomeness of the Vive’s room-scale tracking capabilities.
There’s potential here, but it needs more iteration and polish. It needs more unique content, or even clever reuse of what’s there. Mostly it needs a package that ties it all together in a more interesting fashion than these three isolated stages. There’s fun here for sure, but I’m not really certain what Front Defense VR brings to the party beyond its commitment to a large play area. It’s as fun to shoot things in VR as it ever was, but as the market has matured a little over the last year, so too have our expectations, and Front Defense VR sadly fails to meet them.
Immersion
When it all comes together, Front Defense VR does decent job of convincing you that you’re in a war zone, battling against the odds. As much as I’m not a believer that the majority of Vive owners have the sort of space this game demands, I have to admit that if you do, it’s on another level compared to other experiences. Being set within a large fixed space really aids the immersion—if you happen to have a few dozen sandbags to hand you could probably concoct the ultimate version of this experience.
It’s not all roses though. Accidentally squeezing the hand grip in the heat of battle and unintentionally dropping the weapon while under heavy assault? Immersion killer. Clanging controllers together when reloading the pistol? Immersion killer. Smashing a controller into the headset when trying to prime a grenade? Immersion killer. The same two or three sounds/barks issuing in quick succession? Immersion killer. Trying to aim a fixed machine gun mounted in a corner of the play area and smacking into a wall? Immersion killer. Stilted people animations? Immersion killer.
Many of these issues have been solved by other developers, and clear solutions exist. Quite why the developers in this case have persisted with such obviously bad design decisions remains a mystery.
To end on a high note, though, the necessity to get down low and crawl around on the floor a little really helps to set the experience apart from others that are primarily standing. In this regard at least, the game is in rare company.
Comfort
As there is zero artificial locomotion, comfort is perfectly fine throughout. The only caveat is that—if you intend to survive for more than ten seconds in the game—you will need to get down low either by crouching or crawling around on the floor. Depending on your fitness (my aging bones were protesting at the end of a protracted session with the game!) this may or may not be an issue. Knee pads optional.
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar 2 Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar 2 is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
, there is a gun that can help—from pistols to tactical sporting rifles, you’ll get to try them all.”
