Pavlov Tops PlayStation Store PSVR 2 Charts In March

We have our first full month of PlayStation Store chart rankings for PSVR 2, with Pavlov taking out the top spot for the month.

Each month, the PlayStation blog posts a ranking of the top downloads for the PlayStation Store across each platform. Sony released PlayStation VR2 back in February, so it’s now included in the rankings and with March done and dusted, we have our first full month of download rankings for the new headset.

In both the US/Canada and EU region, Pavlov took out the number one spot, with the The Dark Pictures: Switchback in second for the former and Kayak VR in second for the latter. Other high-rankers include Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, Pistol Whip, Horizon Call of the Mountain, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution and, of course, the immutable Job Simulator creeping in at number 10 in both regions.

The post also includes a disclaimer that the download rankings only take PS Store purchases into account, and not game upgrades or games bundled with hardware (such as copies of Horizon Call of the Mountain bundled with the PSVR 2 headset). This also presumably explains the absense of two of the headset’s biggest draw cards – Resident Evil 8 and Gran Turismo 7 – as they’re both PS5 games that received updates adding PSVR 2 support, not separate purchases/releases.

PSVR 2 released on February 22, so technically there was a week and a bit’s worth of download rankings for February 2023 as well. That period saw Kayak VR take out first place in both regions, with Pavlov following behind in second and Horizon Call of the Mountain in third.

PSVR 2 launched with a fantastic selection of releases and you can now read our picks for Best PSVR 2 Games. You can also check out our review for Pavlov on PSVR 2, which we really enjoyed, alongside our reviews for Switchback, Horizon, Resident Evil 8 and Gran Turismo 7.

Preview: Amid Evil VR Offers Promising Retro Shooter Movement & Combat

Amid Evil, which initially released four years ago on PC, is coming to VR platforms later this month. Boasting a diverse arsenal of weapons and responsive movement, it’s a great homage to classic boomer shooters, like Heretic, Unreal Tournament, Quake and DOOM.

From its environments to its guns to its art style, Amid Evil screams classic shooter. Based on my initial impressions from a 15-minute demo at PAX East, those highlights translate into VR very well. 

Despite being a hotbed for shooters of all varieties, VR platforms aren’t home to many boomer shooters. The genre has a large emphasis on fast movement, making it a difficult style of game to implement in VR because of potential motion sickness. Amid Evil offers some options to adjust turning which might help accommodate some, but your mileage will vary depending on your personal susceptibility. I played with smooth turning and full stick motion and had no issues running, jumping and gunning. With that in mind, I also rarely have any trouble with motion sickness in VR, so others’ experiences will likely yield different results.

Comfort discussion aside, Amid Evil excels at movement. While I didn’t have a ton of time to really get down to brass tacks with the game’s mechanics, I never felt restricted in my ability to dart around each arena presented to me, especially with the massive arsenal I had at my disposal.

Amid Evil VR

The demo featured a few mini combat encounters and the game presented me with a new weapon before each. All maintaining the classic sprite-like 3D look, every weapon in Amid Evil’s arsenal felt satisfying and smooth to use against my enemies. That said, I felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of options to choose from. Part of what makes weapon-based progression feel so special in a game like DOOM is that you start out with only a pistol and your fists. As you progress, picking up a new gun feels great because you have time to play around with it and experience its full utility before mastering it.

This may have been a result of the demo’s short length, but at times I felt like I was being funneled into different weapons without getting a solid feel for each individual implement of violence. This raises two big concerns. First, starting out the game with all seven weapons can rob any individual one of a chance to shine, thus artificially watering down the feel and depth of fast-paced combat. Second, if every weapon is available from the beginning, progression could very easily become stale.

Amid Evil VR

That said, even if these concerns come to fruition, what’s important is that each weapon feels right. Amid Evil’s seven unique weapons each do just that, all while providing functionally different options for different combat scenarios.

Based on my short time with the game, I’m excited to see where Amid Evil takes me when it launches for Quest 2 and PC VR later this month. None of my minor issues with the game trump the fact that it just feels incredible. With creative stand-ins for shotguns, rocket launchers and the like, snappy movement and badass demonic set-dressing, it looks set to be a hit.

Tennis League VR Spins Onto Quest 2 This Month – New Trailer & Arcade Mode Revealed

Tennis League VR is coming to Quest headsets this month, set to release on April 20.

Announced last year, Tennis League VR wants to bring the full tennis experience into virtual reality, with several options for play. Developer AnotheReality says it’s “made for aspiring pros, fitness fanatics and casual joes,” with both offline solo and online multiplayer modes.

tennis league vr

You can check out some gameplay footage in the release date trailer above. AnotheReality says seasoned tennis players will be able to use real tennis techniques in-game, refining slices, lobs and topspin shots across the different modes. There will be a career mode for solo play and an academy mode for training, as well an online multiplayer mode to play against friends or spectate online matches.

tennis league vr

There will also be arcade mode, featuring the freshly-revealed Droid Rush game shown in the trailer above and the pictures below. AnotheReality describes Droid Rush as “tennis meets tower defense,” where players will be taken off the court and thrust into a neon virtual environment to fend off robots using precise shots and sharp reflexes.

tennis league vr

Tennis League VR will be available on the official Quest Store from April 20, but if you’re itching to check it out already then there’s a free demo available now via App Lab to tide you over.

Crimen – Mercenary Tales Brings Slasher Arcade Action To Quest Next Month

Crimen – Mercenary Tales is a new VR release from The Wizards developer Carbon Studio, bringing 17th century arcade action to Quest 2 in May.

Featuring comic-inspired graphics, the game features eight tales narrated by eight characters, all set across the 17th century. You’ll be exploring a range of environments, such as castles, temples and shipwrecks, engaging in puzzles and using historically accurate weapons in “action-packed, gory arcade slasher” gameplay.

crimen - mercenary tales

Here’s a description from Carbon Studio:

Raise yer glasses high, me hearties! Embark on a (bloody!) journey through eight swashbucklin’ tales of grandeur, riches, and legendary feats!

Slash your way through eerie castles, ancient temples, forsaken shipwrecks, and other astonishing locations while wielding a variety of historically accurate weapons directly from the 17th-century.

Experience visually captivating comic book graphics, while being entertained by the mercenary humor of the tavern’s patrons and their over-the-top achievements.

It looks like a promising release and we can’t wait to get our virtual hands on it next month. You can read more about the game over on its official site.

No Man’s Sky Interceptor Update Adds New Corruption Mechanics

Hello Games launched the Interceptor update for No Man’s Sky across all platforms today, featuring major new mechanics for the planetary exploration game.

No Man’s Sky’s continues to layer on new features into the cross-platform title years on from its VR release in 2019. The latest “Interceptor” update focuses on a new “corruption” throughout the universe bringing with it major changes, alongside new “huge Sentinel Capital ships” to engage with in space combat.

The new update also includes new wrist interface controls for VR, allowing you to reposition the menus to any part of your hand. The patch notes also lists “significant improvement to image quality” on PSVR 2. We noted in our recent review that the game isn’t the most visually stunning experience on Sony’s new headset, but nonetheless a step-up from the offering on the original PSVR system. Hopefully the changes in the Interceptor update bump up the render resolution and resolve some of the blurriness that was present in the PSVR 2 release at launch.

No Man’s Sky remains one of VR’s best games and you can find the full patch notes for No Man’s Sky version 4.2 are available here, with some highlights noted here:

SALVAGED INTERCEPTORS: Expand your fleet with your very own salvaged Sentinel Interceptor starship. Hunt down your perfect Sentinel ship, or collect a whole range of these sleek procedurally-generated Interceptors.

CORRUPTED PLANETS: A darkness spreads through the Sentinel horde. Many fortified worlds have succumbed to corruption, with strange crystals sprouting from the earth and their robot guardians twisted into bizarre new forms. Explore these purple-hazed worlds to find new buildings, crashed interceptors, secret equipment and more…

MOVABLE WRIST PROJECTORS: The high-tech projector interfaces for accessing menus in VR can now be grabbed and moved, allowing full custom control over their position. Reattach the wrist projectors to any location around your hand or Multi-Tool.

INTERCEPTOR VARIETY: Sentinel fleets have evolved. System authority ships now appear in hundreds of procedurally-generated variations, dramatically diversifying their silhouettes and styles.

CORRUPTED SENTINELS: The strange power flowing through corrupted worlds has warped the Sentinels beyond recognition. Colossal semi-arachnid machines stalk these discordant worlds, ready to pounce upon unwary Travellers. Those who take on the corrupted swarm should beware their devastating flamethrowers and long-distance explosives.

INTERCEPTOR COCKPIT: For the first time, step inside a Sentinel ship and see the universe from the perspective of an Interceptor. Operate and interact with this advanced Sentinel technology up-close, piloting an Interceptor ship from its unusual vestigial cockpit.

HARVEST THE CORRUPTION: As you wander dissonant worlds, direct your Mining Laser towards the ethereal radiant shards bursting from the terrain. Collect the anomalous crystals to fuel your salvaged Sentinel technology, or harvest and refine new resources directly from the remains of defeated Sentinel forces.

Fruit Ninja VR 2 Slices Onto Quest, Pico & PC VR Platforms This Week

Fruit Ninja VR 2 now has a final release date, set to launch later this week on April 6 for Quest, Pico and PC VR.

Halfbrick Studios says the sequel will feature the return of Classic, Arcade and Zen modes from the original, now “juicier than ever.” Fruit Ninja VR 2 also features a new bow weapon, which will let you aim and shoot down fruit with arrows instead of the regular slice and dice method.

A new rhythm mode will “challenge you to keep up with the pace of the track,” while multiplayer mode will let you compete with other players and show off your slicing skills. If you’d rather use bow in multiplayer, then the new Apple Head multiplayer mode is a perfect fit, while the Social Hub offers a place for players to relax and chat with others in-game.

Halfbrick also says that there will be a new world relaxing area called Fruitasia, where you’ll be able to “take a break from the competition” and “explore, relax and slice to your heart’s content.”

The game is currently available on Steam for PC VR in Early Access, but will go into full release later this week alongside other platforms. On Quest, it will support Quest 2 and Quest Pro but not the original Quest headset.

Gambit! Releases This Week, New Municipal Mayhem PvP Mode Revealed

After multiple delays, Gambit! is set to release this week on April 6 for Quest and PC VR.

XREAL Games, the team behind Zero Caliber VR, first unveiled the co-operative VR heist shooter back in 2020. Initially set to release in 2021, it then faced delays to May 2022 and then again to December 2022. The day before its December 2022 release, it was pushed once again to Q1 2023. However, the release now seems set in stone, with a Quest store page live and a new date set for later this week on April 6.

We spoke to XREAL Games about the content that will be available at release and the changes made in light of the continued delays. Since the end of last year, XREAL Games told us that the team has been “focusing on core gameplay polish and optimisation, moving the HUD to a wrist watch, cross-play server stability” and more.

The team also revealed a new multiplayer PvP mode available at launch called Municipal Mayhem. You can check out some footage of the mode above, but the gist is that it’s basically a short and sweet, Battle Royale-like PvP mode for four players. The last man standing wins, with the emphasis truly on short sessions with matches that should only last around 2-5 minutes each.

Players will collect points in Municipal Mayhem (200 for 1st place, scaling down to -100 for 4th place), which will move them up and down on a tournament ladder and progress towards unlocks for new masks, skins and other content.

Alongside Municipal Mayhem and a classic four-player Deathmatch PvP mode, Gambit! will of course also feature a main campaign mode, playable in single player or co-op with up to four players. Previously, XReal Games promised a 20+ hour campaign for the game. When UploadVR asked about estimated campaign playtime ahead of launch this week, XREAL Games said the studio would rather not make any public estimations.

There’s also a new game mode in the works called Consumer Cleanup, which is a zombie mode “with a twist” that also includes a “completely new campaign narrative.” However, it won’t make it into the game for release – XREAL Games says it will arrive as a post-launch update instead and claims it will double the game’s playtime.

Gambit! is available later this week on Quest and PC VR for $19.99, with full cross-platform play support on day one.

Gorn Now Available On PSVR 2, Passes 1.5 Million Sales On All Platforms

Bloody combat simulator Gorn is now available on PlayStation VR2 for PS5.

In a bit of surprise news last week, Devolver Digital announced that Gorn is now available for PSVR 2 on PS5. Even better, those players who already own the game on PS4 for the original PSVR can upgrade to the PS5 version for PSVR 2 for free.

The combat simulator was first released for PC VR in 2019, before being ported across to the original PSVR and Quest platform in subsequent years. Across all platforms, Devolver Digital says that the game has now sold over 1.5 million copies – half a million more since it passed the one million milestone almost two years ago.

While the release itself was a surprise, there were already some indications that Gorn might be arriving on PSVR 2. In February, a German PlayStation blog post seemingly leaked four unconfirmed PSVR 2 games in the post’s tags and gallery section, including Gorn. The leak also listed a sequel to Solaris: Offworld Combat (which First Contact Entertainment later confirmed) and ports of Wanderer and Project Wingman. Given the Solaris sequel has been confirmed and Gorn is now also available, here’s hoping we see the other two arrive in the near future.

If you don’t already own Gorn on PS4, the PS5 version for PSVR 2 is available now for $19.99. If you want to learn more about the game, you can read our Gorn review of the original 2019 release.

Pin City Shows Promise With Zany VR Bowling Scenarios

In the roughly 15-minute demo of Pin City I played at PAX East 2023, I hurled my bowling ball over fires, through tunnels and into halfpipes.

Put simply, it looks like Studio 217 is making sure the game lives up to its ‘VR bowling with a twist’ subtitle.

Inspired by the mechanics of mini golf, the object of Pin City isn’t just to rack up the highest score possible in each frame, but also to figure out the best way to get your ball to collide with the pins at the end of your lane without being thwarted by any number of obstacles.

In a normal bowling alley, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. In Pin City, it is. Popular mini-golf obstacles block your ball’s way, adding an arcade-like twist to the sport. Similar to What The Bat? and What The Golf?, Pin City starts out simple: a normal bowling alley with a normal lane and ten pins. The more frames you play through, the more chaotic things get. Eventually, you’ll be defying gravity or jumping over fire with your ball. You might even get outside of a typical bowling lane!

pin city

With rules this loose and goofy and a foundation this fun, the sky really is the limit for Pin City – once they can ring in the actual throwing mechanics of the game, at least. Wii Sports, the first game to really nail motion-controlled bowling in a video game, gave a sense of weight by limiting your character’s range of motion to essentially the arc your arm takes when rolling a bowling ball in real life.

Pin City, on the other hand, has a greater challenge. At every point in the game, Pin City allows players to have a full range of motion with their head and hands, meaning that it’s harder to get a feel for the right throw. When I spoke to the developers, they were very upfront about the challenge, telling me that their biggest priority at the moment is getting the rolling part – specifically the weighty feel of the bowling bowl – just right. While I don’t know the studio’s ultimate goal for Pin City, I do think adding some limitations for throws might allow for the rest of the game to shine more.

As I was getting my VR bowling sea legs, I accidentally threw my ball in just about every direction because I had some trouble understanding its weight and feel. After all, the Quest 2’s controllers aren’t nearly as heavy as a bowling ball. Even after getting the hang of things, I still found myself struggling as the lanes continued to evolve.

While I personally didn’t explore much beyond Pin City’s main attraction, the developers teased that other parts of the bowling alley are explorable and interactable. You can move your character around the lobby using teleportation-style movement and interact with various parts of the environment. It’s an idea that holds potential if explored further. Bowling alleys have a very iconic, consistent aesthetic to them and it would be interesting to see minigames explore some of that vibe and culture.

After talking with the developers about the game’s inspirations, I became even more excited about where this game could go. With DNA rooted in a range of games, from Walkabout Mini Golf to Boom Blox to What The Golf?, Pin City has some big shoes to fill. Moving forward, the key will be nailing the feel of the virtual bowling ball. But after trying the game out and listening to the Studio 217 team discuss their creative and mad-cap ideas, I have faith in this small team and I’m excited to see where they strike next.

A Knight In The Attic Preview: An Arthurian Tilt Maze Rolling Onto Quest 2, PC VR

I love it when games surprise me the way A Knight In The Attic did. 

Not to discount the fun that comes from VR’s most popular genres, but this felt like something I’d never seen before. At PAX East 2023, I played the first 20 minutes of an early demo build of A Knight In The Attic, set to release April 13 on Meta Quest and PC VR.

In A Knight In The Attic, you unravel the mysteries housed within a dusty attic. With a very light narrative that centers around the Arthurian Legend’s femme fatale, Guinevere, this game maintains a mystical sensibility that really drew me in. In fact, playing the demo at Mighty Yell’s booth at PAX East, I completely lost myself in the game. The convention’s chaotic cacophony melted away as I explored the tilt maze-inspired world.

This is a great example of a game within a game. Your character is interacting with magical items in an attic. There’s scrolls that doll out tutorials, drawers that require keys to unlock, and a jar to catch fireflies, but the star of the show is the world of Camelot. Presented as a tilt maze, you hold and move the maze in your virtual hands the same way you would in real life.

There’s a twist, though. Instead of a marble, you’re rolling Guinevere around the maze. And instead of a plain wooden maze, you’re rolling Guinevere around the world of Camelot. The gameplay is quite engaging, with obstacles and challenges that provide clever twists beyond just avoiding walls and holes. Striking a good balance between challenge and smart checkpoints, it’s no pushover, but it also never treats the player unfairly. Extra collectibles also really encouraged me to put my skills to the test, though I only happened upon one or two during my time with the game.

After progressing to a certain point, you’re drawn out of the tilt maze aspect and  encouraged to interact with other objects in the attic around you. This demo did a great job of balancing each side of its gameplay to keep you not only engaged, but continually searching for the next key, puzzle or objective.

My only concern is with the game’s narrative. Yes, it’s based on a fairy tale and aimed at all audiences, but it felt a bit sparse. One of the game’s main collectibles is optional scrolls that expand Knight’s story, but I never felt pulled into the story or even sure enough of what was going on to feel compelled to grab the scroll beyond the extra challenge.

Narrative complaints aside, I’m interested to see how A Knight In The Attic’s gameplay continues to evolve when the full game releases this month. Keep an eye out for more thoughts on the game in the coming weeks.