Onward Field Guide: Tips and Strategies for New Players

Onward Field Guide: Tips and Strategies for New Players

Editor’s Note: This guide is an edited version of a guide contributed by a dedicated member of the Onward community named Alex Tukey; he goes by the online name Nightfiree. The original, living version of this guide can be found in this Google Doc and may receive more consistent updates than this version. This version has been adapted and reprinted with Tukey’s permission. Follow Alex on Twitter here.


This written guide is to serve as a generally informative starting point for playing the VR-only tactical team-based first-person shooter, Onward.  You can download the game on Steam Early Access right now. I notice a lot of threads about questions ranging from how to improve at the game to technical issues like improving framerate. I want to cover them all to the best of my abilities. The ultimate idea is that this becomes a manual for any and all Onward players.

My top recommendation before I get started to get better at this game, regardless of existing skill level, is to join the Onward Discord. Doing this will open up a forum to ask any and all questions you have about the game.  Additionally if you want to look for a team to play with, or are interested in playing in the community’s Bi-Weekly Onward Tournaments, that is where you will want to be.

Navigation

The Guide is broken down into the following topics in order and each of the headings are clickable links to jump straight to the corresponding section:

Control Basics: Discusses basic interaction of the controllers and items.

Game Mechanics: Discusses game objectives / important info to know during rounds.

Settings: Discusses basic settings such as audio and grip functionality.

Technical Assistance: How to increase framerate and other plugins you should have.

Additional Information: This is where I’ve compiled a list of links and other resources to help you after reading this guide.

Control Basics

(For touch users, if I say click down, this means move the thumbstick down and then click in. The majority of this guide will be written with the Vive controller in mind, but it’s 100% playable on Rift with Touch.)

Movement

Movement in Onward is unique in that it is based off of your trackpad/stick and the angle of the controller. To sprint double click up on the trackpad/stick. The faster you move the louder your footsteps will be. Crouching makes your footsteps almost completely silent.

The angle of your weapon can determine your speed. The reasoning for this is that if you’re holding a rifle with both hands, you need to have the rifle down to sprint, and when you draw the gun up to your eyes you slow down. This has some side effects, in that sometimes it seems you’re not running at max speed because your controller is not angled properly. People also can find ways to aim down sights while keeping full movement speed, but that’s cheesing the system a bit. Additionally if you’re experiencing performance issues you’re run speed can be effected.

Weapon

To grab a weapon off your chest hit the grip button. You should always hold weapons with both hands. You lose massive accuracy one handing any weapon, including pistols. If you want to increase accuracy I recommend crafting yourself a PVC mount.  This stabilizes your aiming significantly since both your front and back hand dictate accuracy.  Stabilizing both hands helps a lot. Attach a strap to the mount so you can have both hands free for grenades and medkits.

There is a litany of mounts on the Onward discord and a thread meant just for discussing different mount types.  My mount is not the only one and I recommend you check that out since there are a few solid pre-made options for sale as well.

Reloading

How you reload a gun varies from gun to gun.  LMGS (Automatic Rifleman Class) are reloaded differently than every other gun. Some weapons will have the magazine drop out from it when clicking down on the dominant hands trackpad/thumbstick. The other guns require you to use your free hand and, while clicking down on the dominant hands trackpad/thumbstick, grab the clip out of the gun by pulling the trigger.

If you have an LMG you MUST load it at the start of a round.  It does not come pre-loaded unless it’s a G3.  Additionally for MOST LMGs you have to lift the top open, grab the ammo out of the ammo drum, place it into the gun, and then close the top and cock the chamber.

Additionally you can drop clips on the ground and as long as they are not empty you can pick them up again.  You cannot share clips between teammates.

Grenades

To throw a grenade grab it off your chest using a free hand and the trigger (not the grip button). Pull the pin out of the grenade. To do this use your other free hand and reach for the pin and pull the trigger.

Pulling the pin does not start the cooking process but assures that once you release the trigger the grenade will be let go from your hand. To start cooking the grenade click down on the trackpad/stick. To release the grenade either release the trigger or click and release it, (this is determined depending on if you had the trigger depressed when you started cooking the grenade or not). You have 5 seconds before it explodes.

You can cook any grenade, but cooking a smoke grenade will cause the smoke to start billowing in your hand and then create a trail when thrown. This makes for faster deployed smokes and opens up possibilities for proper smoke grenade rolling. If you only prime the smoke and throw it, it will not deploy until it hits the ground.

Medkits (syringe)

Similarly to grenades in order to grab a medkit/syringe off your chest click the trigger (not the grip button).  To administer a medkit pull the trigger and push down on the trackpad.

Medkits can heal you if you have been hit but not downed, and used to resurrect people that have been downed but not killed. We will talk more about resurrecting and game mechanics in the next section.

Radio/Mic

Your mic is always open in this game.  The mic that is selected is determined by the mic you have set in the SteamVR settings.  An open mic means that while you’re in a lobby everybody can hear you. Once the game starts your voice chat becomes proximity chat. This means that if people are near you and you talk they can hear you, the closer they get to you the better you can be heard. Enemies and teammates can hear you and you cannot turn this off unless you mute your Vive mic all together.

To communicate while far away from your team, use a free hand and reach to your non dominant hand shoulder and hold the trigger (if you’re right handed reach for your left shoulder for example). If done correctly, you will hear a click and this means everybody can hear you on your team but with a little static to mimic the sound of a radio.

Knife

To grab the knife use your dominant hand and click the grip button over your non dominant shoulder.  This equips the knife, but for it to stab somebody you still must pull the trigger while stabbing.

Tablet

The tablet lets you locate the objective as well as your teammates. To grab your tablet, reach over your shoulder and using your dominant hand click the menu button (“b” button for touch).  For those salty vets out there who remember, you can still pull the pad out of your tailbone if you reach deep enough.

The white dot is the objective and the green dots are your teammates.  A yellow dot means a teammate is injured, and a red dot means a teammate is down.  No dot means the teammate is killed. If you are near a teammate it will show their location on the map, but if you are at a distance it will show their direction until you’re close enough for them to show up on the mini map.

Game Mechanics

The goal in Onward is to defeat the other team in a best of 7 series.  This means one series can consist of up to 7 rounds.  1 Round lasts a maximum of 6 minutes.  The goal of each round is for the Marsoc faction to capture the objective, while the Volk defend the objective. A round can also end if one team has all its members killed. Marsoc knows where the Volk objective is, but Volk do not know where Marsoc troops spawn on the map.

Capturing and defending the objective is more important than killing the enemy team. The reason for this is because capturing an objective gives you two points towards the series, while eliminating the enemy team only counts as one point.  The only way to score two points is if you’re on Marsoc and capture the objective. Successfully defending the objective as Volk only awards you one point.

This means a few things:

  • Volk = Black Uniforms / Marsoc = Desert Camo,
  • Once you’re dead, you’re out for that round (Think Search and Destroy game mode in other shooters),
  • The game intends for Volk to camp and Marsoc to attack,
  • This is balanced out by the fact that Volk do not know where Marsoc spawns,
  • This also means that if you’re on Marsoc, don’t shoot at the start of a round. If you have that itchy trigger finger and are wondering if your gun works or is loaded the answer is yes unless it’s an LMG so don’t pull the trigger. If you shoot while on Marsoc you give away your advantage of surprise.

Capturing an Objective

“Oh wow there’s an objective in this game?” is something I hear pretty commonly from new players.  To find the objective check your Tablet.  To attack the objective you must do a few things:

  • Take out the tablet and click on code. This displays the code you need to enter into the tablet once you’re near the objective,
  • Once you have the code memorized, click back and click enter. Now you must enter the code from memory or with a teammate reading it to you. The tablet can be finicky so if you’re having issues punching in numbers try to change the angle and height of the tablet,
  • As long as you’re close enough to the objective, you can enter a code even if the objectives on the other side of a wall,
  • Smoking the objective for cover before you capture it is highly recommended if you intend to capture the objective.

Down but Not Out

As mentioned earlier you can resurrect people in this game.  A teammate can be resurrected only if they are downed and not killed. Being downed means that your screen goes grey, and your character looks like they are dead at your feet.  You can talk to people within a certain proximity to you, and if you reach down to your radio, you can use it by clicking the trigger on your dominant hand. This downed state will last for about 2 minutes before you are killed and returned to the lobby.

This means if you have managed to hit an enemy, and he falls to the ground, the downed enemy may be able to be resurrected and he may be communicating to his team while he is down. It’s a common practice with Onward veterans to “secure” a kill by putting a few more rounds into a downed body in order to send that person to the lobby and out of the round. Headshots are instant kills and always send the player to the lobby.

Downing and killing a person also affects your stats. If you down somebody in a round and they do not either bleed out, or die from “securing” the kill you will not be credited with a kill. Additionally, if you down somebody and a teammate “secures” the kill then your teammate is awarded with a kill, not you.

Similarly resurrecting somebody gives you 1 point under H on the scoreboard (for healing).

Loadouts

Your Loadouts are essentially your saved profiles. When you select a class (Rifleman, Specialist, Automatic Rifleman, Designated Marksman) you are given the option to choose between two profiles.  These two profiles are unique to each class. This is so that you can have two different weapon loadouts per class saved.  Loadouts do not change between rounds or series.

Once you select a loadout you can then customize it. The middle menu is attachments for your weapons while the right menu is attachments for your character. When adding attachments to your character you have a few options. The top selection is grenades, and is the only place you can select frag grenade.  The bottom option is your secondary attachment which can be night vision goggles, body armor, or a smoke/flashbang grenade.

For night maps it is highly recommended you equip night vision as an attachment — for obvious reasons.

Shooting/Damage

There is bullet drop in this game. Go into the shooting range and test it out. All weapons in a class do the same damage and have the same range.  So for example if you select Rifleman, all the rifleman weapons have the same damage and weapon range.

AP rounds penetrate body armor, FMJ rounds do not.  This means if you are using FMJ rounds and your enemy has body armor equipped you will do zero damage to them if you hit their chest. For this reason it’s highly recommended you use AP rounds or aim for limbs/head.  There is some interesting conversations around re-balancing this since in its current iteration AP rounds seem to be the dominant choice in competitive rounds with little reason to select FMJ.

If you are shot and do not heal yourself, you can bleed out and die. You can be shot twice before dying.  Being shot in the head instantly kills you and sends you to the lobby. When reloading I turn the gun sideways so it makes it easier to cock the chamber.  Some people have issues with controllers clanking and this may help.

Settings

Audio

There are two options realistic and normal.  Realistic is very loud, normal is normal.

Grip

There are two grip options. Proximity and clicking. Proximity means that if your hand is close to the weapon, it snaps to it. Clicking means you have to click the grip button for the hands to grab hold. From my experience I prefer click to grip functionality because it allows you to move the weapon around more with 2 hands clicked onto the gun.

Height

The game wants to know your height so it can determine if you’re crouching standing or prone in real life.  Set it to your current height.  There is a height restriction to the game so if you are under 5’4 you will have difficulty moving at full speed.  The game will register you as 5’4 but if you’re actually 3’4 it will look like you’re crouching in game all the time.

Technical Assistance

First and foremost, Oculus users must disable ASW to ensure a smooth experience in the game.

Also, you can hold ALT while opening Onward. This opens the Unity window. You can turn the resolution down here and it will not affect the resolution of the game in the headset, however, turning down the graphics quality will affect what you see in the headset. Turning down just the resolution will turn down the resolution of the 2D display on your monitor.  This is a huge FPS saver and is highly recommended if you’re seeing any hiccups in performance.

For additional performance increases, download this and turn on asynchronous reprojection, then turn off interleaved. This really helps smooth the game out. Also, super sampling makes it way easier to see things in windows / around corners but stresses your PC

Onward displays the left eye perspective on your 2D monitor.  This means if you want to make a video or stream Onward you have to do some extra work to capture the right eye perspective.  If you have questions about that ask away in the Onward discord.

Additional Information

That’s about it for the basics. Detailed strategies and meta game elements are always evolving and changing as the game updates — it is still in Early Access after all. Here is a short list of resources to keep an eye on if you’re into the game:

Content Creators:

Maps:

Sub-Reddit

Discord


Are you playing Onward? If so and you’d like to share some tips for new players, let us know in the comments below!

Note: This article was originally published on February 16, 2017 but has been republished due to the game’s free weekend happening right now.

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Onward Field Guide: Tips and Strategies for New Players

Onward Field Guide: Tips and Strategies for New Players

Editor’s Note: This guide is an edited version of a guide contributed by a dedicated member of the Onward community named Alex Tukey; he goes by the online name Nightfiree. The original, living version of this guide can be found in this Google Doc and may receive more consistent updates than this version. This version has been adapted and reprinted with Tukey’s permission. Follow Alex on Twitter here.


This written guide is to serve as a generally informative starting point for playing the VR-only tactical team-based first-person shooter, Onward.  You can download the game on Steam Early Access right now. I notice a lot of threads about questions ranging from how to improve at the game to technical issues like improving framerate. I want to cover them all to the best of my abilities. The ultimate idea is that this becomes a manual for any and all Onward players.

My top recommendation before I get started to get better at this game, regardless of existing skill level, is to join the Onward Discord. Doing this will open up a forum to ask any and all questions you have about the game.  Additionally if you want to look for a team to play with, or are interested in playing in the community’s Bi-Weekly Onward Tournaments, that is where you will want to be.

Navigation

The Guide is broken down into the following topics in order and each of the headings are clickable links to jump straight to the corresponding section:

Control Basics: Discusses basic interaction of the controllers and items.

Game Mechanics: Discusses game objectives / important info to know during rounds.

Settings: Discusses basic settings such as audio and grip functionality.

Technical Assistance: How to increase framerate and other plugins you should have.

Additional Information: This is where I’ve compiled a list of links and other resources to help you after reading this guide.

Control Basics

(For touch users, if I say click down, this means move the thumbstick down and then click in. The majority of this guide will be written with the Vive controller in mind, but it’s 100% playable on Rift with Touch.)

Movement

Movement in Onward is unique in that it is based off of your trackpad/stick and the angle of the controller. To sprint double click up on the trackpad/stick. The faster you move the louder your footsteps will be. Crouching makes your footsteps almost completely silent.

The angle of your weapon can determine your speed. The reasoning for this is that if you’re holding a rifle with both hands, you need to have the rifle down to sprint, and when you draw the gun up to your eyes you slow down. This has some side effects, in that sometimes it seems you’re not running at max speed because your controller is not angled properly. People also can find ways to aim down sights while keeping full movement speed, but that’s cheesing the system a bit. Additionally if you’re experiencing performance issues you’re run speed can be effected.

Weapon

To grab a weapon off your chest hit the grip button. You should always hold weapons with both hands. You lose massive accuracy one handing any weapon, including pistols. If you want to increase accuracy I recommend crafting yourself a PVC mount.  This stabilizes your aiming significantly since both your front and back hand dictate accuracy.  Stabilizing both hands helps a lot. Attach a strap to the mount so you can have both hands free for grenades and medkits.

There is a litany of mounts on the Onward discord and a thread meant just for discussing different mount types.  My mount is not the only one and I recommend you check that out since there are a few solid pre-made options for sale as well.

Reloading

How you reload a gun varies from gun to gun.  LMGS (Automatic Rifleman Class) are reloaded differently than every other gun. Some weapons will have the magazine drop out from it when clicking down on the dominant hands trackpad/thumbstick. The other guns require you to use your free hand and, while clicking down on the dominant hands trackpad/thumbstick, grab the clip out of the gun by pulling the trigger.

If you have an LMG you MUST load it at the start of a round.  It does not come pre-loaded unless it’s a G3.  Additionally for MOST LMGs you have to lift the top open, grab the ammo out of the ammo drum, place it into the gun, and then close the top and cock the chamber.

Additionally you can drop clips on the ground and as long as they are not empty you can pick them up again.  You cannot share clips between teammates.

Grenades

To throw a grenade grab it off your chest using a free hand and the trigger (not the grip button). Pull the pin out of the grenade. To do this use your other free hand and reach for the pin and pull the trigger.

Pulling the pin does not start the cooking process but assures that once you release the trigger the grenade will be let go from your hand. To start cooking the grenade click down on the trackpad/stick. To release the grenade either release the trigger or click and release it, (this is determined depending on if you had the trigger depressed when you started cooking the grenade or not). You have 5 seconds before it explodes.

You can cook any grenade, but cooking a smoke grenade will cause the smoke to start billowing in your hand and then create a trail when thrown. This makes for faster deployed smokes and opens up possibilities for proper smoke grenade rolling. If you only prime the smoke and throw it, it will not deploy until it hits the ground.

Medkits (syringe)

Similarly to grenades in order to grab a medkit/syringe off your chest click the trigger (not the grip button).  To administer a medkit pull the trigger and push down on the trackpad.

Medkits can heal you if you have been hit but not downed, and used to resurrect people that have been downed but not killed. We will talk more about resurrecting and game mechanics in the next section.

Radio/Mic

Your mic is always open in this game.  The mic that is selected is determined by the mic you have set in the SteamVR settings.  An open mic means that while you’re in a lobby everybody can hear you. Once the game starts your voice chat becomes proximity chat. This means that if people are near you and you talk they can hear you, the closer they get to you the better you can be heard. Enemies and teammates can hear you and you cannot turn this off unless you mute your Vive mic all together.

To communicate while far away from your team, use a free hand and reach to your non dominant hand shoulder and hold the trigger (if you’re right handed reach for your left shoulder for example). If done correctly, you will hear a click and this means everybody can hear you on your team but with a little static to mimic the sound of a radio.

Knife

To grab the knife use your dominant hand and click the grip button over your non dominant shoulder.  This equips the knife, but for it to stab somebody you still must pull the trigger while stabbing.

Tablet

The tablet lets you locate the objective as well as your teammates. To grab your tablet, reach over your shoulder and using your dominant hand click the menu button (“b” button for touch).  For those salty vets out there who remember, you can still pull the pad out of your tailbone if you reach deep enough.

The white dot is the objective and the green dots are your teammates.  A yellow dot means a teammate is injured, and a red dot means a teammate is down.  No dot means the teammate is killed. If you are near a teammate it will show their location on the map, but if you are at a distance it will show their direction until you’re close enough for them to show up on the mini map.

Game Mechanics

The goal in Onward is to defeat the other team in a best of 7 series.  This means one series can consist of up to 7 rounds.  1 Round lasts a maximum of 6 minutes.  The goal of each round is for the Marsoc faction to capture the objective, while the Volk defend the objective. A round can also end if one team has all its members killed. Marsoc knows where the Volk objective is, but Volk do not know where Marsoc troops spawn on the map.

Capturing and defending the objective is more important than killing the enemy team. The reason for this is because capturing an objective gives you two points towards the series, while eliminating the enemy team only counts as one point.  The only way to score two points is if you’re on Marsoc and capture the objective. Successfully defending the objective as Volk only awards you one point.

This means a few things:

  • Volk = Black Uniforms / Marsoc = Desert Camo,
  • Once you’re dead, you’re out for that round (Think Search and Destroy game mode in other shooters),
  • The game intends for Volk to camp and Marsoc to attack,
  • This is balanced out by the fact that Volk do not know where Marsoc spawns,
  • This also means that if you’re on Marsoc, don’t shoot at the start of a round. If you have that itchy trigger finger and are wondering if your gun works or is loaded the answer is yes unless it’s an LMG so don’t pull the trigger. If you shoot while on Marsoc you give away your advantage of surprise.

Capturing an Objective

“Oh wow there’s an objective in this game?” is something I hear pretty commonly from new players.  To find the objective check your Tablet.  To attack the objective you must do a few things:

  • Take out the tablet and click on code. This displays the code you need to enter into the tablet once you’re near the objective,
  • Once you have the code memorized, click back and click enter. Now you must enter the code from memory or with a teammate reading it to you. The tablet can be finicky so if you’re having issues punching in numbers try to change the angle and height of the tablet,
  • As long as you’re close enough to the objective, you can enter a code even if the objectives on the other side of a wall,
  • Smoking the objective for cover before you capture it is highly recommended if you intend to capture the objective.

Down but Not Out

As mentioned earlier you can resurrect people in this game.  A teammate can be resurrected only if they are downed and not killed. Being downed means that your screen goes grey, and your character looks like they are dead at your feet.  You can talk to people within a certain proximity to you, and if you reach down to your radio, you can use it by clicking the trigger on your dominant hand. This downed state will last for about 2 minutes before you are killed and returned to the lobby.

This means if you have managed to hit an enemy, and he falls to the ground, the downed enemy may be able to be resurrected and he may be communicating to his team while he is down. It’s a common practice with Onward veterans to “secure” a kill by putting a few more rounds into a downed body in order to send that person to the lobby and out of the round. Headshots are instant kills and always send the player to the lobby.

Downing and killing a person also affects your stats. If you down somebody in a round and they do not either bleed out, or die from “securing” the kill you will not be credited with a kill. Additionally, if you down somebody and a teammate “secures” the kill then your teammate is awarded with a kill, not you.

Similarly resurrecting somebody gives you 1 point under H on the scoreboard (for healing).

Loadouts

Your Loadouts are essentially your saved profiles. When you select a class (Rifleman, Specialist, Automatic Rifleman, Designated Marksman) you are given the option to choose between two profiles.  These two profiles are unique to each class. This is so that you can have two different weapon loadouts per class saved.  Loadouts do not change between rounds or series.

Once you select a loadout you can then customize it. The middle menu is attachments for your weapons while the right menu is attachments for your character. When adding attachments to your character you have a few options. The top selection is grenades, and is the only place you can select frag grenade.  The bottom option is your secondary attachment which can be night vision goggles, body armor, or a smoke/flashbang grenade.

For night maps it is highly recommended you equip night vision as an attachment — for obvious reasons.

Shooting/Damage

There is bullet drop in this game. Go into the shooting range and test it out. All weapons in a class do the same damage and have the same range.  So for example if you select Rifleman, all the rifleman weapons have the same damage and weapon range.

AP rounds penetrate body armor, FMJ rounds do not.  This means if you are using FMJ rounds and your enemy has body armor equipped you will do zero damage to them if you hit their chest. For this reason it’s highly recommended you use AP rounds or aim for limbs/head.  There is some interesting conversations around re-balancing this since in its current iteration AP rounds seem to be the dominant choice in competitive rounds with little reason to select FMJ.

If you are shot and do not heal yourself, you can bleed out and die. You can be shot twice before dying.  Being shot in the head instantly kills you and sends you to the lobby. When reloading I turn the gun sideways so it makes it easier to cock the chamber.  Some people have issues with controllers clanking and this may help.

Settings

Audio

There are two options realistic and normal.  Realistic is very loud, normal is normal.

Grip

There are two grip options. Proximity and clicking. Proximity means that if your hand is close to the weapon, it snaps to it. Clicking means you have to click the grip button for the hands to grab hold. From my experience I prefer click to grip functionality because it allows you to move the weapon around more with 2 hands clicked onto the gun.

Height

The game wants to know your height so it can determine if you’re crouching standing or prone in real life.  Set it to your current height.  There is a height restriction to the game so if you are under 5’4 you will have difficulty moving at full speed.  The game will register you as 5’4 but if you’re actually 3’4 it will look like you’re crouching in game all the time.

Technical Assistance

First and foremost, Oculus users must disable ASW to ensure a smooth experience in the game.

Also, you can hold ALT while opening Onward. This opens the Unity window. You can turn the resolution down here and it will not affect the resolution of the game in the headset, however, turning down the graphics quality will affect what you see in the headset. Turning down just the resolution will turn down the resolution of the 2D display on your monitor.  This is a huge FPS saver and is highly recommended if you’re seeing any hiccups in performance.

For additional performance increases, download this and turn on asynchronous reprojection, then turn off interleaved. This really helps smooth the game out. Also, super sampling makes it way easier to see things in windows / around corners but stresses your PC

Onward displays the left eye perspective on your 2D monitor.  This means if you want to make a video or stream Onward you have to do some extra work to capture the right eye perspective.  If you have questions about that ask away in the Onward discord.

Additional Information

That’s about it for the basics. Detailed strategies and meta game elements are always evolving and changing as the game updates — it is still in Early Access after all. Here is a short list of resources to keep an eye on if you’re into the game:

Content Creators:

Maps:

Sub-Reddit

Discord


Are you playing Onward? If so and you’d like to share some tips for new players, let us know in the comments below!

 

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Hellgate: London Is Getting A Surprise VR Prequel Game

Hellgate: London Is Getting A Surprise VR Prequel Game

Hellgate: London is almost literally back from hell, thanks to a reveal of an upcoming VR prequel to the long-forgotten game.

Flagship Studios’ shooter MMO seemed lost to time, as least in the west, after it first released in 2007. It had an intriguing premise, set in a post-apocalyptic London in 2038, but never rose to the kind of prominence that rivals like World of Warcraft enjoyed, despite being relaunched and having continued work on the franchise when it was picked up by Korean company Hanbitsoft. But, according to a report from Japanese site 4gamer, Hellgate is far from dead.

At least, the series as a whole isn’t. Based on a rough translation of the report, the single-player VR experience is set a day before the events of the MMO kick off. You’ll be tasked with protecting a young girl named Jessica Summerisle, that appears in the original title. Footage of the game, seen below off-screen, was revealed at a Sony press conference last year. It keeps the original game’s first-person perspective, but it’s a single-player experience this time.

We’re not exactly sure how you play; the footage looks like it’s being experience on a gamepad but the featured image in this article suggests position-track controls too.

We can’t speak to the length of the experience, but the demonic world of Hellgate could certainly make for a great VR game.

The report only mentions a PC version of the game, though it was revealed for PlayStation VR last year. It appears Hanbitsoft actually first announced the VR game all the way back in 2015, but release is being planned for the beginning of 2018. No word on a Western release, but we’ve reached out to the publisher to ask. It’s built on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and, if these screenshots are anything to go by, it’s looking like it makes good use of it.

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Epic’s New Robo Recall Dev Diary Details The Game’s Evolution From Bullet Train

Epic’s New Robo Recall Dev Diary Details The Game’s Evolution From Bullet Train

Robo Recall is easily one of the most exciting VR experience coming in 2017, but its roots actually trace back to a relatively simple tech demo from 2015.

Fans of the Rift will remember when developer Epic Games took to the stage of the Oculus Connect 2 keynote that year to announce a tech demo for the then-unreleased Oculus Touch controllers, called Bullet Train. The demo was a first glimpse into what Touch could do for VR shooters and served as the foundation for Epic’s first larger VR game, Robo Recall. In this new dev diary, the first in a new series, focuses on the upcoming game. We can see the developer talk in more detail about how the two are linked, something Nick Whiting, Technical Director at Epic Games, alluded to in our interview from October.

Members of the Epic team are on-hand here to discuss how Robo Recall builds upon what the studio learned in Bullet Train. Teleporting, for example, is no longer assigned to specific spots in a level, but instead allows you to move to any position, much like other modern VR shooters.

Most importantly, though, you’re getting lots of new footage of the game here. There’s no two ways about it; Robo Recall is looking gorgeous, no doubt thanks to the intimate knowledge the developer has with its popular development toolkit, Unreal Engine. In the game, you’re tasked with taking down hordes of malfunctioning robots and encouraged to get inventive with creative kills, not too dissimilar to Epic’s own Bulletstorm, only with a much more comic-book, cartoonish style. We cam away very impressed from our time with the game at OC3 last year.

Bullet Train, meanwhile, can now be downloaded on Rift for free. Epic will also release Robo Recall for free, exclusively on Oculus Rift with Touch, and it’s easy to see why: this is as good an advertisement you’ll see for the engine as you’ll see.

There isn’t much longer to go until Robo Recall hits; it’s due in Q1 2017 and we’re already a month through that window. Expect a few more entries in this diary series before it launches.

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John Wick Chronicles Brings Gun-Toting Action To Vive Next Week

John Wick Chronicles Brings Gun-Touting Action To Vive Next Week

Action movie sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2, hits theaters next week, so it only makes sense its anticipated VR tie-in arrives then too.

The Steam page for John Wick Chronicles: An Eye For An Eye has been updated, confirming a February 9th release date along with a $19.99 price tag. That’s next Thursday, for those reaching for their diaries, and the film opens next Friday. Officially, only HTC Vive support is listed for the game right now, but we’ve reached out to developer Starbreeze Studios to ask after Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR support. Grab Games, GameCo, and Big Red Button all also contributed to development duties, and the game is published by Starbreeze with the help of Lionsgate.

Chronicles features an original set of missions that cast you as the titular character, played in the movies by Keanu Reeves. You’ll visit the Continental Hotel, a familiar locations to fans of the franchise, to pick up assignments that will then lead into shootouts using Vive’s position-tracked controls.

We got hands-on with the game back at New York Comic-Con last year and, if that preview is anything to go by, then it’s definitely one that Vive fans will want to look out for. We’re particularly eager to see how the full game will standout next to the flood of other VR shooters that have released for headsets over the past few months. The production values alone have us hoping for something memorable.

If you pre-order the game you’ll also get access to co-op bank heist shooter, Payday 2, complete with some John Wick-themed DLC.

If you don’t have a Vive but still want to give the game a try you can book a ticket to Los Angeles; the newly-opened IMAX VR center is showing the experience.

Naturally, we’ll be looking to bring you a full review of the game next week.

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Get A Free Copy Of Balloon Chair Death Match Before Next Week’s Update Hits

Get A Free Copy Of Balloon Chair Death Match Before Next Week’s Update Hits

We really, really like Balloon Chair Death Match here at UploadVR, and we think you would too. Pay attention, then, because you can get your hands on a free copy today.

Starting 10am PST (that’s now) and running through until 6pm, the first 1,000 people that post on this subreddit, Facebook channel, Steam page or Discord will get a free copy of the game. On Steam the game sells for $14.99.

Balloon Chair Death Match is currently in Steam Early Access, so the expanded player base will help developer Climax Studios stress test its various multiplayer features before a wider release. The game takes a unique approach to VR shooting, getting players to sit on a chair and treat their left controller as a flight stick. In the virtual world they’ll find themselves suspended in mid-air on a chair held up by balloons. Other players must shoot these balloons to take you down, and you’ll need to do the same to them.

We had great fun with the game when it launched late last year, but as with a lot of VR releases a lack of content was holding it back. The giveaway, then, is also the team’s way of celebrating the impending launch of a new update to the Early Access edition to the game. In this update, the team is adding two new modes. The first is a co-op survival mode in which anywhere between one and four players will be pitted against waves of incoming enemies, and you’ll have to last as long as you can against them. You can see it in the trailer above.

There’s also a new shooting range challenge mode for solo play. Here you’ll have to shoot down balloons that appear around you as quickly as possible. Climax also has a handful of AI and menu improvements for players.

Developers will be playing the game during the giveaway time slot, so make sure to pop in and say hello. Currently, we’re expecting the full version of the game to hit sometime this year.

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What Can You Expect In SUPERHOT VR’s Forever Update?

What Can You Expect In SUPERHOT VR’s Forever Update?

Like a lot of Oculus Touch owners, SUPERHOT VR [Review: 9/10] was one of our favorite games at the controllers’ launch last month, but there’s no denying it was on the short side.

The game, which adapted the ‘time moves only when you do’ mechanic from the original non-VR release, lasted less than two hours in total. We were dying for more content when the credits started to roll and, fortunately, it looks like we’ll be getting some, or at least some new ways to play what’s already there.

Both the SUPERHOT VR development team and Oculus itself are teasing a ‘Forever Update’ for the VR FPS. While there’s no news post to go along with the Twitter messages, the GIF above does have its own set of hints. Set in the game’s hub world, the disk the player’s hand holds seems to have a list of what to expect in the update.

It’s a little blurry, but Reddit user Leviatein seems to have uncovered the code: challenges, achievements, bug fixes, and secrets.

Achievements and bug fixes are simple enough; Oculus games recently started rolling out the company’s in-game rewards system, and there are always imperfections to iron out in any title. Challenges, meanwhile, are a little more exciting, as they suggest you’ll be able to tackle the levels you’ve already mastered with a new set of restrictions or goals to reach for. We’d love to try some of the game’s more challenging missions by perhaps only using melee weapons or firing a certain number of bullets.

Secrets, meanwhile, could obviously mean anything, but the game’s ambiguous story leaves plenty of room for cracks to explore. Hopefully they’ll lead to some brand new levels, though maybe that’s hoping for a little too much.

No date for the new features yet, but be on the lookout for them.

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Exclusive: ‘Dimension Hunter’ Might Be VR’s Most Stylish-Shooter Yet, Demo Out Now

Exclusive: ‘Dimension Hunter’ Might Be VR’s Most Stylish-Shooter Yet, Demo Out Now

I had a funny case of deja vu last week. Firstly, I played and reviewed Henry The Hamster Handler, a game that caught me off guard with its quality seeing as I had never heard of developer Pocket Money Games before. Then I stumbled upon the trailer for Dimension Hunters (demo here), a new first-person shooter which again surprised me with just how good it looked. This time, though, I had heard of the developer.

You guessed it, it was Pocket Money Games.

Henry captured my attention with its solid mechanics and the value it offered players. Dimension Hunter, meanwhile, practically demanded our coverage with its stylish trailer that seemed to go a step above the polish we see in a lot of Vive shooters. Visually it reminded me of Platinum Games’ fondly-remembered, ultra-violent beat ’em up, MadWorld, while on-rails progression hinted at a game with more to offer than wave-based combat. Naturally, I was eager to get in contact, try out the game and talk to the developer, and that’s pretty much how I spent my weekend.

Pocket Money Games holds yet more surprises, though. Given what I’d seen from the developer so far I was expecting it to be formed of UK games industry veterans that had broken off from respected studios to try their hands at VR, a story we hear almost weekly in this scene. Instead, it’s headed up by Frankie Cavanagh, a lecturer at Northumbria University, who uses the studio as a vehicle to develop his student’s ideas with them.

“I wanted to create a studio that allowed any student work on a real product and get their name on a real game,” Cavanagh tells me over Skype. “The idea was I’d start the studio and we’d build games with these very talented students that struggle to get into the industry. The idea was to have an open door policy.”

The team has been active for about six months and is based in the same building as developers like Hammerhead VR, Wolf & Wood Interactive and Oculus’ own UK office. Dimension Hunter is its first stab at a shooter. As the name suggests, it casts you as a dimension-hopping warrior that visits 10 different worlds, each with its own theme and connected by a strange facility that you hop to and fro throughout the campaign. Each world you visit will sport wave-based gameplay, while traveling between portals at the facility uses the on-rails mechanics seen in the trailer.

A lot of ideas are flowing through the studio. In fact, Cavanagh tells me Dimension Hunter was actually going to be shelved at one point, though one student’s persistence saved it. He also builds on my MadWorld comparison, noting that a lot of inspiration — and an underlying hint of humor — comes from British comic books like 2000 AD. The developer’s location is a “huge part” of why it looks this way, he says.

“I’m friends with Hammerhead and things like that,” Cavangah explains. “I’m one artist, Hammerhead are a team of artists and animators. So we have to be clever, we have to be stylistic, we have to change things.”

Indeed, playing through a short sci-fi orientated section of the game feels like rooting myself in an early Judge Dredd story, with a touch of the cartoon zaniness of Epic Games’ upcoming Robo Recall. It’s complete with powerful weapons that I can change with a click of the Vive’s touchpads. Almost as if I was Dredd himself, my dual-wielded guns morph from standard pistols to more powerful bullets with a smaller clip size to chargeable shots with a big impact. You can mix and match which types to use, too.

Right now the standard pistol feels the most useful, perhaps due to ease of use, but you’ll be able to upgrade weapons so that others really start to shine too. It will be interesting to see just how in-depth that system goes; reload times, magazine sizes and damage dealt all feel very methodical, and balancing it out on your own could make for a great customization system.

I’ve only seen an on-rails section of the game, which Cavanagh regularly compares to Time Crisis, but I almost feel as if that’s doing it somewhat of a disservice. Yes, you move along a set path, dodging big bright bullets, and using the Vive wands compares to the feel of a G-Con gun, but there’s true FPS satisfaction to having to duck behind cover and pop in and out using positional-tracking. As fun as they are, light gun games started to age just as soon as Halo hit the console scene, and Dimension Hunter is anything but dated.

On-rails movement is slow and refined so as to avoid simulator sickness, and sections are tightly designed so that there’s always cover to take advantage of, and enemies can appear from unexpected places. There will be a mode with recharging health, but the demo is designed to be challenging, and hugging a wall as you’re flanked by two sets of soldiers proves it. This isn’t a VR shooter you can simply blast through, and that’s refreshing to see.

Plus, Pocket Money is allowing you to choose how you move in these sections, with automatic and manual settings, the latter described as a “push-rail system” that allows you to move back and forth. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel”, Cavanagh says, instead suggesting Dimension Hunters is more of a fresh, solid take on something you’ve played before. Based on what I’ve played so far, that’s fine by me.

But I’m eager to see more. The other dimensions will range from Atlantis to post-apocalyptic themes with different enemy types that go beyond the standard crash test dummy humanoids and drones I fought in the on-rails section. Each dimension will end with a boss encounter, where the studio will also introduce dash mechanics for dodging (or teleportation, if you’d prefer).

As mentioned, Pocket Money Games launched a demo for Dimension Hunters today, with plans for a full release at some point this quarter. From there, the studio will bring the game to the Rift and PlayStation VR respectively.

Oh and PS VR owners don’t worry; I could tell in the demo that this was a game designed to avoid occulsion and other issues, and Cavanagh confirms this was done with Sony and, to a lesser extent, Oculus’ headsets in mind.

Just like Henry before it, Dimension Hunter might not be the most ambitious VR game, but it looks to be polished and varied, and it’s most certainly something I’ll want to play when it launches soon.

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Remembering RIGS: What Sony’s Guerrilla Cambridge Did For VR

Remembering RIGS: What Sony’s Guerrilla Cambridge Did For VR

The VR community was hit with quite a shock yesterday. Guerrilla Cambridge, the Sony-owned developer behind PlayStation VR multiplayer FPS, RIGS: Mechanised Combat League [Review: 8/10], was confirmed to be closing just a few months on from the game’s launch last October.

Needless to say, shutting the doors to the studio behind one of the biggest titles on the new hardware comes as a big surprise. RIGS might not have exactly been the new Call of Duty, but it was one of the better reviewed games among Sony’s launch line-up and one of the two full gamepad-based FPS games to hit the headset, the other being World War Toons. In our 2016 VR Game of the Year Awards, we named RIGS our PS VR Game of the Year.

Initially it had been assumed that Cambridge was about to embark upon a lengthy DLC roll out plan for the game, which would have kicked off with December’s Winter Update, but it looks like that may not be the case any longer. DLC might not be dead entirely (Sony didn’t respond to our questions about if it could continue), but it won’t be Cambridge making it.

Studio closures are an unfortunate part of the games industry, but this is the first time we’ve seen a developer behind a high-profile VR game shut down. That makes this news all the sadder; Cambridge was one of the pioneers of a new industry and it’s closing its doors far too early as far as we’re concerned, even considering its 19-year history. But the UK studio did take some important steps for the early days of VR with its lone HMD release, and it’s only right that we don’t forget them.

I was one of the first people to play RIGS following its reveal at E3 2015. In fact, it was the first thing I tried out at that year’s show, heading straight for it as soon as the expo hall doors opened. It occupied the entire second floor of a massive structure at Sony’s booth.

What struck me about the game was just how refined it was, even almost a year and a half away from launch. Developing gamepad-based FPSs for VR is a risky business considering the potential for motion sickness, but here was a developer that was bullish on its ability to create a comfortable experience, and trusting enough in players that they could handle it.

And they pulled it off.

That’s the most important thing RIGS did for VR; it proved you could have frantic, fast-paced multiplayer shooter action in the here and now, defying expectations. Rooting players in a walking mech gave a sense of authenticity to their movements, as their character wasn’t actually moving their legs, just comfortably sitting inside those metal frames, much like the player was just sitting on a chair in real life. Granted RIGS wasn’t free from comfort issues, but Cambridge’s novel foundation is something that more developers should pay attention to when looking at design and circumventing sickness.

You can’t overstate the wonders this did for PS VR’s launch line-up. Without RIGS, we’d have very little solid proof that the headset could handle non-flight shooters with this kind of ambition. Now as we look out to 2017, it’s one of the reasons we’re expecting such big things for PS4 VR.

A big part of its appeal was also accessibility. Every time I’ve jumped into the game I’ve found myself slipping back into the controls with ease, where I had previously been worried they’d overwhelm me. Cambridge made the most of combining a traditional shooter control scheme with the new features of VR. You could move and steer with your head, for example, but you could also stick to the classic joystick layout.

But RIGS didn’t just settle from successfully translating an FPS into VR, it also taught us that innovation in mechanics will be still key to pushing the genre forward in VR just as much as it is for standard displays. Rather than forcing you to lock an eye to your iron sights and have you creep around corners, RIGS embraced the arena shooter. It featured a wide aiming reticle that made it hard to miss and gave the action a snappy pace, dual-wielding weapons had you pressing the attack, and special abilities forced you to use strategy in firefights. It would have been all too easy to imitate contemporary shooters and chase some of the Call of Duty and Battlefield pie, but RIGS instead set itself apart. How many other shooters have a game mode where you need to throw yourself through a goal zone?

Cambridge made a mark on production values, too. At a time when we weren’t quite sure if Sony’s console could really provide VR experiences that measured up to what we’ve been seeing on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, here was a rock solid game with sharp visuals, a stunningly vivid color palette, and an unflinching 60 FPS framerate reprojected into 120FPS.

I also have a lot of admiration for RIGS‘ determination to steer clear of VR violence. It’s a rare shooter with a family-friendly, televised-sport tone. The Mechanized Combat League is a futuristic (sadly fictional) sport after all, and Cambridge used this to put a positive spin on the action. Instead of feeling like an action hero, the cheers of the crowd and cries from the commentator made you feel like a team player. Shooting guns might not be the most enlightened use of VR, but here’s a game that at least does it in a tasteful way.

Guerrilla Cambridge’s demise marked a sad day for the VR industry. This was a team that had made a very good first impression with its first game, and I’ll forever be wondering what might have happened if it had had the chance to make a second. While the studio might be gone, the impact it made with RIGS means I, for one, certainly won’t forget it any time soon. How Sony fills that gap it’s just created in its experienced VR teams will be interesting to see.

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Playing ‘Deus Ex’ With Lenovo’s ‘VR Upscaling’ Was Far From Enjoyable

Playing ‘Deus Ex’ With Lenovo’s ‘VR Upscaling’ Was Far From Enjoyable

When I heard about Lenovo’s VR Upscaling feature, which debuted at CES last week, I just knew I had to try it. This strange little feature, included as part of the company’s upcoming Entertainment Hub storefront, takes AAA games and ‘upscales’ them to run inside the HTC Vive. In one corner of their show booth sat one of their new laptops with a Vive, running 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Now, I had imagined this to look and run a little something like vorpX, the third-party software that lets you play games like Skyrim inside your VR headset in full 3D and decoupling head movement from the HUD. Obviously this doesn’t provide an experience anywhere near as fantastic as a native VR game, but it’s a fun way to see what your favorite games might have looked like if they’d supported the Rift or Vive. If Lenovo had come up with something similar to that, then I might have genuinely considered buying some games off of its hub, just to have the option to see them in VR.

But VR upscaling isn’t really VR at all. In fact, it looked like all that had been done was to take the 2D game and stretch the screen all the way across your face. I could even seen a small blip of black at the very bottom of my view where the screen appeared to end. The world didn’t stretch out in front of me but instead appeared flat and oddly proportioned. I never once thought I was actually in the space I was playing in.

Despite being on Vive with two base stations facing me, positional tracking was completely disabled in this mode. Head-tracking, meanwhile, replaced the functions of the right control stick on an Xbox gamepad, though you could use that stick too with seemingly no consideration for the player’s comfort, steering the camera with the same speed it would have in a normal game. Your gun followed you wherever you looked, so fighting enemies was a simple case of looking at them and shooting.

As I was playing a Lenovo representative noted that I had gotten further than most people, and I had only been in VR for about 5 minutes. I don’t have issues with simulation sickness most of the time, but I imagine most people will with this mode. It took me back to the heady days of the Oculus Rift’s DK1 where many design rules for VR games hadn’t been established and we had a sort of wild west of games that just made you flat out ill.

I had expected this option to be bad considering Lenovo hadn’t really shown a lot of interest in VR on the public-facing side so far, but not this bad. This was not playing Deus Ex in VR, this was playing it in an oversized ultra-wide version of PlayStation VR’s cinematic mode (you could switch to a smaller screen floating in front of you with the press of a button), and it’s worrying to see a big company — no less one that’s making a VR headset itself — use the tech in this way.

Lenovo’s Entertainment Hub will be launching this summer, and also offers the ability to watch movies in a VR space, which was at least in 3D it seems. The company plans to support over 200 AAA titles with its VR Upscaling feature. Don’t be fooled, though; this is not a good way to play your favorite games in VR.

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