The VR Conundrum

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Just In Time Review



This is a fun, if slight, little action-puzzler. The core conceit is: Prevent a death in slow motion. The core mechanic is: Plucking bullets from mid-air. And at its best it is indeed classic VR fun

It's a mixed bag though, and so short on content you could complete it in an afternoon session. Rather than scale up further mechanics, they seem to have focused their energies on building the different scenarios, some of which are genuinely cute little playpens or evolving scenes of carnage, others of which just feel like rehashes or missed beats. (The best ones riff on other franchises, from the Matrix to Laura Croft).

More on the 'action wish-fulfilment' end than the puzzle one, they still throw in the odd single-solution conundrum, with some heavy hints. If you can snag it on a sale it's def a cute indie dabble. (Can't believe they tried to charge £20 for this initially :/). The only real annoyances are the 'post death' restarts and the limitations of the teleport locomotion.

(+)
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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



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Finally teleported through the Skyrim door...





Not sure why Steam images have squished like that. Initial graphics settings actually looking OK, although I'm going to have a heavy play with it. I could see happily out to the mountain ranges on my slow (totally encumbered ) waddle down from the barracks though, which was a pleasant surprise.

There are some nice little bespoke VR touches in here, the map being a vista you swoop over in particular . Although my strangely static Khajit hands are more like having bits of taxidermy stuck to me than evocative of hands inserted into the world

(And god there's no point posting screenies, but things like this mounted fish just look bizarrely compelling in 'real 3D'. It really doesn't come across though ).

Need to massage the hell out of it (like taking the crosshairs from my flame on for a start, fun as that is ), but thankfully I've forgotten almost everything about my last playthrough at this point so I'm happily browsing enormous books and going through the standard early adventure stuff. Hunting (snagging a rabbit on my first shot with a hand bow was grand - still missing the deer and eagles though ), spamming spells, putting things on top of things...

But there'll be time for all that. Got to bed too late as it was

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EDIT:
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Grabbed some Skyrim VR footage:



It's just me bumbling around the first cavern (and pressing the wrong buttons, and doing far too much looting ), but it might show a bit of what VR hands etc bring to the party

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EDIT: Yeah ok it was on the starter 'Adept' level. Wayyyy too easy.

It's weird being back in Skyrim. I'm already grimacing at the encumberance waddle, and lord some of the locations haven't aged particularly well. But then others are still fairly startling or transporting. (Emerging into the widening cave where you get your first shout, edging past silent tombs, while bats scattered and traced the roof up, was a neat set piece this time round. Also just the simple act of swaying-tree-shadow covering some seemingly-ferny ground can still works it charm in the wilds).

The thundering sky-voice of the ole Greybeards (as I encumberanced my way back from the first dragon kill) was also a neat moment, with more of a feeling of being in a wide expanse suddenly, ringed by mountains.

I'm a bit torn. I've played the damn game so many times. And the melee is poop. But I just peeked at the spells available at Whiterun, and I want them alllll. And a house.

Plus having a guy run up to my face and excitedly exclaim 'Fire!', due to my casually burning hands, was just fricking hilarious

Guess I'll keep playing



there's a frog in my snake oil
Indie Dev Experimentation:

This is just a cute example of an indie dev playing around with gameplay and input norms. Not hugely out there, but his toying with classic controls augmented by motions in real life is intriguing. (IE for example, pushing the stick to get a slow motion going, then rocking gently on your feet to get up to faster walking speed, and arm sprinting for bursts. With bonus leans for jumps. Looks like it could work, but still within limited spaces etc).



And then there just that classic obsessing about getting hand-interaction physics working nicely.

(One thing I've found a minor immersion-negative in Skyrim is the lack of physics on the weapons. It's a silly thing, but being able to tap and push things with a wielded 'tool' adds loads. Just being able to tap out a beat on a bar top with your sword during some dialogue adds a real bonus feeling of being 'connected to' the environment, and more within it).

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The Price of Newness


Looking forward to this launch hitting a price drop:



Looks like a really fun puzzle conceit, if pitched on the easy end. Pass stuff up and down to your giant or tiny mirror self. Can def see this working well the natural 'human scale' that VR provides. Unfortunately £15 for what's apparently 1hr+ of fun, ain't happening...



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Skyrim: I'm Late, I'm Late...



Oh damn, I'm falling down the Skyrim rabbit hole.

It's obviously dated in many places, and some of the VR implementations do feel slender. (Even if they're totally parallel to F4. I guess I just really want to tap things with a sword the way I don't with a gun )

But... I'm giggling like a fool when a new fireball one-shots a bandit down a hill. And loving having a complete open world game in VR again, with daft dialogue everywhere, and huge hills to crest. This could get dangerous...

(As a minor aside on a fun thing, I was a bit disappointed by the 2D sprites they used for the flame spell. I've realised the others are a lot more '3D' though )



Plus I'm going to post another 3D thing that will just look totally unimpressively 2D, but is in fact, impressively 3D. When seen in 3D...




there's a frog in my snake oil
Skyrim: Video Reality

Put a better vid together, just grabbing some of the fun bits from a 2hr session:



Playing on the middle difficulty level now, so the combat isn't a complete walkover. (I'm usings Sedai's 'don't pause and use potions mid-battle' philosophy, which made the early Hagraven fun!)

Mainly going mage/archer. Although lord I suck with the bow . (And although they've tried to update the perks, the reticule they replaced the zoom with seems totally useless to me. Gonna ini-file it out and just unlock the slow-mo perk that goes with it.)

The age of the engine is showing itself in various ways (and weirdly the object manipulation is wayyyyy jankier than in FO4), but the art efforts still manage to rise to the top at times. There's something about being able to appreciate a 3D space's arrangements, lighting and higher-poly assets by 'moving amongst them' that really does elevate even these older school efforts



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Skyrim: Dungeon Delving & 'Depth'

It doesn't really come across in these fuzzy pix, but it's fun to stumble onto the more 'set piece' dungeon antics in Skyrim again. Both of these ones were familiar locales...



But rounding a corner to hear booming incantations, while the blue magic swirled 'high' above, was nicely striking, despite this being like the fourth time I've encountered these guys trying to summon a Wolf Queen. The bonus feeling of height/scale as you wind your way up, and the swirl of the magic effects, all gained a bit. (Plus the general ducking and diving and exchanging of bow shots on stairwells )




The light-path dungeon seems to have a weirdly volumetric effect to its creepy dark mist effect. I'm pretty sure it's just layered sprites, with a bit of fade as you move amongst them, but it kinda works, seemingly holding their scale correctly as you move through them, but kinda otherwordly in their cartoon oddness.


Devilish Sprites & The Search for the 3rd D...

I've got form for being tricked by this stuff, and found these Elite steam sprites strangely 'volumetric' when flying amongst them in VR. (I think almost purely due to 'bump map' illusions, and the effect when they're overlayed and in various states of fade-out).

There are some really obvious flat effects which look properly meh in VR. The god that flings you up in the air at one point just being a flat disc, being a good example

But then I was walking around the Greybeards and the magical effects as they imbue you with Shouts really did seem to be modelled strands of 'magic' in 3D that emerged from their back and passed over their shoulders.

And dammit I'm still trying to fathom whether this Stoneflesh spell is a flat image of a 3D animation that stays facing you at all times, occluded by the hand, or a 3D model in motion. I've literally spent minutes watching it intersect with the hand model trying to figure it out (I thinnkkkk it genuinely might be a model. But yeah, I've been fooled before. It looks cool either way )

It's kinda fun, amongst getting lost in the silliness and the action, to poke around the cool 3D / lighting work that gets elevated by VR, and the other shortcuts that get horribly exposed



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Futurescape!



I think this is someone playing Runescape, dressed in custom gear, while mainly playing Beat Saber.

I think...



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The Daft & The Graph:



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Monthly Connected VR Headsets on Steam Have Grown Exponentially



A fun little snapshot, now that they've balanced it for steam population growth. (Still like only around 0.8% of the Steam userbase doubtless, and doesn't cover a load of non-steam uses and non-PC headsets, but still. Kinda healthy )



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Ultrawings: First Look

Liking this. 'Handheld' controls, gamey challenges, but flight skills required. I'm using the arcade mode, rather than the pure sim, but it's still got plenty of challenge and stall-turn fun in there.

Slightly annoying early on when you have to trek to different islands in your starter microlite to unlock new missions, which takes like 5 minutes. But the unlocks keep coming, and I'm enjoying the second plane.... a classic glider, with an experimental rocket on the back, and very little fuel



Well worth a fiver at the mo

(And ideal chill seated VR gaming when you've got a cold )



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TECH TREADS WATER:



So the new Oculus is a side-grade (easier set-up, slightly less screen-door effect, slightly cheaper screen & audio, lower launch price).

So the hardcore are pouty (see link above) as it's not a shiny new toy. But it kinda signals a slight step towards accessibility (the starting $400 price will drop down readily enough I suspect) and ongoing support for PCVR.

Can't say I blame Oculus/Facebook etc. They could push the tech on, and meet costs from a small whale fanbase & industrial applications, but with the software side still a bit soft, and the tech still essentially at the enthusiast level, they've just opted to nurse both along in the meantime.

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BARGAIN BASEMENT FUN:

Got some amusing stuff for a couple of quid in a bundle:

TOWNSMEN VR



This is a slick little God game, really making good use of various VR aspects.

Definitely still Early Access, and with scant replayability at the moment, but what they do have is lovely and promising, even if it's essentially just a glorified tutorial.

Seems to be on the 'poke things' silliness end of the scale, with lots of interaction possibilities and physics fun tucked away in there.

(It doesn't come across in the vid, but the 'shrink yourself down' aspect is really striking in the headset. I think they may be using the 'change the distance between the virtual eyes' trick to really give that feeling of scale change).

They haven't added anything for a very long time, but they do claim to be still working on it behind the scenes.

Fingers crossed that they do get the new maps etc up and running. No review for now though, as it's not really a game yet... :/

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THE TEAR



This 'prelude' is more of an experience than a puzzle game, but honestly well worth the 2 quid purely for the oddness. Was glad it worked painlessly on my Rift, even though it says it's Vive-only.

This is a play through of one 'path', although the other path just seems to involve doing one thing differently. So, here be spoilers essentially.

Worth sitting on the floor of your flat surrounded by inter-dimensional oddities for ultimately

( + + + + )



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The stealth project, Espire 1, looks like it's got a bit more gun-slingy, and I'm liking it. Who doesn't like slow-mo?



Still seems to have the neat little attention-to-detail bits from the early builds, like some decent physics interactions (tapping things with your rifle making a noise, or being used for a cudgel blow etc).

They're obviously taking their time with it, which has me intrigued.



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The Red Stare



This is a very cute freebie indie. The simple premise is that you're on a 1950s stake out for scurrilous Commies, with not much more than a phone, fax, camera, and a window view.

There are lots of rough edges. Your phone contact sounds notably British. The 'intense' communist meetings that play out before you are more like clockwork bumper car incidents between the NPCs. But the little touches are great. Stare at the clock to make time speed forward. Array polaroids of your suspects on the handy chalkboard expanse. Realise that the radio isn't overly fuzzy, you just haven't tuned it properly.

Not a lot of meat on the bone, but definitely fun to prod for a bit. (And more enjoyable on a higher end rig now, so that I can actually discern what the hell's going on )



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Fallout 4: Full Game Experience



It's still mainly a comment on the rest of the ecosystem, but a great thing about F4 is stumbling on all the 'late game' & game breadth stuff.

I'd never run across this gamma weapon before. The electricity arcs over its nobbly surface really ground it as a lump of novelty in your hand. And its fun expanding shot was amusingly alarming when it first crashed all around me



I really can't exaggerate how big this Mirelurk Queen looked as it towered down an apocalyptic night time road towards me. (To the extent that I was measuring her claws like a gleeful game hunter by the end ). I'd never stumbled on one in the wild, and it was something else.

(Only downside was my gf being less than amused at me suddenly shouting 'holy ****' like I'd been transported inside Them the movie, while apparently desperately shooting the ceiling )



there's a frog in my snake oil
Fallout: Eeeeeee



I know this image doesn't look that compelling, but it capped off a great run of Fallout fun. Getting a lift in the bird over the city, 'one handing' a mini-gun out the window to clear out the mutant welcome committee. Watching Cait, highlighted in Power-Armour red, leap like a janky idiot into the sea, for no particularly good reason. And then on to some old ultra-violence amongst the latest corridor twists, all of it a kinetic counterpoint to the lore-soaking on the floating ship just before.

Honestly, I can just get lost in this for ages again, now I've wrestled myself out of the 'Must Build Another Base Populated By Bowler-Hatted Assassins' thing. I'd never done the Brotherhood of Steel line, so visiting the corners of their ship was all great. And feeling a load of storylines and set pieces overlapping out there in the middle-distance, waiting for me to elect them, is increasingly grand. No single aspect is superlative in F4, for sure, but together some of it really does take wing in VR. Partially it's the way Beth tries to fill in the space between engagements that's really getting me though. The whirly-bird that gets taken down overhead and flings shrapnel straight past your face. The sudden roaming monster that's 3x your size hoving into view. The wry comment from your companion that fits the local mood.

Some of this is good just because there's not enough of it about in VR gaming. But to paraphrase the song, it's also because, in VR: "The birds are the birdiest, the people the peopliest...". Umm. It's because all these elements are more 'present', that bit more 'real'. The crows look daft close up, but damn does a flock of them startling past you, or brooding noisily on a house top, add a lot to the game. Dammit if these silly characters don't feel more memorable for the fact that they barge you out of the way, clanking noisely as they pass, or just say something apposite behind your right ear while you're out in the ruins.

TLDR: I'm loving this again. In part it's because of giant 3D explosions, lore-infused environments, and its delicious tradition of functional jank. But also because made-for-VR games just aren't replete like this. Not one of them has a hidden perk for running around naked. Not one...



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VECTOR 36: PREVIEW

So this has a some decent potential. A pod racer sim. You get the most traction from your engines when you're near the ground, but the more you clip along the more likely the undulating, fractured surface of Mars will heft you up into the air. The game becomes about timing overheating bursts of speed, assessing terrain as you curve back down from air peaks, and skimming yourself as close to the ground as possible without smacking into dunes or outcrops. Also features much power-sliding around corners

And then it gets proper geeky. You realise you can not just buy new components (like say the main thruster at the back, or the 4 lift thrusters) but also alter their position and orientation. And there's no obvious sliding scale of excellence for them, they sit on a weight / heat / power nexus of tricksy decisions.

In line with my normal 'change the acceleration bands' efforts in driving games, my second build inexplicably tilted backwards alarmingly and saw me fly 45 degrees upwards above the track



I'm pretty sure I know what went wrong though. Pretty sure...



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The Spy Who Shrunk Me: First Look



Another VR/flat title. Definitely on the basic end, but it's been a fun-enough cartoon sneaker through the early levels. Shrinking down is definitely a fun touch in VR, if not as strikingly done as the scale transitions in the likes of Townsmen VR. The basic graphics also suffer somewhat from being observed and interacted with at both scales. Definitely on the rustic end, but will be interesting to see where the puzzles go.

All of the VR locomotion stuff has been ported pretty solidly. You can scurry around easily and adjust most aspects like the toolbelt etc. (I did find that if I made myself the same height as the NPCs I couldn't pick anything up off the floor though )






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Yeah, Spy Who Shrunk Me is picking up actually

Managed to capture some non-glitched footage:



It's not the giddiest run through (most of the others fell foul of a playback glitch on the mirror screen), but once it gets going there's a flavour of the fun in there



there's a frog in my snake oil
In lieu of any stonking AAA releases at the moment, most of the interest lies in the indie sphere...



And, like, pure rip-offs



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Picking up quite a few decent titles for £10 a go at the moment in fairness though. The last few mentioned avove in the thread, and will be grabbing 'Virtual Virtual Reality' & 'Fisherman's Tale' soonish I reckon. Short but silky / playful experiences going by reports.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Hey, @Golgot ! Wanted you to know that, although I don't really post in this thread, I'm reading it. I'm still just wading very slowly into VR with my Oculus Rift. Just haven't had time to really delve in. It's not like regular PC gaming where I can dip a toe in for a a few spare minutes here or there. I seem to need to wait till I have enough time to really get into it... which happens too rarely. I'm going to try to be better about *making* time to explore the VR stuff I already have.

But in the meantime, I enjoy your posts and hope I can enjoy my VR as much as you are already!