Thirith on 27/9/2018 at 08:09
Rock Band VR uses a solution that allows you to temporarily attach one of the Touch controllers to your plastic guitar, which works well. I haven't played much of the game, but as a proof of concept it works.
Quote Posted by henke
I'm also looking forward to news of a proper Rift v2, but I doubt they'll talk much about it during this Connect, for fear of undercutting sales of the Quest by announcing the next, even better, thing right away.
You may well be right, though I would've thought that like Oculus Go, the Quest targets a somewhat different audience: the people who want something they can take with them, who don't necessarily have a very fast computer.
SubJeff on 27/9/2018 at 17:24
Dis
[video=youtube;3gqbubA6oqY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=51&v=3gqbubA6oqY[/video]
henke on 28/9/2018 at 07:25
Yeah maybe. Maybe dat. Most of us VR-heads have seen too many movie tie-in experiences that turn out to be lightweight and underwhelming affairs to get too excited about another one.
Sometimes they turn out good tho. Star Trek was fun, but light on content, and I'm feeling the same way about Creed: Rise to Glory, which I'm playing right now. The fighting is pretty good, there's a lot of clever gameplay ideas here and my shoulders are aching from the workout, but I already blasted through the career mode (in about an hour I think). Granted, that was on the easiest difficulty though, after my first few sessions with it I can feel myself getting better at blocking and dodging, and I look forward to seeing how I fare on the harder difficulties.
About those clever gameplay ideas, my favourite quirks are how you enter slo-mo when successfully dodging and big swing, as well as the "out of body" experience that happens when you get knocked down, and the playable pre-fight workout montages. The last is essentially a series of minigames in quick succession, with your stamina in the fight being determined by how many segments you manage to complete before the montage is over. A similar thing happens in the Ricky Conlan fight(which you might remember as the main event of the first movie) where all 10 rounds of the fight are presented as a playable montage as well.
Those folks at Survios know their stuff, and I suspect that this game, just like Sprint Vector, will get more fun as I get better at it. There's also an online PVP mode, tho I haven't dared try that yet.
[video=youtube;5PvLg8mFVK4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PvLg8mFVK4[/video]
Thirith on 1/10/2018 at 06:35
I finished the 'story' in Robo Recall yesterday, and while I enjoyed the game well enough, I'm not sure I'll go back to try and improve my performance in the various levels. The game's too samey for that. Obviously I could try to change things up to keep them interesting, but I've got a pretty big back catalogue of VR games, so I might just keep Robo Recall installed for now and then I'll deinstall it six months later when I realise I haven't thought about playing it even once.
I also played some GNOG, a game I'm finding absolutely delightful to look at and play with. It's also kinda infuriating in that the controls would have benefited massively from tweaks and polish: this kind of game, which is more of a toy than a classical game, needs to feel as tactile as possible, and right now the controls are way more fiddly than they should be. If you're into games like CHUCHEL, it's worth checking out GNOG once it's come down in price, but it is a game for a very specific audience and the implementation is less than ideal.
Thirith on 3/10/2018 at 07:36
I've only just heard that Lone Echo 2 has been announced.
[video=youtube;J-VbAK8TFR8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-VbAK8TFR8[/video]
Also, I revisited Beat Saber last weekend and the downloaded songs don't work. Will have to look into this, because there seem to be some pretty cool tracks/fan levels. Most likely a recent update means that I have to reapply the mod fix.
henke on 3/10/2018 at 12:24
Quote Posted by Thirith
I've only just heard that
Lone Echo 2 has been announced.
[video=youtube;J-VbAK8TFR8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-VbAK8TFR8[/video]
Also, I revisited
Beat Saber last weekend and the downloaded songs don't work. Will have to look into this, because there seem to be some pretty cool tracks/fan levels. Most likely a recent update means that I have to reapply the mod fix.
I believe there's some kinda Lone Echo 2 "trailer experience" that'll pop up on Oculus any time now, I'm holding out for that instead of watching the trailer in regular ol' monitor-o-vision. Super-eager for more Lone Echo!
About Beat Saber songs, yeah the plugin breaks every time there's a new update released. It's usually fixed within a day, but you'll have to run the installer again.
Thirith on 3/10/2018 at 13:49
My wishlist for Lone Echo 2:
- More exploration
- More, and more interesting, puzzles (they should take a hint from the non-moon logic point&click adventure games)
The first game was great, but the sequel could do with less hand-holding.
Thirith on 7/10/2018 at 10:29
I just checked out the VR version of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and from the 20 minutes I played I think I may well end up replaying the whole thing. IMO it doesn't suffer from the lower resolutions, as so much of the aesthetic is about lighting and hinting at things. The effect of the binaural sound is reinforced by the world being everywhere you turn your head rather than just on a screen in front of you. Scale also makes you feel more like you're with Senua, especially at the beginning when you're on the boat with her and she's basically your size. Finally, while it's not unusual in VR to have cinematic sequences on a rectangle floating in front of you, for me the effect in Hellblade is somewhat akin to Get Out's Sunken Place, disassociating the player from Senua when the rest of the time you're right there with her.
I don't think VR will make anyone love Hellblade if they didn't already like what the game does, but it's absolutely worthwhile checking out the VR version if you already liked the game.
Other, unrelated notes:
- I checked out Moss and it's delightful.
- GNOP is also very cool - if you're into quirky puzzlebox toys.
- Oculus Home no longer opens when I enter VR. I wonder why that is.
henke on 7/10/2018 at 16:28
I just finished Moss! Yeah, delightful is a good word for it. The presentation is very nice, Quill is wonderfully animated, and there's a few really cool scenes throughout. As for the rest of it? Eh... servicable combat and puzzling, and the story isn't anything to write home about. It's also very short (I think it was less than 2 hours), and the finale is a set-piece heavy thing that borders on being more annoying than awesome. I don't know, it's fine. Just fine.
Also finished Creed on the Normal difficulty today, and I'm not sure I'm gonna bother with Hard. It has a bunch of cool gameplay ideas, but the real meat and potatoes of it (the boxing, that is) isn't partifularly fun. The career(story mode) is also a very slight affair, and the whole thing is oddly paced. It all kinda builds up to the Ricky Conlan fight, which is the most cinematic and memorable fight of the game, but after that it doesn't end. Instead there's one more fight, and then it just kinda ends. Eh. Ok.
I wouldn't recommend anyone pay full price for either of these. Get em in a sale if you're interested. Or don't.
Picked up Sairento this morning. Looking forward to finally seeing what all the fuzz is about.
Also been playing a bit of In Death since it just came out of EA. I like this game quite a bit, despite it's faults. It's a very novel and fun VR FPS, but the procedural levels and enemy placement means the balancing is kinda all over the place, and very often it ends up feeling either too easy or too difficult. At the same time that randomness and never knowing what's around the next corner means you'll have to explore with caution, which I like.
Thirith on 7/10/2018 at 16:32
Quick P.S. concerning my Hellblade post above: the bit I played this morning made me think that something like Dark Souls - or, more precisely, not something *like* but indeed Dark Souls - would be great in VR. Anything where the world itself has such a strong sense of presence comes to life even more in VR, and getting more of a sense of scale from the opponents would be wonderful. Chronos did something akin to this, but its world lacked the detail and sense of history that From Software's creations have.