Retro|Spective 203: The Final Tour of PlayStation VR

[Neon Ignition]

The PlayStation VR headset


The dawn of the second age of PS VR is on the horizon and it's been clear for some time that the original headset is seeing its sun set with releases drying up and the discussion move on to more recent developments surrounding its successor. However, because the headset is tied to the PlayStation 4 infrastructure it means that unless Sony does some remastering or ensures the new headset works fully with existing titles there will remain some titles that are only playable for PlayStation users.

We're going to make a whistle stop tour through noteworthy PSVR exclusives but first:

Do you feel the original headset still holds up in the face of modern units and the dominant Quest 2?

[Asura]

Do you feel the original headset still holds up in the face of modern units and the dominant Quest 2?

Difficult, this one.

The PSVR remains the most comfortable stock VR headset I've ever worn. By far. I have a Quest 2 with a bunch of aftermarket parts to improve the fit and it's in a similar place, but that shouldn't take away from the PSVR being really comfortable. It's also OLED, which the Quest 2 isn't, and has much better IPD adjustments (the two main issues people bring up about the Q2).

However, in most other respects, such as tracking, resolution, the fact that it's cabled... The PSVR is showing its age. Its strength is in software; it might be arguably the most outdated form of good quality VR, but it still has two of the absolute best VR games ever - Wipeout VR and Blood & Truth.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 01 - The Inpatient
A prequel to Until Dawn, players take on a journey through an asylum directly from the view point of being there in person. Expanding on the main games lore, players experience jump scares as they experience events 63 years before the teens are picked off. The game used some voice recognition elements so you could respond to the characters who spoke to you in game as well.




Did Inpatient work on you?

[Neon Ignition]

I only played Inpatient once but for me it was one of many VR titles that steered too heavily into 'experience' territory. It looked good and the creepy air was effective but in the end it left little leaving impact on you which was a shame given how likeable Until Dawn itself had been


Game 02 - RIGS: Mechanised Combat League
It didn't last too long thanks to how small the player base was but the game was one of the first attempts at making an online multiplayer title work well in VR for the console so stood out against so many short single player contained experiences. The closure of the Cambridge studio shortly after its release helped cement its fate




Did Sony rig a fun experience?

[QualityChimp]

I have not played games 1 & 2, but have RIGS on a list.

[Asura]

I only played Inpatient once but for me it was one of many VR titles that steered too heavily into 'experience' territory. It looked good and the creepy air was effective but in the end it left little leaving impact on you which was a shame given how likeable Until Dawn itself had been


Game 02 - RIGS: Mechanised Combat League
Did Sony rig a fun experience?

This was a fantastic game. Unfortunately, I got my PSVR quite a while after launch, and I never played the full game of RIGS because it was already dead online, along with Sony's other big failed attempt to own the VR multiplayer shooter space, Starblood Arena (which was like a mixture of Descent and Overwatch). However, the demo was quite extensive and I could tell I would've really gotten into it, had I got it earlier.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 03 - Iron Man VR
Bringing the brand power of Marvel to PSVR, this game aimed to put you literally in the suit of Iron taking on missions using your pulse blasters to fly through the air and shoot targets whilst built around an Iron Man storyline. The game didn't quite make the impact expected though due to arriving quite far into the headsets life and not scoring the level of high review scores it had been aiming for.





Did you feel like the game made for a Stark choice on PSVR?

[phillv85]

I got my VR quite late, the same Christmas PS5 came out. I really enjoy it, although the resolution could be better. I do find a lot of the games make me feel very sick very quickly. Wipeout in VR is awesome, but I can only really do one race before I have to stop. Blood and Truth I got 10 minutes into and had to stop. Tetris Effect is probably my favourite as I can play that for quite some time and it's awesome. I wish they'd remake Child of Eden for VR.

[QualityChimp]

I played the demo of Iron Man VR.
Looked good from the trailers, but the actual game seemed a bit basic.
Maybe the final game looked better and had more going on.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 04 - Farpoint
Coupled with the Aim Controller attachment, Farpoint transported players to a first person adventure on an alien world. The game featured a single player FPS campaign and co-op in a title that stumbled a little in terms of the design of its levels being fairly vanilla but the VR element was well received.







An experience that went Far or fail to see the Point?

[Asura]

Game 04 - Farpoint
Coupled with the Aim Controller attachment, Farpoint transported players to a first person adventure on an alien world. The game featured a single player FPS campaign and co-op in a title that stumbled a little in terms of the design of its levels being fairly vanilla but the VR element was well received.
An experience that went Far or fail to see the Point?

I enjoyed this. I got the full package, with the Aim Controller - which was a bit of a scam honestly. Nowhere had it in stock, and I had to go to CEX who had split it up, charging the price of the controller+game and then the game on its own <grumble>.

But still, I remember I enjoyed it. Visually it was great, gameplay wise it was fun... But I think its biggest problem was that it was very "competent".

This is a bit like someone who reads The Lord of the Rings for the first time in 2022 and says "but the orcs and elves and stuff, not very original is it?".

It looked fine. Good. Visually it was pleasing. Good lighting, actually good animation and character models. But nothing really memorable.

It sounded good. Great weapon SFX, like I remember the weapons felt satisfying... But I don't remember how any of them sound.

The story was good. I seem to remember some sort of thing where you've got a holographic log of some person, and you're trying to rescue them? So when you walk through places, a hologram of them appears, and you get some mystery about what they were doing and why... But I don't remember who they were, or what the deal was.

The gameplay was fine. It was a perfectly competent first-person shooter. Nothing was buggy, everything was smooth, all the key mechanics were there and they worked well. But I don't remember any of the levels or specific situations; just the general memory that it was... Good.

And that makes me feel bad! Because if the developers ever read this, I'm sure they'd be miffed, and rightfully so! Because it was the first really competent, story-driven FPS game ever made fully for VR; before Half-Life Alyx and all the rest. They were building on stuff developers learned from prior successful games like RAW DATA but regardless, on a technical and design level, the fact that they nailed so much was a real achievement.

Hell, I remember being at EGX one year when it was first playable to the public, and the queue was a bona fide fire hazard.

It's a good game. Maybe a bit simple by console FPS standards but that's like comparing Wolfenstein 3D to Halo 3, it's simply not a fair comparison to make. But that's the impression the game left.

It was competent.

[CMcK]

Farpoint is a mediocre FPS elevated by it being in VR. It's enough fun to play but you can see where the PS4 tech just wasn't up to delivering the visuals the developer would no doubt liked to have offered.
Those spider things the crawled towards you under the sand and jumped out at you had my nephew scared rotten. That wouldn't have been the same with out the VR element.
The gun peripheral is really quite good but the tracking could be thrown out by reflective surfaces nearby.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 05 - Until Dawn: Rush of Blood
The second of the two spin-off titles for PSVR, this game took a more straightforward form of being a lightgun style shooter with players stuck on a rollercoaster as they blasted trackside targets. Each pass gets more and more twisted to represent the decline in the mental health of the players character building to its revealing climax. Though the game worked well enough, it did attract some criticism because of its limited and short length.








Did this last spin-off give you a Rush?

[Asura]

I hated this one for totally subjective reasons

I've always hated the "evil carnival" aesthetic. Weird menacing clowns, lo-fi big-top music played in a minor key... It don't find it scary, I just find it daft.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, I didn't mind the game but it didn't manage to put the scares into the experience given how that was the main hook. It's a very easy game to go through but it's the definition of a simple experience