So I got the Astro Bot demo and played it and now I want nothing more in my life than to plonk down $40 to play full Astro Bot. I haven’t yet, because I have bought too many videogames lately… but it is a revelation, and I now really look forward to Super Mario VR in 2024 (or whenever Nintendo gets around to it) from the 3D Land team, because this is an amazing feeling. I had an ear-to-ear idiot smile on my face the whole time.
Edit: oh what’s this, GameStop will be having it on sale for $20 next week. glad I didn’t give in to temptation!
Hey @Father.Torque have you played Wipeout in VR yet? You should. Your blurb about Wipeout HD on the SB wiki was the thing that led me to Wipeout, which is now one of my favorite games, so I felt like saying. It’s outstanding and worth the price of admission.
I’m trying to keep an eye on those incoming Black Friday deals for PSVR. I think they’re supposed to be in-store starting today but I guess that means no online deals? I dunno. Going to stores suuuuuuucks
I think I’m going to go ahead and get the PS4 VR peripheral. I’ve never seen it in action, though, and I wonder:
Are headphones required, or can sound just go through my TV as normal? Everyone seems to be wearing headphones in pictures.
Does the video output go to the TV as well as the goggles, so spectators can see roughly what the player sees? Or do I need some sort of HDMI splitter for that?
Does it matter that I don’t have a PS4 Pro? From what I can gather, performance should be fine overall but might be in a lower resolution than it would otherwise. (I’m not likely to get a PS4 Pro in the foreseeable future.)
Do games take advantage of the Move controllers? It appears that most do not require them. I think Superhot requires them, but does Superhot also require a friend standing at the edge of the playing area holding a drink?
Are there any good horror titles, now or on the horizon? I know I can’t hope for a VR version of the PT demo. There’s apparently a game based on the Exorcist, though, and I guess there’s that Resident Evil game.
What’s the best game for simply messing around in a VR world? I see that there’s some kind of eagle flying game. Maybe that would be a good one.
Why is there no port of Dactyl Nightmare that lets you challenge other players online?
can only answer a couple of those offhand but by all accounts RE7 is genuinely good in VR and one of the main reasons still to get PSVR over PC; unfortunately, the PC’s main advantage is having a much greater number of toys for messing around in a VR world (google earth and tilt brush alone make this case very powerfully).
The new editions of the PSVR are a little different (quality of life improvements) and I haven’t used them so I can only speak to the first generation. I saw there are several $200 PSVR bundles for Black Friday; I imagine the Moss and Astro Bot bundle would be a real good one.
Uh, I guess you could technically play without headphones but you won’t get the positional audio and I assume that would break a lot of the illusion. The headphones have to be plugged into PSVR though. The PSVR processor box is doing the audio processing so you have to have the headphones plugged into the PSVR with a wire (no wireless headphones, not even using the regular PS4 surround sound virtualization).
Yes, the PSVR outputs to the TV. You connect an HDMI and USB cable from your PS4 to this little PSVR Processor Box. Then you connect that box to your TV and the PSVR headset. The TV outputs sound and sees everything you’re seeing, although I think I read it’s only outputting one lens so the FOV is a little smaller than what the player is actually seeing.
If you’re not going to get a PS4 Pro anyway then I don’t think you should worry about this. People seem to be using the regular PS4’s fine, though I’m sure the Pro brings better resolution or texture in some games. But since you’ve never experienced those you wouldn’t know what you’d be missing out on anyway. I’ve only ever used PSVR with a Pro so I can’t really speak to the differences.
A lot of games will require the move controllers because that’s how you get hand tracking in a game, letting you reach and grab things, so that will of course vary on a game per game basis but those experiences are definitely a large part of VR’s appeal. But DS4 based games can be quite good in their own way, such as Astrobot, Statik, and Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes.I heard PS Move controllers are the exact same as the PS3 ones (with a PS4 logo added) so you can probably find them cheap as used goods somewhere.
Resident Evil 7 is the go-to recommendation and is supposed to be quite good but I’m sure there’s a lot of horror stuff as those tend be real popular “experience” type games, since it’s fun to watch people get scared. I know I watched some Giant Bomb halloween videos this year where they did PSVR stuff and some of it looked interesting. The Excorcist was pretty gamey, but Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul looked like it had some good jump scares. Stifled look like an interesting game where you have to make sounds with the PSVR’s built in mic to reveal the world, like echo location, but it also lets monsters hear you. Home Sweet Home looked like a more classic style survival horror (I think a non VR version is on Steam but I might be thinking of something else).
Rec Room is probably popular, as it’s free and has a large collection of different activities to play in an online multiplayer environment. There are digital demo discs on PSN called something like PSVR Demo Disc 1 and 2, which gives you a smattering of games to sample. “PSVR Worlds” is kind of a collection of “experiences” or mini-games, and “life sims” like the Job Simulator series and I assume that Rick and Morty thing are quite popular “messing around in VR world” games. There’s also The Playroom VR which gives you several multiplayer games that utilize one PSVR player and up to 3 people playing on the TV, which is quite neat and also the genesis of Astrobot.
A lot of “messing around in a VR world” games will probably ask for Move controllers, though.
I don’t think I even knew what this was so I’ll just say it sucks and will never get a remake. Now Beach Head and Heavy Gear? Those need to come back.
answering where I can and have something different from what Drem said:
Not required, although probably some games need it more. I don’t usually play with headphones. I sit or stand about 5-7 feet away from the TV with a soundbar fairly loud and honestly it doesn’t make much of a difference so far in games I’ve played. the headphones are a real pain in the ass, especially if you’re moving around a lot, or if you want to at least have some capability of responding to things in the real world… I guess the total immersion with headphones gives me a little bit of anxiety. but it is spectacular for wipeout. anyway, it’s not required.
I haven’t played Superhot, but the move controllers are must-have for some games, like Sprint Vector and Knockout League, both of which make great use of them. on the other hand Astro Bot uses and requires the DS4 to amazing effect. i’d say it’s a mixture of both. there are probably going to be a lot of different peripherals… there’s already the ‘Aim’ controller for Firewall
Edit: I’m pretty impressed with Thumper, too. I never tried the non-VR version because I’m not generally interested in rhythm games. I wasn’t aware that it’s a horror rhythm game (sort of).
Thumper was developed by one half of the band Lightning Bolt (Brian Gibson) and a dude who used to work at Harmonix with him.
i got to put together their release party and it was a dream come true. personal biases aside, i think Thumper is really great and i’m sad it hasn’t gotten the attention i think it deserves.
Yeah, although the resolution will obviously be quite a bit lower than a real tv. When viewing 2D content it let’s you adjust the screen size so you can make it look like you’re looking at a giant tv, which is kind of neat.
Over the weekend I was playing VR games in the headset in my parent’s living room, flailing my arms around in Sprint Vector, while they were watching TV. They said it looked like I was skiing.
