Once Oculus went wireless with its Quest headset in 2019, it looked like there was no going back. For years, everyone was talking about what the troublesome strings were for VR and how they would one day inevitably disappear once the technology was discovered. And here Oculus was ahead of time, figuring it out.
Sure, the game seemed a generation or two older than the Valve Index or the Oculus Rift S, or even PlayStation VR, but it felt like a fair trade-off for something like that. Who didn’t make you feel like you were on a leash. Almost immediately, I switched on and started using Quest more or less exclusively for VR.
I was not alone. The Quest took off, becoming the most popular headset line ever and delivering highly convenient, good quality VR to millions of people.
After trying out PlayStation VR2 recently, I can’t seem to remember what we’re missing.
Last week, I tried Sony’s new headset for the first time and couldn’t stop at how great its two marquee games were. mountain skyline call And Resident Evil Village, saw. They did not rely on particulates or stylized art direction; They looked like the AAA console games that just happened in VR. The last few years of playing Quest had re-calibrated my expectations of how a VR game should appear, and it was great to see the game progress once again without the need for an elaborate setup.
I’m still not particularly thrilled about going back to a limited headset, but with Sony’s support and a game this beautiful, it’s immediately appealing.
Photo: Matt Lyons / Polygon
headset
At Sony’s press event, I had a chance to play around with the PSVR2 hardware and try out four game demos. Overwhelmingly, the thing that stood out is that the hardware feels a lot like the original PSVR that has been brought up to date. Sony isn’t known to rock the boat or shove plans around like the others; It is following the same path that it started six years ago.
This time around the headset itself looks a little different — studded with cameras and cut with sharp edges to match the look of the PlayStation 5 hardware — but it feels familiar, thanks to the same kind of sliders, padding, flexibility, and weight distribution. Together we got the original on PlayStation VR.
The main benefits come with raw power and visual tricks, such as foveated rendering (where the hardware only fully renders the areas you’re looking at), which help keep graphics looking high-end – that’s for sure. impressive in that it can replicate a game like Resident Evil Village With minimal drop-off from the console version—and a variety of changes in quality of life.
For example, there’s now a button on the bottom of the front of the device that you can press at any time to switch to see-through view using the inside-out cameras built into the headset. This lets you pause the game to talk to someone in the room, or pick up your controllers without taking the headset off and re-adjust it when you turn it on again.
It’s also nice that Sony has simplified the wiring involved in setup. While you have to deal with a cord sticking out of the back, it’s now a single cord that plugs into the PS5 instead of a mess of cables. If you use wired headphones, it’s still a mess to turn them off, then remove the headset, figuring out what to do with the two controllers, but that’s progress. The lack of need for a PlayStation camera, thanks to the cameras in the headset, further simplifies setup.
They also make it possible for the camera system to more accurately and comprehensively track your movements. On the original PSVR, having a camera in a fixed position meant that games struggled when they asked players to turn to the side or look behind them. Now, since the tracking comes from the headset, as long as you hold the controllers in front of you, you can watch anywhere without a problem. Old news on other platforms, but welcome here.
Similarly, Sony’s PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers keep the interface up to date in look and feel like the controllers included with the Quest and Quest 2, with handles encased in plastic rings to help with tracking, and the touch of a button. With the ability to register. than a press. Again, they work well and make for a significant upgrade, but will feel familiar to those who have put up with other hardware.
The controllers fold in haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, vibrations in the headset, and built-in eye tracking, and Sony’s device includes tons of ways for players to mess with it, as well as some elements that set it apart from combat.
But Sony’s event wasn’t just about the hardware. In fact, it had very little – much of it centered around four game demos.
Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment
mountain skyline call
One of the most beautiful games I’ve seen in VR, call of the mountain Seems like a visual showcase for Sony’s new headset. Leaves, wind, fire, explosions and giant robots fill the sky as you make your way through a New Horizons story.
While the game takes place in the same universe as Horizon Zero Dawn And Forbidden WestWell, it’s a different kind of experience. For one thing, according to Sony, instead of controlling series star Alloy, you play as Rias, “a disgraced former Karza soldier who is looking for redemption”. For another, you play in first person, so when you climb, swim, use your bow and arrow, and otherwise interact with the world around you, you’re primarily playing Riyas. Let’s see through a pair of separate hands.
According to the developers, the game will run in about six or seven hours, and combat will primarily consist of shooting arrows instead of the wild melee acrobatics seen in earlier games. But if the huge Thunderjaw fight I played in the press event demo is any indication, those fights will release many of the same endorphins.
Compared to other games on display, call of the mountain The headset seemed like the most custom-built for the new headset, with nice touches like vibration and using eye tracking to control the game’s menus.
Image: Capcom
Resident Evil Village
The 9-foot-6-inch Big Boss Lady Dimitrascu is the kind of stunt-casting spectacle VR developers who built the entire game, so it worked out well that Capcom had lined up for her. Resident Evil VillageKa VR mode, which will comprise the game’s primary campaign and is “currently in development exclusively” for the PSVR2, according to Capcom.
In a small demo on display at the event, Lady Dee was the obvious standout, talking to you while hanging from the ceiling of a room with hooks in your hands, to make you see just how huge and intimidating she is. – and how much more detailed she looks than the character model resident evil 7 PSVR or . Feather resident Evil 4 on Quest.
Capcom reps say the VR mode will feature small balance tweaks and several small interface adjustments (like the ability to block both of your hands), but there won’t be any significant content changes from the original campaign.
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge — Enhanced Edition
Add Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge And its last Call Follow-up in one package, smooth out the design so that both feel like the same game, sprinkle in some advanced visuals and there you have it. Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxies — Age Enhanced EditionComing exclusively to PSVR2.
Similar to ILMxLAB’s Vader Immortal series, the game has a lighter type of theme-park, toy-box feel, which is probably apt considering the title. The demo at Sony’s press event included some discussion and minigames in a bar setting, followed by a short outdoor shootout, but it sounds like the kind of game that’s built for longer play sessions, so its It was hard to get the right meaning. This in a brief sample.
The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners – Chapter 2: Vengeance
The last game on display may be the most troubling, which is saying something considering a Resident Evil game on this list. But The Walking Dead’s melee attacks take some of you in VR closer, and whether you read that praise or criticism may well determine whether or not you should play the game.
As a beginner, I found myself struggling to find weapons and ammo to reload while being surrounded by zombies, which I’m sure was all by design to heighten the fear, But felt a bit overwhelming, so here’s hoping the whole game ramps things up in a more gradual way.
fall back
As with any new piece of game hardware, software support matters much more than hardware. And so far, it looks like Sony is on the right track, with a good mix of genres and licenses, though it’s still early. Horizon looks a lot more substantial than most of the big license spinoff games we’ve seen for PSVR1, and while these four games are tied to big brands, Sony announced yesterday that Quest favorite dungeon crawler demo Coming to PSVR2 as well.
The big question at this point is what the next wave of software will look like. Will we see a new synesthesia light show from Enhance? Something pleasant from Team Asobi? Another cinematic ride from the London studio? We’ll get a clearer idea of what to expect from the PSVR2 as soon as those cards are in place. But on a hardware level, it’s hard not to like what Sony has shown so far.
