The 5 best VR games launched at E3 2017
E3 2017 is a quiet year for virtual reality. With all
the major headsets released, and the next generation little more than
prototypes, developers seem resigned to the fact that they’re working in
a niche market. Microsoft never followed through on its promise that
Scorpio (now the Xbox One X) would bring VR to the Xbox, and Oculus sat
the show out completely.
But even during VR’s equivalent of a post-console-release
slump, people are getting used to treating VR games like games, instead
of novelties. Bethesda and Sony
both featured multiple high-profile VR announcements, and headsets
could be found alongside monitors at the convention’s Indiecade
showcase. There were enough experiences that I didn’t get to track down
all of them, so these aren’t the definitive best games of E3. But
they’re the things I’m most looking forward to seeing as a finished
products.
Doom VFR
Bethesda Softworks’ biggest upcoming virtual reality titles, Fallout 4 and Skyrim for VR, are just modified versions of existing games. But the most exciting project is something a lot smaller: a Doom expansion
where you play the consciousness of a dead scientist, who’s able to
possess combat robots and other machinery. The E3 demo was mostly a
straightforward shooter, but a satisfying and well-paced one, featuring Doom’s iconic demons and infernal corridors.
Doom VFR uses a similar teleportation system to shooters like Robo Recall, which
is quickly becoming virtual reality’s answer to the circle-strafe.
Instead of ducking behind cover or using an analog stick to dodge
bullets, you pause between shots to warp out of enemy fire, while time
momentarily slows to a near-standstill. There’s even an equivalent to Doom’s bloody fatalities: when you stagger an enemy, you can teleport straight into them, reducing them to a pile of gibs.
Stifled
Stifled, which debuted at PAX last year, is the
first effort from studio Gattai Games. It’s a horror game that uses a VR
headset microphone to turn your own voice into a vital tool and a
dangerous weakness. After escaping a car crash, your protagonist finds
himself in a pitch-black world that’s visible only through a kind of
echolocation. When you speak or otherwise make noise, the sound waves
outline the environment around you in stark white lines, helping you
explore — in the demo — a forest and abandoned waterworks. It’s like
wandering through a piece of old-school vector art.
The inevitable catch is that any creatures around you can
hear you as well, and some of them apparently mean you harm. They
couldn’t do more than utter ear-splitting screams in the demo, but in
the final game, you’ll have to figure out how to make enough noise to
figure out where you’re going, while keeping quiet enough to get there
safely.
Moss
Polyarc’s Moss is a third-person
action-adventure fairy tale that was part of Sony’s E3 PlayStation VR
lineup. Its fourth-wall-breaking premise puts players in a dual role:
controlling an anthropomorphic mouse named Quill, while also acting as
the “reader” of her story — a literal guiding presence who can
manipulate parts of the world to help solve puzzles or survive enemy
attacks.
The former task uses basic analog stick and button
controls, but the latter takes advantage of the DualShock’s
motion-tracking capabilities. You can physically reach out to move
objects, draw Quill into a glowing ball of light to heal her after
fights, and even pet her when you’ve got some downtime.
Arktika.1
Arktika.1 feels a bit like a junior varsity version of the Metro
series — both are developed by 4A Games, and both are set in a
washed-out post-apocalyptic world full of scavengers and mutants. 4A
already has another Metro installment on the way, so it seems likely that Arktika.1 won’t feel as substantial as the studio’s non-VR titles. But its E3 demo was strong enough to give me some hope for its future.
Unlike the more survival horror-oriented Metro games, Arktika.1’s demo
makes players powerful bounty hunters with an arsenal of
non-traditional (and often very fun) guns, like laser revolvers or
pistols that appear to shoot glowing green javelins. It’s a very literal
cover shooter: you press buttons to move between different barriers
that offer varying levels of protection, fighting enemies who are
playing the same dodge-and-weave game. In between fights, the demo has
enough exploration to keep things interesting, without getting bogged
down in item hunts or puzzles.
Echo Arena
I was disappointed that Lone Echo, one of our
favorite games from last year’s Oculus convention, wasn’t at E3 — it’s
coming out next month, and studio Polyarc apparently didn’t want to
bring it in for a showing so soon before release. But the studio is
fine-tuning its loosely related multiplayer experience, which plays like
a cross between Ender’s Game’s Battle School and ultimate frisbee.
In Echo Arena, two teams of five players compete
to score points with a glowing disc in zero gravity, navigating with a
combination of thruster jets and basic momentum. Even when you don’t
play well, you feel incredibly graceful pushing off walls and gliding
through thin air.
Via theVerge
Via theVerge
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