PlayStation VR Worlds is intended to raise belief in its accompanying hardware. And it does; once for each of its five technical showpieces. Afterward that high is only reached through a vicarious transfer from newcomers, positioning VR Worlds’ potential as a dramatic flash instead of an imposing statement.
This fate was hard to escape. At least two of VR Worlds’ pieces were technical demonstrations designed to work with a prototype of the PlayStation VR hardware. The other three feel like internal projects commissioned to gain familiarity with the hardware. Conception happened before the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and (obviously) PlayStation VR made its way into the hands of every day consumers. From 2013 to the early part of this year, virtual reality was an intangible myth celebrated only by those in rare positions to gain exposure. With all three systems in the hands of early adopters, this isn’t necessarily true anymore.
London Heist is the notable name among VR Worlds’, uh, worlds. Riffing heavily on Guy Ritchie’s earlier films, it sets the player as the silent companion to a pair of British criminals. In begins in media res, flashing back to a botched diamond heist and ensuing violent shootout. Imposing men with cockney accents take turns yelling at you, ultimately leading to a scenario with the gun in your hands and an unexpectedly large number of options available. Top to bottom, London Heist takes about half an hour.
Making the player feel like part of the world is London Heist’s top priority. One of the opening scenes seats the player at a table in bar. There, you’re free to pick up a lighter, light a cigar, and generally fool around with other objects on the table. Two Move controllers serve as two floating hands, allowing the player to pass objects from hand to hand. This sounds primitive but if this is your first time in VR it is amazing. Its pure existence is more authentic than anything else in interactive entertainment.
Veterans, however, will quickly feel out the bar sequence’s limitations. I can pick up and flick a lighter, but I cannot burn the table, myself, or any of the people who lean in to sneer at me. My mobile phone doesn’t bounce quite right when I smash it into the wall. My cigar always reappears when I try to throw it behind the bar. Anything seems possible but really there are only a small number of available options. The player is much more of a tourist in this world than an active participant.
Two action sequences compose the more memorable parts of London Heist. The most notable is a freeway shootout against leagues of armed assailants on motorcycles and nondescript sport utility vehicles. The player is responsible for firing and repeatedly putting a clip in a machine gun, a fairly basic actual, but the visceral thrill of travelling down the freeway and the explosive violence available at your fingertips creates the most memorable sequence in all of VR Worlds. The freeway shootout is a real crowd pleaser, and easily received the most requests to play every time I have people over to sample virtual reality.
The remainder of London Heist amounts to some odd challenges and a shooting range. The shooting range is exactly what it sounds like with a few additional flares like turning the lights out. Without aim assist it’s a bit more challenging, operating, essentially, like a real pistol. Even in its simplicity it’s still better than junk like Pixel Gear, and it may be a boon to firearms enthusiasts.
Another game available is VR Luge. This one doesn’t actually use any controllers, instead relying on the player tilting their neck to pilot the sled left and right. Harkening back to the dreams of the 90’s, the player isn’t sliding down a carefully manufactured ice course, but rather a busy country highway somewhere in the Midwest. The structure here is a bit startling, with the player sitting down but positioned as if they’re lying on their back. Moving backwards a few feet repositions the player’s avatar as a headless visage controlled by your mind, which, while not recommended, is hilarious.
VR Luge is built as an arcade racer. Advancement through four successive courses is reliant on your ability to make good time down the hill. This is primarily accomplished with a bit of foresight regarding upcoming turns, as colliding with a wall reduces your speed and running into cars, while not affecting momentum (or lethal), shaves points off of your time. Like most arcade racers, it’s a pretty shallow experience that can end prematurely if your skills aren’t up to par.
While VR Luge isn’t likely something you’ll return to, it’s one of the easier pieces of VR Worlds for non-gamers to enjoy. Tilting your head is universally understood, though those with a proclivity for motion sickness (specifically my father) may beg to tap out early. If nothing else, VR Luge is significant evidence that the medium could support a Road Rash / ESPN Extreme Games revival.
Danger Ball is VR Worlds’ submission for best retro revival. Imagine if Pong were expanded to the third dimension and perspective shifted to behind the paddle. Control of the paddle is assigned to your head. Dress it up with the ostentatious hype of stadium full of people and suddenly Danger Ball feels like a sport that doesn’t exist yet. You and an opponent wallop the ball back and forth, trying to sneak the ball past each other’s paddle, until someone scores five hits.
There is a slight bit of nuance to playing Danger Ball. By smacking the ball with the periphery of your targeting reticule and kind of sliding in at the last second, a curve can be placed on your throw. Additionally, the velocity of the ball starts increasing with successive hits from you and your opponent. This is a neat system that encourages and rewards risky play, provided you don’t snap out of it and lose your ability to view Danger Ball in the third dimension.
Danger Ball is begging for multiplayer. I understand why it was not included, implementing it would easily double the labor necessary to create the game, but it would have been a great alternative to the PlayStation VR’s predictable insistence that every multiplayer game be some kind of shooter. The AI opponents and their escalating suite of gimmicks aren’t built for the long haul, rendering Danger Ball’s potential as partly untapped.
One of the first demos ever publically shown for PlayStation VR is included in Ocean Decent. As the name implies, it contains three different scenarios that take players under the sea. You’re in a steel diver’s cage and dropped very slowly into considerably deep waters. Control is mostly taken away, and your only agency is looking around and admiring the sublime and occasionally electric saltwater creatures on the way down.
Shark Encounter is the base for Ocean Decent, while Wildlife Tour and Coral Reef feel like smaller pieces carved out of the main course. While the titular shark encounter at the end of the primary scenario can be kind of scary, the other two are serene and (mercifully) much shorter. Ocean Decent provides a nice alternative for the otherwise demanding games that compose VR Worlds. Its appearance suggests virtual reality, under the right context, may be a nice place to stop and look around.
Scavenger’s Odyssey is the final piece of VR Worlds. This is the most involved of the five and, while ultimately simple, relies the heaviest on gaming conventions. It’s preaching to the already converted, and meant to demonstrate virtual reality’s potential for existing games. The venue Scavenger’s Odyssey chooses is something of a mech simulator in outer space, perhaps the most fertile ground for gaming conventions.
Your head controls aiming while navigation is handled with the traditional right analog stick. The left stick plays a minor role with camera control, although moving, aiming, and walking all at the same time is frequently a recipe to make people barf. I didn’t have any problems in this department, but with one other exception virtual reality’s nauseating capability hasn’t affected me. You’re also afforded a blaster on the trigger button, a gravity tether on another trigger, and an opportunity to plot and execute jumps with one of the remaining triggers. Scavenger’s Odyssey is a slow paced experience, which is handy given the disorienting daze inflicted upon overdoses in VR.
Scavenger’s Odyssey opens with potential and fizzles out under repetition. It feels good to operate its quadrupedal robot and the super bass-y laser canons are a literal blast to operate. Blowing away an escalating series of green creatures is rendered mostly pointless by a liberal allotment of timed power ups, though the concluding boss fight at the end provides a more formal challenge. The story is the science fiction equivalent of a cheap anthology novella from a hack author. In the end, like much of VR Worlds, Scavenger’s Odyssey is more interested in showing, as opposed to realizing, potential.
This is basically the thesis for the entire package. VR Worlds is more of a promise than a purpose. An introduction without an explanation (or a conclusion). It’s upstaged by the demo disc packed inside every PlayStation VR box—which, itself, has samples of Ocean Decent and the shooting range portion of London Heist—and contains meaningful selections of real games. It’s good that VR Worlds is out there but, two years ago, who would have thought we would be so anxious to leave it all behind? Better games are already here.
