GAMETECH: Even better than the real thing
It’s worth the price and the hassle. PlayStation VR is worth it, because it’s the closest gaming has ever come to magic. It won’t transform your gaming habits just yet, but it will forever transform your expectations of what gaming is capable of.
Sony pulled it off. They reverse engineered the PS4 to accommodate a virtual reality (VR) headset and, despite a lengthy and cable-laden setup process, the result is amazing.
It’s by far the most accessible and user-friendly of the high-end VR headsets. Crucially, it also the most comfortable.
This is the first VR headset that you could wear for hours — it is very light, adjustable and the ‘breathability’ for your eyes and face is impressive. There’s still a long way to go before VR becomes truly comfortable, but PSVR does banish discomfort, at least, which is a big step forward.
That comfort is hugely important, because you don’t want anything to prevent the magic — and it is like magic.
Despite using VR many times now, it still astonishes this writer to be placed in a digital world that feels real in a visual and physical sense. In London Heist, one of Sony’s launch games, you are placed at the centre of a Guy Ritchie-style gangster story, complete with shootouts and kidnappings.
You reload your gun by ‘picking up’ the clip with one hand and shoving it into the gun hilt, held in your other hand.
But guns are boring and well-trodden — the real magic came in a dingy London pub at the start, when you realise you can pick up the cigar in front of you with one hand and light it with the other. You don’t have to do that, but you can.
There you are, all gangster-like, lighting up a Cuban while your dodgy partner explains the plan. The sense of ‘being there’, thanks to your in-game ‘hands’ and the immersive quality of VR, is simply astonishing.
In Job Simulator, where you can attempt to master a number of cartoon-world professions like being a chef or a mechanic, the physicality really comes into play.
As the mechanic, for example, you must open the car bonnet, pull out different engine parts and replace them, pour fluids into the fluid shaft, take out headlights and clean them — for the first time ever in gaming, you are truly performing actions in a 3D world.
Motion controls, like the Wii, touched on this feeling, but nothing compares to actually being there, turning your body and head to search for parts, reaching low to grab a can of oil, flipping some bacon on a pan as the chef.
The actual game aspect, where you try to keep costs low by doing things quickly, isn’t great – but this unrivalled physical tangibility is a fresh kind of fun for gaming.
Unless you are two years old, when was the last time you were allowed to throw food around a kitchen without consequences? Ketchup, everywhere!
We’ll be reviewing PSVR games in more detail in coming weeks, like the transformative Rez Infinite and thrilling Eve Valkyrie (which will make Star Wars and Battlestar fans very happy), but it’s important to state now that PSVR isn’t perfect.
Motion sickness is almost unavoidable and, after two minutes of playing Driveclub VR, in which your car travels at top speeds, this writer had to stop playing and felt ill for an hour afterwards.
This recurred with a number of games to a lesser degree, but only the ones that include lots of ‘movement’.
In addition, the field of vision on PSVR is excellent but limited — you will always see the circular black ‘edges’ of the headset in the corner of your vision while playing, especially when wearing glasses. Finally, to achieve the best experience, you should purchase motion controllers along with the headset and PlayStation camera, all of which raises the price.
Still, if you love games and the worlds that they inhabit, it’s hard to put a price on this experience. PSVR won’t replace Fifa or GTAV and it’s not suitable for Call of Duty or Skyrim just yet, but for the first time ever we really get to inhabit those worlds.
Until now, we’ve looked at them through a window, from afar, but VR lets us step through that window and into those worlds. It’s like Alice through the looking glass. It’s like Neo in the Matrix. It’s like magic.
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