GAMETECH: Rez in VR offers plane scaling

REZ in virtual reality is transcendent, writes Ronan Jennings. 

It’s like travelling through an airport for a connecting flight — you cross over to another plane. Rez was a classic when it was first released in 2002, but virtual reality is the definitive version. It transforms the game into something new and incomparable.

When Tetsuya Mizuguchi first created Rez, his goal was ‘synaesthesia’, whereby one body sense stimulated another — like when a colour makes you taste something. To do that, he made a shooting game where the resulting explosions created music and the visuals were like fireworks, each of which flowed perfectly into the level’s thematic soundtrack. This wasn’t a first-person shooter like Call of Duty; instead you swept a cursor across the screen, holding down ‘X’ to select up to eight targets and then letting go to attack all eight targets at once in an explosion of trance beats.

While we can’t say Mizuguchi’s goal of synaesthesia was a success, the result was spectacular nonetheless. Rez is a fever dream of a game, revolving around an incredible, thumping soundtrack that reacts to your every success and failure. It’s also an amazing world, one in which you travel through the depths of a machine (TRON-style) to rescue the consciousness of a girl trapped within. Along the way, enemies appear before you in dance formations, twisting and turning in the sky like synchronised swimmers or living confetti, each formation designed to be destroyed in tune to the awesome soundtrack. Meanwhile, each level is guarded by towering bosses that are works of art in themselves — some of the best bosses in video game history.

By the time you reach the fifth level and your journey is almost complete, with the lyrics “fear is the mind killer” sending chills down your spine, Rez will have taken you on a journey unparalleled in gaming. Because Rez isn’t just a game about sensations — there is a theme and a philosophy built into the game that will stay with you forever. Rez is, at heart, a game that shows a deep love for both the technological and natural worlds. It’s where the arcade and art meet, fused together by trance beats.

In virtual reality, you step inside that work of art — and it’s amazing. Rez Infinite, the VR version of Rez, feels like the way the game was meant to be played. The cursor is controlled by your head movement instead of the joypad, transforming the game into a much more physical experience. Like all virtual reality experiences, the sensation of ‘being there’ is staggering, but Rez never distracts you with showboating — after all, this is a 15-year-old game, never designed for VR in the first place. There is one concession to modernity, however, and it’s worth the price alone. A bonus sixth level, called Area X, was created especially for PlayStation VR. With modern graphics and full range of movement, Area X is arguably the single greatest use of virtual reality in gaming to date. Together with the already incredible experience Rez offers, it makes Rez Infinite unmissable as a launch PSVR title. If you have PSVR, make Rez your first purchase.

AVOID THE RUSH

On the other hand, avoid a rush of blood when making VR purchases – no, really, avoid Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. As average ‘carnival’ VR games go, this is the very definition. ‘Rush of Blood’ simulates a ‘house of horrors’ ride, in which you sit down in a cart that takes you through a haunted carnival. The game begins with the player shooting cardboard cutouts and targets for points, but soon things take a turn for the worse, with ‘real’ monsters attacking you from every angle.

Using two PS Move motion controllers, you hold two ‘guns’ in your hand that you can aim to shoot. This is pretty cool, at first, but nothing we haven’t seen in VR already. That’s the whole game in a nutshell — cheap scares, then point and shoot. If you really like haunted houses and those old lightgun arcade games like House of the Dead, then Until Dawn: Rush of Blood might be worth a look, but we don’t expect many people to rush out and buy it.