The VR Conundrum

GTA VERY GOOD RUNNING AROUND


THE USUAL SUSPECTS:

Standard caveats: It's blurry as feck at speed, slightly flickery, overlaid with the 'screen door' effect of bonus pixelation, and occasionally borderline unplayable.

Also, do remember to reposition your head occasionally



Right that's the safety warning over with...


WISHING ON AN NPC STAR:



The story exposition and insane side-alley content is at its absolute best when enacted in the world, not as a cut scene. I really wish there was a whole game built around this stuff...



Waking up, surprised, in a body bag (because you had to skip the horrible cut scene part), and seeing the 'live action' chat of the coroners, is a great curtain-raiser for a mission. Walking with your mission giver to the next 'scene'. Checking out your companions doing what they say they're doing (or occasionally, totally not - that cargo bay was supposedly 'full of explosives & arms' ). Being your own 'director' inside these HL2 style scenarios.

It's grand. But unfortunately the mirror image of...


MISSIONS CAN BE A MISSION:

Cut-scenes aren't the only bits that translate poorly to VR [EDIT: NB latest builds have fixed cut-scene horror significantly!]. Some of the set-pieces are the worst bits in the game... Shooting out of helicopter side-doors involves moving your whole visual field with the stick. Nastyyyy as it gets. And many other sections are displayed in a canned '2D' format, which while bearable, are frankly no fun to play.

Thankfully most of the classic 'in game' sections are pretty much a ball...



Although shooting has never been GTA's forte, and the cover mode isn't worth using here, stuff like tense shoot-out escapes from locked down buildings, or shot-gunning your way out of an industrial-estate drug deal are all as bombastic as you'd expect. Completing the heists, with all the inter-linking getaway driving and set-up thefts have all been grand too


LOOK MA, ALL LEGS:

Despite all of the above challenges, and all of the combustive chaos, the most surprising thing about this mod is: It seems to have cured my 'classic' VR nausea

I've never really had a reason to push through that wall. But this is such a fresh way to play GTA (and such a welcome jumble of content in the VR world), that I've been main-lining it. And by my third session I found to my delight that I could stagger around, embodied by the cumbersome R* character model, careening hair-raisingly off rooftops, barely in control of my flailing path through the world... and feeling absolutely fine . It seems I can use 'classic' stick control now

If I have a 2hr+ session where I really push the boat out... (Like, push a boat down a hill with an upside down plane or whatever...), then I might still feel a twinge, but it's barely a flutter. I'm not even closing my eyes any more for the canned animations.

Possibly it's because I'm playing seated? It's primarily a vehicle game, so that works best. (And hell, the walking style is more mech than human anyway ). The slow motion speed on foot may also be a boon here too. There might be more more conflict if I was all immersed and on my own feet, but for now I'm taking this as another string to my VR bow


FGGING FUN I'M NOT GETTING ANY SLEEP AHHHHH:

Just as a general, distracting, detail-replete playground... this is great . The story missions are just the cherry on the top. I spent the last two night losing loads of money on hospital bills for Trevor, just having an absolute ball. Chasing down bounty hunt targets for his mom. Parachuting onto moving trains. Falling off moving trains. Plummeting past cable cars like an incompetent panther....

I still haven't found the silicon valley crim who's on this mountain-top, but damn if I didn't get distracted just trying to find him all last night. Stealing a private jet, eye-balling the map location, free-falling, realising I had no noob parachute, just failing to engage Trevor's rage mode in time... Driving a BMW up the epic winding track. Tight-rope-walking metal beams onto the roof of the chalet to scout for him (with bonus vertigo in VR up there generally). Stunt parachuting off when I couldn't find him. Getting distracted by stuff on the ground...



I don't know if it's just that VR really makes you feel like you're at 'human eye level' with the whole affair, or just to ludicrous content levels, but I'm noticing loads of new little things I haven't seen in 100s of hours of GTAV.

From deers headbutting cars (possibly just poor AI pathing ), to the marsh flies that appear anywhere near water sources, to the above cops suddenly taking down an onrushing puma...

All the core stuff takes a step up too here though. Escaping the cops by driving a hauler down an improbably thin pier. Taking in the views. Gazing around and noticing that, even though the dashboards are ultimately scrubby and faux-textured, the radio displays what DAB channel you're on, as the rev counter flutters to a halt....



Just... damn this is good

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ON REVIEW:

Third time round with this game. Fricking best version yet. Points knocked off for all the many hurdles described in this and prior posts, as it's definitely not an official release. But not even prat-falling over those hurdles in first person with your concrete limbs flailing can stop this from being a very ace way to play GTA indeed

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* Previous posts here *

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Obviously I should stick this here for posterity...




And this too

Russian cows get VR headsets 'to reduce anxiety'

First Look: Boneworks

So I've been ignoring this, because it was getting lots of launch hype for silly-seeming reasons, and I thought it was just a murder sandbox.

Turns it has a Half-Life-homage campaign, majors on physics puzzles, and is only £20. So I jumped in

This Is Me With A Cardboard Box on My Head:




So the physics stuff is holding up in the main. You can mess around with most things . Its primary selling point seems to be this full on, 'full body', interactivity, and there are some fun toys to exploit it in the tutorial zones already...

This is cool, but comes with some intriguing downsides too. You'll realise you can't walk because your hand has got wedged the wrong side of a locker door, or you've somehow tucked your feet into a drawer. Your perspective shakes like a mad thing as you clamber up pipes. Lifting up 'heavy' objects requires you to kinda play-act their heft, or you start getting some nausea warnings from the conflict. (It's actually quite fun when it tallies though )

The HL-esque side does seem like it won't hit those heights on the slick narrative sweeps, concept shifts, and nested humour fronts (no surprise really), going by the early sections and reviews. But the 'VR Museum' that serves as the tutorial is still proving a neat opening setting:





Most of the staples all seem solidly done (guns that need bullets chambering, throwing accuracy, smacking things with other things, fiddling with TV dials, all that stuff). And yeah, what can I say, I enjoyed playing in a giant ball pit

I'll report back on what the actual game is like

Second Look: Boneworks

I went back in...




Gore Time in Garrys Mod



Ok so I got into the game proper, and Christ it was horrific

You get dumped into a dumpster buzzing with flies, before moving amongst the eerily deactivated corpses of grunt-ish computer programs, who then naturally engage their inner zombie and start trying to interface with your face... They're slow, and you've got time to dance around them in the open spaces as you eye up the puzzles that block your way. But you have to tackle them eventually...

So far so standard, in many ways. But when the groans and outreached hands are a presence around you it's all a bit more personal and hair raising. And then it gets really nasty...

The primary way to take them out early on is just to hit them with stuff. And that means big old earnest swings aiming for the head for the most part. It's kinda sickeningly kinetic. And worse still, your main starter weapon is a claw hammer. Which is both a nasty instrument, and has an unnerving tendency to get its claw stuck in their armpit during a wild backswing, or some other inconvenient place. The next thing you know you're de-armed, and being tracked by a disgruntled fleshy avatar with a hammer jauntily sticking out of their buttock...

This was genuinely horrific...

And this milieu of discomfort was made somehow worse by the drab monotony of the aesthetic. Like being trapped inside an uninspired Source mod. (It's not that the location designs are bad. They're not bad at all. They're just retro and gritty... An extra sandpapery layer of dour sensory abuse...)

But then... But then...


Reboot: The Rhythm of Hammer on Shield



My reaction after that session was totally: Not my thing. I'm no gore king. This is just like being trapped inside a reinforced cardboard box with a crooning serial killer.

But I had another go. In my first round I'd realised I could use a bin lid as a defensive shield. This had given me time to take events in, to toy with a big floating physics puzzle, and to stay alive long enough to walk into a gun turret trap....

And leaning into that side of the physics turned out to be the key to getting glee out of this

Once you realise that you can place the whole bin over your crimson nemesis (mainly causing them to die in an unfortunate physics accident), things get a lot more playful . Suddenly you're hurling bricks to slow them down, piling barriers in their way, kiting their (terrible) pathing into these jumbles of physics or down flights of stairs. Tripping them up and running away giggling. It made it a lot less oppressive

And then on the desirable tension side, the crappy rareness of the save points works in the game's favour. You genuinely don't want to die, because it would mean going back to being dumped in the bin and trapped in narrow corridors again. So when three avatars drop off some scaffolding around you you suddenly swing that emergency axe with actual heartfelt intent, or backpeddle with eyes wildly seeking out some physics solution. (Now I think about it, I could have pulled the scaffolding down on them if I was quick enough )

I've only had game time to complete that first level (1.5 hrs for the second run I think). But by the end I was enjoying the sweaty survival and down-time tinkering. A lot


Telly Tubby With A Hard Hat:

The puzzles themselves are normally the quieter moments of repose. Some are a bit janky, or seemingly easter eggs rather than progression points, and in general they don't feel super high brow. But I have enjoyed them on balance to date.

Due to the physics underpinnings there seems to be a slight 'solve it your way' aspect to many of them (or you can just glitch your way around the problem ). The general lack of direct instruction could be a source of frustration, but I've enjoyed exploring dead ends and alternate options. (Can I climb all the way up these inviting wall sculptures? Ok yes I cannnn, but it didn't get me anywhere ).

And even the simpler acts can be distracting in this living-QWOP control scheme . I found just moving enormous yellow planks into place to form an aerial walkway, like a Telly Tubby on his first day at the building site, to be strangely zen

The Westworld narrative lite-puzzler is 67% off on Steam at the mo. £8 is ok for a higher end 5 chapters / 5 hour experience in VR land...

Have heard decent things, in a 'walking sim' / telling by showing / less-scary-than-Alien-Isolation-but-still-a-bit-scary way.

Not hyping, not hyping... But...



Liking most of what I’m hearing here: Magna gloves / throwing mechanic being slick. Environment being super slick and manipulable. Weighty objects requiring two hands. Bit surprised that a ladder was a teleport moment rather than physical interaction, but hey.

Quite a bit of footage in the background. Almost getting spoilery.

Probably a decent overview of all the headsets on the market for anyone interested though

Deep In The: Boneworks


This feels sooo cavernous in VR...

Wrestled 2hrs amongst the Xmas mania to complete another level.

Gotta stress that this is very much an indie title. A humanoid throws a gun under a lowering door, and looks like he’s powered by clockwork. The incidental audio is so thin that your legs sound like two sheets of tin when they knock into something.

There are few save points purely because they filled the memory cap up tracking all the positions of the physics objects. The side objective of solving bonus puzzles to populate the sandbox with toys easily loses out to the drive to survive the level. And at times all you’re doing is running and gunning trough a grim grey landscape (and occasionally slipping your gun neatly into a trash pile rather than its holster...)

But...




When the bespoke story audio is scraping and clanking down the other side of a wall, when you hit a grand set piece, or mess up a puzzle and drop 3 stories into a nest of ‘Combine wheely men’ (and survive via some emergency dual pistol duck and dive), it is alllll good

I was pleased to see that they’ve got scopes working nicely. And happy to notice I was flipping lockers open with neat flicks of my crowbar, and other fun physics interactions (to counter-act the periodic jank ). And when the slightly loose ‘do it your way-ish’ physics puzzles click (as you move giant paper clip things around to distribute weight etc), they feel like they’re pulling their weight...

Manually raising your legs up to get onto a ledge is still the most ludicrous thing in the world. But on balance, game good

Ahhh... I am HOPING that 2020 means I'll find more time to dive into the VR stuff. I need to rethink my office space to give me more room around my main desk computer so I can use the VR without knocking my knuckles on the desk or on the cabinet behind my chair. If the guinea pig cage wasn't in this room, I could move the desk to a different wall and have plenty of space.

But I have a feeling nobody would appreciate the cage showing up in the bathroom all of a sudden.

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Guinea pigs are better than telly. They’d be a feature in the living room

Yeah getting (& defending ) a space is tricky. If you get 1.5m x 1.5m clear you’re pretty set though. (I set my guardian boundary wall just a bit in from any obstacles. Normally get a decent warning before trying to insert my hand into a table )

I have whacked my hands onto my desk more times than I care to admit. It hurts if you do it full force, assuming that big space you're seeing in the headset is the same amount of actual space in the actual room. There is one metal cabinet (kinda shaped like a locker) right behind my desk. If I can find a spot for that, I'd have a clear four feet behind the edge of the desk. Side-to-side isn't an issue.

That may be on my to-do list for next week: finding a better spot in the house for that cabinet (which doesn't have to be in my office).

What the hell. This low-budget Blade Runner alpha has a hobbit in it... [53s+]



Not quite LA Noire style face capture, but not bad...

The words over his face have "LAVATORY" misspelled as "LAVAROTY."

Otherwise, I keep vacillating between thinking it's brilliant and also seeing every little seam between the face-paste and the body. Won't be long now, though, till things like this are seamless.

I told you it was low budget

Yeah that's what made me think of LA Noire in particular, it seemed pretty obvious they'd done face capture alone and then stuck that onto the body. Always looks a bit odd.

The BR 2049 freebie is worth a look, for the full 'volumetric' character capture. Weighty download as a result though...



Not sure if that tech has got a future for now, partially because of the file sizes, and partially because, for all the verisimilitude of the holograms, if they're meant to be an character opposite you, they can't actually track your eyes or movements or really react to you the way a more classic HL2-style character can.

(I reckon one of the challenges VR has more generally is that it really allows us to get up and nose into the game assets. A misaligned gap in a wall that I'd walk right by in normal mode is pretty flagrant with the headset. Not sure what the solution is, it could just be mad effort and resources. When 'AAA scenes' get it right, it definitely flicks that magic switch harder and you're more consistently lost in the world )

REVIEW: The Gallery - Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone



Positives:

• The mini-game mini-puzzles are neatly done and prettily presented, if kind of 'fairground tier' in their mechanics.
  
• The sets are all fairly evocative.
  
• The core game mechanics of telekinesis, and a cute little ballistics system, are solid enough.
  
• That Goonies-esque 80s head-nods still provide a welcome lick of retro-nostalgia at points, with the cassette player system and the scribbled felt-tip lore.

Negatives:

• Ludicrously long load times between locations, even on an SSD
  
• An absurd reliance on constant backtracking between the 3 core locations...
  
• As with many games that added smooth locomotion at a late date, the walk rate is incredibblllyyyy slowwwwwwww. (Normally out of excessive fear of nausea). This compounds all of the above. (There's also a certain frustration at not being able to jump / climb stairs / navigate more broadly).
  
• Your narrative companion is, frankly, really really annoying. And the surrounding lore is unfortunately heavy-handed, to the point of extreme hand-holding early on, while also contextually vital for solving the room puzzles, so you can't really skip it.

Honestly, any strands of magic or moments of transportation are absolutely bludgeoned by the.... moments of transportation, as a giant enslaved beast carries you, cut-scene style, back and forth between the locations.

I gave up on it in the end, when a much-harped-about underground city turned out to be a tiny 'stage' for a minor narrative event. From which I then had to backtrack...

Nope.

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It is kind of perverse that I'm giving it a lower score than the first Episode, given it has way more content and game mechanics. But lord do those dead transits back and forth just kill the vibe...

REVIEW: Episode 1

Review: Boneworks

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Imperious Overview:



Despite the early basement aesthetic and garage dev on display, the visual elements flower somewhat into the later levels, and the skunkworky mechanics prove pretty robust by the end. The reloadable guns, the environmental clambering, the crowbars that actually hook onto things. None of them are innovative on their own (outside of the fully interactive body you're lumbered with, perhaps), but they're all 'VR 2.0' elements that are good to have

(The story is slight, standard fare, with an undercurrent of unease. Most of the time it barely exists. Periodically TV screens will fuzz to life, generic graffiti will help or hinder, portals will have a Russian Doll moment, and together they'll form a scattered breadcrumb trail of sorts. But you get the impression that the levels often came first and the story could have just been squashed into the gaps afterwards. I wouldn't really call it a polished arc or anything )



Puzzling:

I would have liked more emphasis on puzzles all told. Some levels were purely 'gun your way to the escape point, with an odd bit of trial and error and wobbly climbing'. When they got their balloon guns and physics obstacles in a line though they managed a few fun challenges. They never felt like an escalating succession of concepts though, and it's a shame to see some of the more eccentric physics tools only getting a workout in Sandbox mode.




TLDR:

If you're not happy to be chased around by a zombie with a claw hammer in their bottom, don't get it. If you get motion sickness fairly readily, don't get it.

I'm not a huge fan of gore & disquiet myself, but on balance I had a ball here. It's a gritty, neon, perma-pratfall of a run-and-gun puzzle-escape-athon. All plus points for me

It also gets a bonus point for a very contemporary reason though, which may date. It launched at an affordable £20 asking price, with a 14hr+ campaign, a suite of 'modern' mechanics, and not overly compromised by nausea-avoidance techniques. This combo is a rarity in these early years of VR. But a welcome one

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Previous Thoughts:

• Gore Time in Garrys Mod vs Tellytubby with a Hard Hat
• Tin Man drops in on the 'Combine Wheely Men'

First Look: Westworld Awakening



Liking the audio/visual polish here. Hearing the soundtrack and the twang of the internal monologue made it feel like being in an episode right from the off. (The 'inhabiting an artificial body' setting also fits VR like a glove in many ways).

I did have a little pang for the full interaction of Boneworks, but this is me wanting everything to an extent. Being able to knock over or heft literally any object on a whim may not always add gameplay, but the 'oh this isn't real' chasm that opens up when your hand passes through a passive object does still disappoint a bit having had it.

It's a bit harsh though as WA seems to have more objects than normal that can be faffed with. And there are some neat little touches, like being able to physically lower yourself behind any cover by gripping it.

I only stopped playing because, amongst the solid menu options, they don't allow you to remove the 'turn around' arrows if you're using the 'Experimental' Oculus set up (IE 2 sensors for roomscale). A bit of a bummer on the immersion front :/


First Look: Subnautica



With the mod installed this is all pretty painless to use (if your VR legs are under you), and pretty with it.

Reckon I'll dump the survival mode, as the food/water thing is already making grind noises. Interested to see how much it lets you build out and explore though. I was enjoying bobbing back to my proto-base with spoils at any rate.

Damn do you immediately think how cool motion controllers would be underwater though, compared to classic stick movement. Something about that 'fluid' environment just calls for iron-man style hand propulsion . (NMS VR got this bit close to spot on, and zig-zag-zigging around is a lot of fun there, even if with only one hand providing thrust. Just a shame they only have one, massive, underwater biome )

Some fun oddities from this 'Top 50 of 2019' list:



Multiplayer + VR can be so mad. (I'm not sure you can beat giant goading and tiny wavy high fives ). Aside from some fun shooters like Pavlov and Onward, and a bit of the freebie silliness of Rec Room, I haven't really messed around with it enough though. There are 'drop in and play' communities for all of those, but the peak experience would definitely be messing around with mates . (Payday2 has been grand for this incidentally )

And now, for something... that clearly isn't going to work :/



Still an interesting space though. 'Safe spaces' for trialling scenarios etc. This is way too patronising to work on teens I reckon, but I'm sure there's stuff that could be done here.

And people say VR is a pipe dream...

Hark at these highly pragmatic 2020s predictions by the HTC CEO!

• Universal basic income
• AI will lead to a 10 hour working week
• Crypto will unite global finance oh god whhhhat?

On the plus side, seems like Left 4 Dead is coming to VR

Second Look: Subnautica

OK the survival loops swept me away this time. It was 2am when I surfaced :/



Lost in Loops:

The core game (right now) is the way you extend the depths you can dive too, unearthing more exotic loot as you go, and discovering greater threats amongst the reeds and radiation.

Balancing your greed and inquisitiveness against the need to ascend is a fun tension. The dynamics can change, as you descend below 100m (and burn through your compressed O2), meaning the 30-second-warning is no longer quite long enough...

Pushing it too far as you ferret through a crashed ship section, or plunge deeper into an inviting cave, is super easily done. Streaking upwards towards the slanting sunbeams, thrumming with 'not gonna make it' thoughts, breaching the surface while nearly unconscious, is all pretty striking at times




Familiar Territory:

Cool as it is to reach the safety of your floating base, or gird yourself for greater survival and adventure... The best bit so far has been the way you get to know the wildlife around you, and get a feel for the local biomes, noting striking locations for future exploration.

The audio is solid, cuing you in to whether that giant basking seal thing has just released its distress defence, or alerting you that a dino-shark creation is speeding out of its reedy den towards you. Which is handy, because you can't face everywhere at once . So it's cool that you can also hear the minor grunting that means the seal-thing is just chilling beside you, as you navigate to your next target...


Story Mode All The Way:

Definitely a lot more fun in 'story' mode rather than 'survival'. (As easy as it is to snag colourful fish, actually squeezing sustenance out of them is just needless busy work )

There are enough loot/craft loops and lurking threats to keep you occupied as it is, as you nudge the narrative along, and the food stuff just repeats the worst of those mechanics really. And besides, you've got bigger fish to spy



VR :

• You need your VR legs to imitate those sea legs, to a degree. Any scampering around your tiny base is done with the stick.
• 'Head look' underwater has no nausea threat, but brings its own issues. Want to swim straight down? Kinda have to stare at your own crotch for a bit then... Want to swim up as fast as possible? You'll be craning at your ceiling.... (Possibly there are alternatives for this, but I haven't found them yet )
• Generally though: Claustrophobic caves filled with explosive puffer fish? Giant ocean sunlight shafts? Shifting lights as you descend towards a possible jewel in the darkening depths? Yeah, all that stuff works pretty good
• (Would still lurrrrvv hand controls in this, for defensive knife-fencing with sharks, and torch shining, and directing your free-floating forays. But it ain't happening, so this'll do )

Half Life Q&A