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Pixel Gear
Oasis Games is aiming to bring five games to PS VR within the headset’s launch window starting in the fall. You can read details about each individual game here in their announcement on the PlayStation Blog. One of the titles that naturally stood out to me was Pixel Gear, although if I had one nitpick it’s that the game’s style is in voxels, not pixels. But I get it, they’re going for the retro feel and pixels has a nostalgia pull that voxels doesn’t. Regardless, the game is a first person shooter that has you blasting a variety of cartoon monsters and ghosts. According to the description, every level is packed with interactive objects that react differently when hit along with upgradable weapons which grant abilities like slowing or stopping time. Does this sound like a deep game? No. But it does sound like a fun hop in/hop out style game? Yes.
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Ark: Survival Evolved
I’m going to be completely honest—I should be head over heels in love with Ark, but I’m not. It’s not because it’s a bad game, it’s just because I suck at it. So I gave up. Lame of me I know. Anyway, with the announcement back in 2015 that the title is PS VR bound I’m more than willing to give it a second chance. Maybe getting my ass kicked by dinos in VR won’t be as bad?
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Adr1ft
When I saw this game announced the first thing I though is “man, this would be great in VR” and now it’s confirmed to be coming. The title currently supports the HTC Vive on Steam and will also be making it’s way to Sony’s unit in the future. In Adr1ft you play as an astronaut who wakes up with no memory of what happened as you’re silently floating along in space amidst the scattered debris of your destroyed space station. To make matters worse, your EVA suit is critically damaged and is leaking oxygen as you’re trying to keep yourself together and find a way back home.
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Battlezone
I haven’t played it, but Battlezone looks like it will be a fast and fun arcade-like tank shooter. The colors are bright and the art style pops. Better still, the game will support local co-op with up to four players. The developer, Rebellion, goes into detail about the different load outs and ways this switches up gameplay in their blog post. It’s great to see a dev embrace social play on an upcoming platform that many think will be primarily only able to offer single player experiences.
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Robinson The Journey
I mean—holy shit—it’s dinosaurs! This is by far my most anticipated game not only in VR, but in general. You play as a person sent on a mission to discover a habitable planet in an effort to recolonize society but—oh no—your ship crash lands on some other planet. When you awaken you’re greeted with the sights and sounds of god damn dinosaurs. Pretty standard stuff, I know, but sign me up! From there you’re little robot sphere pal guides you as you explore, scan the surrounding plant and animal life, and try to survive. This could be No Man’s Sky with dinosaurs and I’ll probably still fucking love it because there hasn’t been anything like it yet.
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PlayStation VR Worlds
Sony’s VR Worlds is to PS VR what Wii Sports was to Nintendo’s Wii, and for me it was just as effective. My wife and I waited in line at PAX East to try it out and we both ended up playing a small slice of The London Heist. I was immediately sold and to my surprise so was my wife. She was grinning from ear to ear when she took the headset off because VR really has the power to transport you into other worlds. In total PS VR Worlds will include five games like Into The Deep, a deep sea diving experience, Scavenger’s Odyssey, a sci-fi adventure where you play an alien treasure hunter, and more.
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Job Simulator
I’m going to be completely honest with you. I had zero interest in this game. I mean, I have a job in real life, so why would I want to simulate another one? Well, when Tristan and I visited IndieCade we both got to try out some VR games and this was one I played. The final game has multiple different jobs you can try ranging from an office job in a cubicle to a cook in a diner. Being an avid home cook with my wife I naturally chose to work as a cook. As I put the headset on I noticed the game was bright and colorful with a very cartoonish vibe going on. I was taking orders and churning them out and apparently people were gathering around the computer screen in real life to watch my shenanigans as I doused hot sauce on someone’s order and threw toast and caught it behind my back. I was having a blast! It may sound boring on paper but it secured itself as a day one purchase for me.
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Here They Lie
I only found out about this game recently, but it looks like it’ll be creepy as hell in VR. Luckily here in the States it’s included on the demo disc along with seventeen other games packed in (sorry Europe). The creepiness of the trailer really speaks for itself and even if this ends up being a mainly on rails experience, the immersive nature of virtual reality will make it scarier than if it was just on my TV. I’m excited to be scared.
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RIGS Mechanized Combat
I had a mech game for Dreamcast that I bought for about a buck. If I’m honest, I don’t think it was very good, but it didn’t matter because it was a mech game. Even though there are a slew of Killzone games from Guerrilla, I thought the most recent Shadow Fall was one of the better in the series and Horizon Zero Dawn looks incredible. Thankfully RIGS looks like it’ll follow the studio’s upward trend of amazing new IP and will be a damn blast for PS VR. The idea is you’re suited up in a mech and have to take down other mechs in order to build up a charge and score a goal. It sounds easy, but rest assured, when you hop in online things are likely to get hectic. If online isn’t your thing, you can also battle against AI and play the single player campaign mode instead.
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Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Ok, so this game definitely isn’t as action packed as some of the others listed above, but what makes Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes so special is that, just like Battlezone, it’s a PS VR game that’s based around multiplayer. In this game the person wearing the headset is trying to defuse a bomb in front of them only they can see while other players try and frantically sift through documentation and feed directions to you. As the bomb diffuser you have to be both fast and accurate in describing the bomb so your team members sitting next to you can tell you the proper steps to successfully disarm it. The title has been out for a while on iPad and according to Will is quite fun in it’s current form, but it’s sure to be an entirely different experience in VR.
According to Sony there will be fifty games between PS VR’s launch through the end of 2016. These are just ten I’m looking forward to with many more not listed. What VR games or experiences are you most excited for?
