Some things to note: This wraps around your periphery in VR, so a lot of the screen isn't actually visible. There is more pop-in in these recordings than I see in VR. Really, when I'm looking forward, I only see as far as the edge of Samus' mask extends. This makes seeing it in VR a bit better than what you see on the screen, as you're seeing too much of the "magic" pulled back. The popping-in world is only noticeable if I'm looking around
The edge controls are god-awful in VR. Moving to the edge of the screen to move your body just feels terrible in VR. It's what keeps me from playing more. None of the control schemes feel right. It actually highlights a lot of the ways in which VR control needs to differ. I need another thumb stick to rotate my body, or I need body tracking, or something. You want as much decoupled as you can. I use the basic control method because it has the biggest bounding box, it makes me feel like my aim is decoupled from my gaze, but I really need to decouple my body orientation from my aim as well. It's soooo close to being right.
It's easy to lose the sensor bar in VR, which is a problem with pretty much every wii game in VR. You might notice the screen jumping back numerous times in the video. I'm doing that by hand, by clicking an Xbox thumb stick in my lap. It resets the head calibration, because the thing is subject to a lot of drift in tridef 3D. If I just stand still and look left and right a bit, I'll eventually be looking to my left when I look forward. Hence the need to reset the orientation. Despite being able to reset the orientation, it's natural for your body to unconsciously drift towards the direction you think it should be facing. I'm basically constantly fighting it, as my natural instinct is to basically turn in my chair without realizing it. In VR, with the headset on, all concepts of orientation outside of the game vanish. It's only a few minutes before I'm no longer facing the wii sensor bar and the game basically breaks. Capturing this video was a constant fight for me.
Despite all this, there are times when everything clicks, and it's basically that Nintendo On video from several years back. It's very compelling. I wish I could play a full metroid game like this, with the faults I'm describing eliminated. I tried to show off some of the cooler aspects of VR with the video, like firing in a different direction than I'm looking. I don't know if it's noticeable, but when I'm doing the platforming, I can actually look down at where I'm landing, making it easier to judge my jump. The subtle improvements in camera control in every game - even 2.5D stuff like Sonic Colors - is a huge improvement in every game, across the board. We evolved to use our necks to adjust our "cameras," not our right thumbs or whatever. Nothing will ever feel as natural as this. It is, in a word, perfect.
Not to be full of myself, but our own mod for Half Life 2 works the way I'm saying I wish Metroid Prime worked. Having two thumbsticks on each hydra, and each hydra providing markerless motion tracking, lets us decouple aim from gaze from body orientation, while also eliminating the need to be facing a certain direction IRL in order to do limb tracking.
Luckily, I think HL2 is an amazing game. I would kill to see someone try and make a metroid prime mod in the source engine, so all these kinds of improvements could be brought over to it.
Once you play with VR, these faults become a lot clearer and, while Metroid Prime might look like our mod superficially, these changes are enormous.
I have to admit it's so cool seeing the enemies from metroid in front of you, though. They're like... right there. And life sized. And you feel like you can reach out and touch it. But instead you just blast the fucker away with your arm that actually looks and feels like your arm.
