E3 report! I went to the show today, here's my impressions of a few of the PSVR game demos.
Gentle Giant - tons of character in this game. Similar to the feeling of "Moss" or that other game where a plane crashes onto a sky-island, sorry I forgot the name - you are an observer playing with a set that is surrounding you. The demo wasn't very smooth, felt rather early and untested - but as I mentioned, it was oozing with character. I loved how everything looked, and very interested to see how it all plays once the game comes out. Very weird and funny.
GunGrave VR - I remember playing the original GunGrave at E3 mannnny years ago, and yes I've picked up the PS2 game long since - anyway I was interested to give this a "shot" (eh hehhh, eh hehhh) Anyway the demo was pretty garbage. This isn't a condemnation of the actual game, but this demo that they showed felt very thrown together like they were just hurrying to get *something* to show on the floor. It didn't look very good, and it was pretty tired mechanically after about 1 minute. As I said I was a fan of the OG game, so I won't pass judgement yet, but at this point I have low expectations. They should not have shown this at E3 in this state - even a year ago this would have been disappointing!
FireWall - now this is more like it. I have had Farpoint with the AIM controller for about 9mo, so I have made my mind up about the peripheral (I love it!) As for Farpoint, it's not terribly complex, but I love it for what it is. Now FIreWall, this is on the other end of the spectrum - this is complex. Too complex for me, I ate shit inside of a minute! Not my cup of tea, rather a game that doesn't demo very well at E3 (for me), but I appreciated it for what it was, a comprehensive squad-blaster with two teams of 4, at least in this demo setup. Sounds pretty bog-standard, but with the gun peripheral & VR it all felt very legitamite and the experience was very fleshed out. Again, I suck at those games and I got iced immediately so I got put on 3-min wait and peaced the game out, but I liked what I saw. Would love to learn how to play and try some more under "proper condiitons."
Creed - heard about this game from VRLA, didn't realize it was coming for PSVR! Easily my favorite VR game of the show. I had heard some hype about it, and was cautious because of that, but it was quite fun. Very by-the-book arcade boxing game, but such a natural fit for the platform and they made the game more challenging than I expected (in a good way). Demo was short and quite limited, but I will definitely pick this up when it releases. I want more!
Drums of War - ok this was in Indiecade, and running on Oculus, so I can't say that it will come out for PSVR at this stage but I tested it and thought to mention it anyway. Disclaimer, I know the dev, we used to work together at Neversoft (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater) back in the day and he since had designed a bunch of Guitar Hero games there - and been away since those days. Anyway, just mentioning all of that to set the stage as this is very much a rhythm-action shooting game - you beat drums to raze a village and dispatch enemies, all to the beat of positively gnarly metal music (good gnarly not bad gnarly). It still has some kinks to be worked out, but it feels really good in a "why didn't I think of this!" sort of way..
Spider-Man - not VR but I played it for a few min so I will drop in some notes as well. YES it looks absolutely beautiful, Insomniac knows how to make gorgeous-looking games and this is their crown jewel from what I could tell. The bad? This demo was NOT GOOD. Again not a condemnation of the game, I think they just assembled a poor demo so I will blame the producers in this case (I've worked with many of them before, in general - I know how they think). The demo was just boring. web-swing X miles, climb this, punch these guys. I didn't even make it to a mission before I put down the controller (I waited about an hour in line to try the game too, I just got bored and wanted to leave!). Not too sound biased, but honestly the original PS1 Spider-man game was actually way more fun than this demo, visuals aside. I will still pick up the full game when it releases because I do trust these guys, I think they just took a shit with this demo (also I know some of the designers at Insomniac and their work is top-notch so I am excited to see the actual product). NOTE yes I asked the demo guy if there was a VR mode and he said he had no idea, "I think people will get sick if they make Spider-Man VR" to me this is a lazy excuse! You can take any concept and make it approachable with a little R&D, if you have a solid design. Anyway - we will see.
Tomorrow - Tetris VR, I hope?