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PSVR2 hands-on articles and videos are dropping

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member












We kicked off 2022 revealing the design of the PlayStation VR2, complete with its sleek headset and innovative PS VR2 Sense controllers. Following that, we shared more details on the user experience of PS VR2, like the illuminating see-through view and the customizable play area.

A stylish design and new features are excellent, but playing is believing when it comes to VR, and our team at PlayStation was pumped to have the opportunity to go hands on with upcoming PS VR2 titles. Read on to discover our experiences playing games from Guerrilla, Capcom, Skydance Interactive, and ILMxLab.



Horizon Call of the Mountain​

There’s a feeling of awe I remember having in my first playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn when Aloy first looks out atop a roaming Tallneck to reveal both a new portion of the map and a majestic, ever-reaching view. That sense of scale takes on a whole new meaning the first time I craned my neck up to watch a Tallneck tower and stomp through my path in Horizon Call of the Mountain. From the moment I slipped on the PlayStation VR2 headset and set off into lands that felt so familiar, I realized I had never really experienced the vast beauty and mounting dangers of Horizon’s environments quite like this.

My hands-on demo brought me into the first person perspective of Ryas, a captive and disgraced Shadow Carja soldier that soon gets thrust into the wilds to fend for himself. Encountering machines in full realistic scale through his eyes was a constant thrill. You simply don’t realize how big a Snapmaw really is until one is chomping away at your canoe! Haptic feedback in the PS VR2 Sense controllers made the weight of each moving machine feel so real, and had me gasping when a herd of Grazers moved past me.


Things really fell into place once I started scrambling up cliff sides and got my hands on a bow and arrow. Drawing my bow and letting arrows fly in combat with a Watcher made me feel the power I’ve come to love from the Horizon series. Hand motions and aim feel so accurate and real to life with the PS VR2 Sense controllers, from the precision placement of my hands scaling an encampment tower to the tension in my bow when I let an arrow loose. The world never feels interrupted, with my health bar appearing as decorative scales on my right hand glove rather than taking up space in a HUD. Horizon Call of the Mountain transported me in a way that made my heart race, and has me aching to hop back in.

– Kristen Zitani



Resident Evil Village​

Capcom invited me back to Castle Dimitrescu for an even more immersive survival horror experience with a bespoke PlayStation VR2 hands-on demo. The gothic world of Resident Evil Village pops thanks to the OLED, 4K PS VR2 displays, accentuating the details of carved gargoyles and ornately painted vases. Before Village, I spent lots of time in RE7’s intense PS VR mode, and playing this sequel in PS VR2 feels like a natural evolution of that experience. The dev wizards at Capcom appear to have cracked the code thanks to PS VR2’s high refresh rate and vivid visuals, as I felt comfortably immersed within the eerie castle walls.

Village’s first-person gameplay was already a thrilling experience on PS5, and PS VR2 offers an even deeper experience. I was delighted to discover that the trusty knife – often a last resort option – can be flicked at enemies from afar. Dual wielding the pistol and knife also ups the feeling of becoming a heroic survivor, and I can’t wait to tinker with more akimbo options.


Later in the demo, the daughters of the notorious Lady Dimitrescu attack and kidnap you. The haptics within the PS VR2 headset subtly rumble, simulating the experience of being roughly dragged to their mother’s quarters. As Lady Dimitrescu stands, the immersive nature of PS VR2 makes her towering stature all the more imposing. If being chased by her was intimidating before, it’s going to get even more harrowing in PS VR2, and I can’t wait.

– Tim Turi



The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution​

The characters of The Walking Dead universe get by thanks to their resourcefulness and quick reflexes. I was delighted to discover the same skills are rewarded when playing Skydance Interactive’s upcoming PS VR2 sequel. The survival FPS pulled me into its dangerous world by digitally strapping guns, melee weapons, and a backpack to different parts of my in-game body. Reaching over my left shoulder to pull off my pack and rummage for health supplies in real-time as walkers close in is a pulse-pounding experience.


Combat encounters with walkers are deliberate and tense. I was impressed by the accurate tracking of the PS VR2 Sense controllers as I handled a fire axe, trying to find the best hand position to execute a meaty swing at a walker’s head. Accuracy counts in combat, too. I encountered walkers wearing bits of armor, requiring some surgical precision with a katana to target vulnerable spots.

The ranged arsenal is just as fun to wield, including revolvers, SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, bows, and more. Skydance’s attention to detail and player expression transforms routine game mechanics like reloading; I felt like an action-movie hero when I flicked my double-barrel closed with one quick motion. Juggling your arsenal in real-time while managing incoming walker swarms feels appropriately badass, and has me excited to dive into the full survival adventure.

– Tim Turi



Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge – Enhanced Edition​

After nearly 40 years of gaming, it’s easy for me to feel overconfident in a virtual firefight. Decades of muscle memory make reaching for the right weapon a simple task in just about any adventure. But when I leapt into my first encounter with the Guavian Death Gang on Batuu, PS VR2 headset firmly attached, I found myself literally reaching for the right weapon, flustered and hectic as I glanced across all my pockets, pouches, straps, and holsters for the right weapons as immersive sound and haptics further pulled me into the experience.

Naturally, I mean this in an exhilarating, positive way! The sense of “oh crap I’m surrounded” is totally different when your actual body needs to coordinate movements and inventory management. This created a wonderful rush as I ducked for cover, scavenged leftover blasters from fallen enemies, and pushed past the gang in search of my lost cargo. Furthermore, moments like manually reloading blasters and using the accuracy of the PS VR2 Sense controllers to manipulate tiny buttons on my wrists were intuitive and satisfying. As with any new controller or experience, there’s a lot to take in initially. It all quickly felt like second nature, however, and left me excited to see where else these tales would take me.


This early Batuu mission is just one scenario among many, as the game spans different eras and disciplines. In this adventure I was a droid repair technician in search of cargo, while other stories cast the player as a Jedi or even IG-88. Some tales will involve encounters with iconic characters like R2D2, C-3PO and Yoda (voiced by Anthony Daniels and Frank Oz, respectively), while the central cantina and cast of characters help build upon the experience in the actual Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge park in Disneyland. Talk about virtual reality!

– Brett Elston

Dive into a gallery of screenshots from this collection of PlayStation VR2 games below:

Horizon Call of the Mountain

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Resident Evil Village

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The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution

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Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge – Enhanced Edition

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Loxus

Member
Just watched the IGN video...I'm not sold now.....I'll wait. It doesnt look as good as I thought it was going to be. The having to press a button to hold a gun in 2022 isnt great.

Looking forward to more info.
That's kind of much closer to real life in a sense. Release the button to drop the item, it's somewhat like your dropping an item in real life.

That would work great in survival games.
Though developers can choose how the buttons work.
 
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Toots

Gold Member

From those not really beautiful people's linkedin :

Kristen (Titus) Zitani

(She/Her)
Senior Content Communications Specialist at PlayStation

Brett Elston

Creating engaging content and compelling conversations in social media marketing.
Senior Manager, Content CommunicationsSenior Manager, Content Communications
PlayStation

Tim Turi

Content Communications Manager at PlayStation


WTF don't they use middlemen anymore for their advertorial crap ??!!
6tcoge.jpg


that said, it looks really tempting...
 

TheMan

Member
Pleasantly surprised to see such positivity. Still not really feeling the hype yet but I think I’ll probably end up jumping in
 

hlm666

Member
Just watched the IGN video...I'm not sold now.....I'll wait. It doesnt look as good as I thought it was going to be. The having to press a button to hold a gun in 2022 isnt great.

Looking forward to more info.
The combat sounds pretty dialed back, why would they do that. The dodging was done by pressing a button according to that guys report and there was no free movement just strafing around a circle with button presses. RE8 VR will be a better game if that's the case, i'm curious to see if they remove movement from that like being hung up and dragged etc, that can make you feel sick double time. The VR mod on pc during those parts is rough on even the most hardened vr user.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Do we know if horizon is on rail or free exploration with free movements?
It looks like a typical bow exploration game with free movement, plus The Climb 2, plus on rail sections in a boat, plus who knows. And AAA graphics.
 

sainraja

Member
Interesting but I don't think I will ever really like VR until they can figure out movement properly — based on what I have seen in Oculus (teleport movement is BS) but even still, I might still not ever like it.
 
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R6Rider

Gold Member
I curse nature for depriving me of 80% of my eyesight on my right eye...I can't experience VR or 3D glasses for that matter, as I lack depth perception. Fuck! 😔
You can still enjoy VR, just with an overall lesser wow factor. Plenty of posts on Reddit from users playing with bad vision in one eye, or barely any vision with one eye.
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Interesting that not all games use foveate rendering.
 

sainraja

Member
It's been solved for years: left analog stick for moment, right for turning. Once you get used to VR there is no sickness at all.
Hmm, I didn't realize most were using the left stick for movement and right for camera control like non-VR games — ones I have seen/tried had you teleporting for movement which I think is not the right way to do movement.
 
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Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Hmm, I didn't realize most were using the left stick for movement and right for camera control like non-VR games — ones I have seen/tried had you teleporting for movement which I think is not the right way to do movement.
You have always been able to use joysticks. But a lot of people will get nauseous doing that, just so you know. Tolerance varies.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
That's how it works with all VR games unless it's a game where the gun literally is your hand.

Thinking about it, I'm not sure why he was saying his hands were cramping up. Surely it is just like the quest controller then.

Looking forward to when we get closer to launch and have a better idea on titles and the hardware...think ill wait a bit to see how it pans out but may pick up day one if they nail it.
 

SCB3

Member
This looks better than the first PSVR, I'm interested as I missed that intial craze a few years ago due to lack of funds, in a better place by far now so I'll jump in, I love the look of Horizon and Walking Dead

Saying that have they said how PSVR1 titles are gonna be done? If at all? I'm interested in Vader Immortal especially
 

jaysius

Banned
That's how it works with all VR games unless it's a game where the gun literally is your hand.
Even in the IGN video the guy states that Steam's controller allows you to physcially grip the controller instead of holding a button.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Just watched the IGN video...I'm not sold now.....I'll wait. It doesnt look as good as I thought it was going to be. The having to press a button to hold a gun in 2022 isnt great.

Looking forward to more info.

That's how using guns in VR SHOULD work. You hold the grip button to hold the gun (or whatever else you're holding), and press the trigger button to fire. Feels much more natural than guns being magically glued to your hand, I really don't like that.

Or do you mean that it shouldn't be a button but just touch/pressure sensing? That might not be "discrete" enough. You need to be able to very clearly feel if you're gripping or not.
 
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