PLAYSTATION TECHNOHAT AFTER ONE DAY:
Hardware: great. Very comfortable to wear and easy to put on and take off. Seems to track movements well. I haven't noticed any lag, dizzyness, or nausea from the games running at 60 fps. However it does barf cables all over your living room; the control box plugs into the PS4 via USB, HDMI and the wall for power, then a fat compound cable runs to the headset.
Move controllers: I believe these are technically inferior to the Vive/Rift hand controllers but they feel fine to me.
Graphics: Immediately after you put it on, you do notice some graphical letdowns: things are relatively blurry, there's shimmering dot crawl, there's aliasing, there's muddiness.1080p is definitely the MVP for VR. But! After a minute or so, that fades away, and you just stop noticing it. I don't find it bothersome at all.
Console polish: there's things here that are definitely better than Vive or Rift (at least as I've played them.) Every bit of the PS4's UI is accessible through the headset, with either Move or pad controllers. You can create parties, change settings, load games, browse the store, change games -- things that on the PC I'd be removing the headset every few minutes for. The headset has a headphone jack with a mic port and volume / power controls, so again, it's pretty well thought-out. Also, the TV always shows a "normal" version of the game (ie. not warped into two circles), and the normal speakers still work -- so people in the room can spectate. This has been very hit and miss with PC headsets IME.
Games and demos I've tried:
Batman: Arkham VR: astounding. It's short (about an hour), using the same game engine and voice actors as the Arkham games. It's a standing experience with teleporting movement, and I played it for a bit over an hour solid without any after-effects at all. It's incredible immersive and really, really fun (I said HOLY SHIT a lot.) Worth the price of entry just for the bit where you suit up as Batman then get to look in a mirror and, hey, I'm Batman! Has a New Game+ that adds a lot of Riddler puzzles, so there's more here than the short playtime suggests. I think this is the thing I'd put guests in to demo VR. It was my first experience of teleporting movement, and it feels much more natural than I thought it would.
Until Dawn: Rush Of Blood: a (literally) on-rails shooter, a rollercoaster ride where you have two guns (works with pad but better with Move.) Turns out lightgun games are super good in VR, because they can naturally exploit the head turning. Guns feel accurate enough with Move, although there's some random jitter to targetting. It has some very stomach-cramp-inducing swoops and so on on the rollercoaster but uses them sparingly and to good effect -- it's just a few seconds now and again.
Job Simulator: I haven't tried it yet but MrsDoc is playing it now. She seems to be having fun. It's pretty funny, too!
Kitchen: a very short teaser for RE7. Just terrifying. I yelped multiple times. Super effective.
EVE: Valkyrie: the demo that comes with the headset is really, really short (just a minute). I wasn't convinced. Also it's £40 and it's mostly an online competitive game, which I'm unlikely to enjoy with randos.
Battlezone: didn't think I'd think much of this but it's actually pretty neat. Sitting in the tank feels natural, it's pleasantly zoomy to drive around, and the guns and cannons have a good thump. I wasn't entirely convinced by the targeting model (you're moving a reticule around with the right stick, which feels a bit... non-VR-ish, I guess?)
Rez: Infinite: I've never gotten into a Rez game but it's great in VR. The sense of scale to everything is very impressive. I might pick this up.
Driveclub VR: the only game where the graphics have bothered me: the middle distance is a shimmering mess of slightly crappy textures and dot crawl. Maybe I picked a bad track. The cockpit looks marvellous, though -- I especially like how the games HUD (like lap count etc) are placed on the car's dashboard screen.
Thunder: rhythm action game from some ex-Harmonix (Rock Band) devs. A bit weird and didn't click with me.
Games I'm interested in but haven't played yet:
RE7: obviously.
Don't Stop Talking And Nobody Explodes: also obviously.
DiRT Rally VR: this is getting very good reviews. I want a driving game, obviously, and I think I'd get this over Driveclub.
Fallout 4 VR: only currently confirmed for PC. I hope it ships for PSVR.
Elite: Dangerous: confirmed shipping for PS, but not confirmed for PSVR right now. I hope that changes, I want a space combat game.
Werewolves Within: this is really intriguing, it's online Werewolf (as in, the game like Mafia). It can do body language, whispering to other players, and of course you can have secret displays other people cannot see. Looks neat.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew: pushed back to March but fuck me it looks good. Reporting for duty under Captain Grim....
tl;dr: this is a new console, and it's unproven, and content is a little on the thin side right now. But it's intoxicating and totally lived up the hype and the great reviews it got from the press. Compared to PC, I suspect it's a "good enough" solution, not a great one; but conversely there's a degree of polish and integration here that the PC headsets cannot match.
|