PlayStation VR seems pretty great but Driveclub made me carsick

The PlayStation VR launch is scant weeks away – just six, in fact, until October 13 – so Sony put on a drop-in style showcase event so people could have a hands on go with some of the games, in the extremely blue-lit basement of a restaurant. I’m always impressed by VR in the moment, though the replayability or longevity of any of it is difficult to predict. With this context in mind, however, I found PSVR to be surprisingly good. I’d expected it to be noticeably worse than the Vive, which we had in the office to try out for a week, and it’s not really. In some ways it’s better.

There were a few games there, and while it’s still early days for VR they were definitely fun, at least for 20 minutes at a time. They would have been more so if the room hadn’t been full of people, owlishly watching each other playing. Passive VR embarrassment is a hurdle. As is motion sickness. If you care to read on then you’ll get some general impressions of both PSVR and the games I tested.

The PSVR Headset

The headset is much lighter and easier to wear than I’d expected, mainly because from using the Vive I’d assumed all VR headsets will clamp onto your face like an amorous mollusc and sheer off your makeup when you remove them. The actual goggle bit of the PSVR headset is suspended in front of your face, and you focus by moving in and out. The way it works with individual games will vary, and visually it wasn’t quite as crystal clear as what I experienced in the Vive, but it seems generally more consumer friendly. It’s way less expensive, plus it doesn’t come with a thick, snaking knot of wires and sensors that require two plugs at opposite sides of the room to sort out. Although some of the games use move controllers for the full experience, which I assumed had died with the PS3. Yet here we are again.

Driveclub

This was initially problematic because my tiny legs weren’t long enough for my tiny feet to reach the pedals and make the car go, even with the control mount moved all the way forwards. I had to sit on the edge of the pretend car-seat they’d brought in and I still couldn’t properly push the brake down, which is a dangerous and incorrect way to drive in real life.

However, in other ways Driveclub VR proved itself to be very realistic, because I felt immediately and very violently carsick. I had flashbacks to the four hour drives to cornwall I endured as a small child, and had to tap out after a very short space of time. However, if you are not or have never been prone to travel sickness then maybe you’ll be fine. One could argue that perhaps it was just too realistic and my brain thought I actually was going very fast in a car, and didn’t like it.

I realise this doesn’t give you a lot of information re: what the actual game was like, so I apologise, but I also didn’t want to be sick everywhere.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Or possibly Biohazard 7: Resident Evil (well played Capcom, well played). This was the only one I played where you walked around in first person VR despite sitting still in a chair, as opposed to e.g. being in a mech suit or a car, but this was fine. Better, in fact. Moving slowly is fine because your mind has time to wrap its… mind around the whole thing. In Resi 7 you move at approximately walking speed. The hardest bit was getting used to the controls. You move with the left thumbstick, and look around by, you know, looking around, but the right thumbstick will also turn you a bit, because it’s almost impossible to angle your head around far enough in the game while you’re sat still in real life. To begin with this is slightly awkward, but you can get over it. Despite the VR it’s still more like you’re piloting a person than inhabiting them, so I suppose it is sort of being in a mech suit or a car. In an abstract way.

It wasn’t that frightening, but possibly being in a room full of people, two of them discussing your own playthrough and what might be about to happen to you close enough that you could hear, probably took away some of the immersion. I think, though, when it comes out, it’ll probably be very good. Even though in real life you can only see in the direction you’re looking, when this happens in a video game it’s very unsettling. Plus the fridge was all gross and there’s nothing more frightening than poorly stored food.

PS VR Worlds

The Vive has The Lab, which is a Valve built thing wherein you can stand on top of a VR mountain in Wales, or deconstruct a VR robot from Portal, and PlayStation has VR Worlds. In it you get five VR mini games (although I was told that more would be coming at some point in the future currently unspecified. You can stand in a dive cage and watch luminous jellyfish and then be incredibly unsettled by a great white shark tearing the front off your cage (cinematic underwater experiences tend to show of VR really well, because you don’t have to move around much but still get a kind of ‘What brave new worlds!’ wonderous 360 degrees experience, although it’s only really impressive the first time you do it). There’s a space mech shooter experience called Scavenger’s Odyssey, where you aim at aliens by looking at them, the London Heist, which I did not try because you barrel along in a car chase and thought after Driveclub it would be prudent to avoid it, and Danger Ball, which is basically playing Pong but played in 3D and with your face. We couldn’t play VR Luge because you have to lie down for that.

PSVR Worlds is well made but it’s hard to tell how much depth is actually there. It almost feels like a greatest hits package or a tech demo, so if they want it to be played consistently after launch they really will have to add more stuff. But maybe that isn’t the point.

Batman: Arkham VR

This was the nads, mate. Honestly. I don’t know what Bruce Wayne is complaining about, being Batman is really cool. I will expand on this separately as the game deserves a more in-depth look.