VR PING PONG PRO

More pong than ping

Perhaps playing table tennis in a garage wasn’t the sort of adventure you dreamed of when you first bought a PS VR headset, but such a game does make sense. It’s something a huge number of people already understand the rules of, swinging a PS Move controller in VR is more immersive than moving a stick with your thumb, and chances are you don’t have space for the table in your living room. The problem is, this game is up pong creek without a paddle.

The presentation immediately rings alarm bells. There are no player avatars, meaning that you and your opponent are floating ping pong paddles. While you can make things more exciting by pretending it’s a poltergeist sport, this is indicative of deeper problems, and we’re not just talking about the bizarre fact that you need two PS Move controllers to get past the title screen even though you can play with just one.

The biggest problem is that unless you move with a speed that can only be captured with time-lapse photography over a series of days, the game is often unable to accurately judge the power of your swing. You can adjust the position and angle of your paddle, but not the motion sensitivity. This kills the experience, making things much harder than they should be.

Well-intentioned training minigames don’t really help, and nor does the multiplayer mode. 1 There’s always something in the environment that seems more interesting than the game itself, such as a Japanese garden you can’t explore, or arcade cabinets that you can’t use. 2 Give the table tennis experience this game serves up a miss. Luke Kemp

Nobody’s playing online at time of writing, and we’ll be surprised if this changes significantly. Even the garage has an old CRT TV that, with some luck, might still work.