PLAYSTATION VR WORLDS
Variety is the spice of your new virtual life
Bought PS VR? Then there’s an alien in your house right now. Beautiful, compelling, yet totally strange, Sony’s virtual reality headset remains a bit of an unknown quantity. So how do you get acquainted? (You can’t exactly coax it out of the cupboard, like it’s E.T., with a trail of sweets.) The answer is PlayStation VR Worlds. Containing five immersive experiences, it’s a mix of first-person, bite-size treats that illuminates the magic of PS VR for all to see. From the non-interactive but mesmeric deep sea dive of Ocean Descent to The London Heist’s frantic sharpshooting, there’s something for every ability level. VR Worlds catapults you through space in Scavengers Odyssey, turns you into an extreme sports pro in VR Luge, and insists your face is the paddle in Danger Ball’s futuristic Pong.
PUKE SKYWALKER
What it may also do, however, is make you feel ill. Everyone reacts differently to VR, so your mileage may vary on sci-fi adventure Scavengers Odyssey’s chunder bus. Personally, I receive a round ticket to Vomiton. The 3D movement is the culprit – you leap a spider-legged walker between asteroids and through freighters, along walls, upside-down on ceilings, and switch between it all at speed. Despite the field of view restricting during flips to reduce motion sickness, I remove the headset multiple times in the six-mission, hour-long slog. Blurry visuals, shonky shooting, boring bug baddies and a weak narrative all add up to below average.
VR Luge (thorough)fares better. Bobsledding down busy highways at extreme speeds, tilting your head to hug corners and slide under big rigs, soaring over bumps: it’s roller coasteresque, stomach-swooping stuff… and totally nausea-free.
In Tour mode, you must nail all four tracks in under a minute and a half total (checkpoints and completions gifting bonus seconds); in Time Trial, you race your ghost. Leaderboards are an incentive to perfect runs. Hitting obstacles reduces speed, each track providing hazards to dodge – but hitboxes on cars and falling debris are hard to judge, and the four runs are very similar. VR Luge is also the least immersive title, your seated position jarring with the horizontal faux-body on screen, and the inability to look around doing little to fully ground you.
HEIST TAKES
These two wobblier wonders of the Worlds are eclipsed by the brilliance of the others. Half-hour Cockney gangster sim The London Heist is worth multiple playthroughs; PS VR’s ability to put two dangerous, diamond-nabbing geezers right next to you in the same smoky
“SOARING THROUGH VR LUGE IS ROLLERCOASTER-ESQUE, STOMACH-SWOOPING STUFF.”
pub or grotty lockup never gets old. Ditto manually slamming mags into guns and shooting out tyres in the car chase scene (gawping as goons’ flaming bodies fly in slo-mo past your window), wincing when a punch comes at you, or lighting and puffing on a cigar with PS Move controllers. (You’ll need those motion-tracking wands if you want the full experience as the majority of the jewel theft scene’s absent when using a pad.) Three endings and creative shooting ranges to compete in mean returning to the scene of the crime is a regular occurrence.
There’s tons of replayability, too, in Danger Ball. You move a paddle by looking around, batting balls back to your various AI foes in lightningfast rallies. Colossus is a huge opponent that must be slowly broken down, Twins are doubly difficult to sneak the ball past, and Tornado puts tricky spins on the ball – but with subtle flicks of your head and clever paddle placement, you can easily do the same to dominate every single foe.
And even if you only try Ocean Descent’s three dives a handful of times to coo at angelfish or shiver as a shark rips the front of the diving cage apart (leaving you feeling genuinely vulnerable), the sense of being somewhere fantastical is worth it. That’s before you put the headset on friends and watch their mouths fall open.
It’s what makes VR Worlds an essential buy. With a mix of games and experiences to try in one convenient, consummate and lasting package, it’s virtual reality demystified in style.