Virtual Gaming

February 20, 2018 by Adam in Adam's Games

I finally cancelled my Humble Monthly subscription.  The monthly batch of indie games weren't being played very much as I'm spending all my gaming time in virtual reality.

I finished up Wilson's Heart, a campy horror puzzle game.  It's black and white and you do battle with traditional monsters like vampires and the like in a 40s insane asylum.  It was generally enjoyable, with some weirdly visceral moments in vr like cutting your prosthetic arm off with a saw.

I played and enjoyed Forgotten Realms, which was a cartoonish adventure game through caves and forests, fighting skeletons.  Then there was the first chapter of Call of the Starseed, another puzzle solving game - I've yet to start the sequel.  I got through all the missions of Robo Recall, which was extremely well polished and fun.

At the moment I'm slowly working my way through House of the Dying Sun, a space dogfighting game with great music and tension.  The kids are playing Job Simulator, which I occasionally jump in and mess around with.  Sam wanted me to get Hotdogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades, which is basically a gun range with lots of extras (such as a haunted house being chased around by evil hot dogs).  Yesterday I started up Arizona Sunshine, which is a fairly traditional zombie game.  Someone also made a mod of Doom 3 for vr.  Unfortunately the control scheme let you rotate with a joystick which made me nauseous for the afternoon.  

All-in-all it's increasingly obvious that virtual reality is going to be the next big thing for games.  There's a sense of immersion and emotional connection that just isn't present when playing traditional 2D games.  Hand controls in particular make a big difference, as everyone knows how to pick up, grab, and manipulate things.

There are some quirky benefits to vr.  My contacts give me good distance vision in one eye and close vision in the other.  Both work equally well at about 2 meters out, which is about where the focal point of the vr headset lies.  That essentially gives me better binocular vision at any distance in vr compared to real life.

There are still rough parts around the edges.  Some games give me headaches after playing for a long time.  Others have weird control systems or marginal graphics.  The first batch of vr games tend to be short and made by small indie groups trying to figure it out.  Still, once I spent some time in vr, it's hard to go back.