Valkyrie isn't on rails at all, the demo is a single player mission but the full game is primarily multiplayer where you're free to roam the map.
Good to hear, because to be honest I did feel quite constricted playing the demo, myself. I think the sense of being out there in the vastnesss of space, where you can look all around you and feel so small within your craft, makes it extra-frustrating to be directed along a more-or-less fixed path.
I'm still not sure whether it'll give me what I want from a space game, if the increased freedom in multiplayer is kind of negated a bit by your time constantly being taken up in frantic battles. VR makes the urge to just patiently explore the awe-inspiring sights out there in the galaxy so so strong, I'd end up getting annoyed by constantly being interrupted by someone initiating a dogfight with me... I'm just trying to have a picnic parked here watching this black hole eat a dying star, leave me alone FFS!
Someone please give me a heads-up the moment something like that becomes available for PS VR. I've been thinking about how amazing a virtual planetarium would be, where you would walk into the theatre space as you would in a real one, but then as you're being educated about our solar system and beyond, you could actually float up into the ceiling constellation projection and fly through the void to visit planets, stars, etc. yourself, unrestricted. You wouldn't necessarily have to create procedurally-generated terrain for the entire planets, only a sizeable fixed vista, maybe by cleverly directing your descent to just one section of the planet, and have that section load up as you burn through the atmosphere in blinding fire.
One of the very best things for me about VR, when done to the quality this headset does it (which, believe me, is a real bargain if you already have a PS4 - the other 'premium' headsets most certainly do not put this to shame, in fact there's hardly anything in it once you stop wanking about the specs and just experience the experiences on offer), is that it breathes extraordinary new life into extremely simple gameplay constructs. As Mac says, the VR poo-pooers frankly haven't got a clue, because there are so many ideas swirling around my head now about games which could never even hope to work outside of VR, but would be utterly compelling within that space. It can take already winning game genres (3D platformers, shooters, puzzlers, racers, rhythmers, point & click adventures, god sims...) and instantly give them a thrilling new dimension, but it can also invent countless genres of its own. It's an entire new videogame platform (well, not that 'new' of a concept per se, but you know what I mean).
And I'm glad other people are spooked by the
Kitchen demo - I did enjoy it, I just find it a tad too silly to have any visceral fear reaction. It made me giggle, but I want the
Resi 7 to make me shit my pants with a sense of nopey dread, rather than loads of jumpy surprise bits which have you laughing after too long. Hopefully there's at least a sequence in the full game where the classic
Resi guilty-pleasure bad B-horror flick acting gives way to a real oppressive, claustrophobic, psychologically-troubling atmosphere more akin to
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
The Thing or
The Shining or something. The original
Silent Hills would be so disturbing if brought up to date in VR; that slowly creeping feeling of vague wrongness and evil hanging in the misty air being the ultimate 'baddie'.
On another note, I'm getting so much out of playing non-VR games in Cinema Mode as well. That slightly-blurry old-style big screen film projection effect really does something for me deep down, I kind of want a developer to fully embrace it and add an optional film grain filter just for those playing in Cinema Mode. Seriously try it, and if you remember those golden days of proper filmreel projection, you too might get the same warm vibe.
Rocket League Rumble is phenomenal enough fun the standard way, but it ups the ante when played on a virtual IMAX screen, for me. I think there just
has to be a
Rocket League VR, it would be simply incredible - imagine driving forward on an attacking run while simultaneously tracking the flight of the ball above and behind you with your head, as natural as anything, letting you judge the perfect moment to use that power-up you've been saving... pure magic. I'm having dreams about shit like this.
By the way, I've found the ultimate motion sickness acid test:
Windlands, with all comfort options turned off. I passed all the tests I set my body, thankfully, but there's definitely a little something there going on in the background; it's a sort of momentary dizzy-inside-the-head sensation, which I can easily imagive could travel to the stomach quicker for some than it does others, giving you less time to process it. I don't think I could do it at full intensity for hours on end, I don't know. Nice game though, it's a really visceral effect grappling and swinging from tree to tree - perhaps the most disorienting aspect is not that, happening at full speed, but just sharply changing your viewing direction with the right stick in combination with head-tracking. It's a very strange, slightly confusing feeling.
Shouts out to
Thumper again, which continues to amaze me and always leaves me itching for more (I've spent the most playtime by far on that), the cute-as-fuck animaton
Invasion!, and the absolutely wonderfully-realised god sim
Tethered. Was mightily impressed by the presentation of
Super Hyper Cube too, although I'm not sure the full game would warrant a £25 outlay, as you kind of know what you're getting for the rest of the levels. As the prices come down once launch fever settles, I'll start hoovering up loads of these more mini-gamey things, such as
Headmaster.
Now that I feel the disorientation that leads to motion sickness for many is probably just something you simply need to push through with until you've got your 'VR legs', the sky's the limit in terms of what can be done in VR. I now know I don't necessarily
have to be inside a cockpit or anything like that, it's more a case of how well the devs implement your movement through the environment.
You defo getting one then, Macphisto?
