Since you can't freely wander, you're pretty much always sailing straight toward puzzle solutions. This sucks for two reasons: first, because it breaks the realism when your hand just magically goes through object after object and second, because the puzzles very quickly boil down to "warp to an exact spot, look for flashing thing, manipulate it, repeat." Instead, you'll regularly see a bunch of surfaces and objects in front of you, but you can only interact with the glowing ones (and usually, only one thing glows per scene). Every spot you warp to is littered with random junk, and, in some cases, the objects you see (bottles, drawers) can all be touched, grabbed, or knocked over. That's clever, as are a few moments in a painting-related puzzle where you pull your new, mechanical heart out of your chest to unleash super powers.īut the developers at Twisted Pixel fail the first major rule of VR: If your hands can reach a virtual object and you cannot "touch" or interact with it, then the realism is broken. You can reach up to these and just yank them out. For example, look at a mirror early on and you'll see giant bolts in your forehead. Use and combine objects to solve little puzzles, step-by-step. In some ways, this is comparable to a point-and-click game of old, where your view is limited to a single vantage point at any given time (and is littered with objects that you can interact with). You can only move to the exact places that the game developer permits, and these movement options usually change or disappear once you complete an objective. Rather, I'm interested in exploring just how this week's new game, which once looked quite promising, slammed to Earth with melted wings on its back-and what that says for the current state of VR gaming.
I'm not just here to inform you that Oculus's high-budget, high-production-value attempt missed the mark-especially for those readers who don't own an Oculus and high-end PC to match. Thus, the hunt's still on-and the folks at Oculus have been crowing for months about how their upcoming game Wilson's Heart would do the trick.
However, that's a bit of a cheat, since it launched primarily for normal TV displays with an optional, albeit awesome, VR mode attached. The closest answer up until now remains the incredible and memorable Resident Evil 7. When will a VR system finally get an honest-to-goodness adventure? Early adopters and curious onlookers continue to ask this question, wondering when they'll get their own unique, hours-upon-hours mix of story, puzzles, battles, and thrills. Platform: Windows PC (requires Oculus Rift headset, Oculus Touch controllers)