About a month ago, Sony released their version of virtual reality: PlayStation VR. In the spirit of being a complete PlayStation fan boy, I went out and purchased one on launch day. I had been tempted to preorder one, but never did in fear of getting motion sick from it and having my head not be able to handle it. But after PlayStation came to my hometown on the Road To Greatness Tour - that’s a story for another time - I got to try out VR, and I absolutely loved it. So I set out launch day in search of every store to find one. Finally at Best Buy, I found exactly what I was looking for: a PlayStation VR launch bundle.
After having about a month to experience VR, I finally have a better opinion of it. Although VR is a completely new way to play, it is just like any other video game console out there: it’s super exciting for the first few days, but then there’s that burnout of nothing to play and oversaturation of play time. There are still a lot of games I want to play, but I’m in college, and I can’t afford them all. After spending the first few days playing VR every chance I had, I lost the drive to play more. I had experienced what I wanted to, and I felt satisfied. Life also picked up so I didn’t have as much time to play, and I went into a lull of VR playtime.
Don’t get me wrong, VR is amazing. Once you experience it and you are there, in that world created by the developers, you are 100% there. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. It is amazing to be put in different worlds, and get the sensations of that world. Rush of Blood places you on a roller-coaster-minecart-like-track that requires you to evade oncoming obstacles and shoot targets along with approaching enemies. Occasionally, Rush of Blood will embrace the roller coaster aspect, sending you down hills and around curves at a fast pace. When this happens, you literally get the feeling in your gut of being on a roller coaster. All of my friends who have played it have gotten the feeling. Rush of Blood, along with some other games like Batman Arkham VR, allow for serious jump scares. When you turn your head to look in one direction, and then look back, something new is in its place, and it scares the crap out of you. But again, this is all apart of being in the world of the game and getting to fully experience something new.
PlayStation VR is all about new experiences. There are a lot of “games”, but these “games” are moreso little experiences that are fun to play around with. Job Simulator, VR Luge, and Batman Arkham VR are all experiences that are fun to play around with for a bit, but once you get through the experience it becomes stale and not as fun. Given, that applies with all games, but with VR they’re all shorter and offer little to no replayability. However, one of the best parts of VR is getting to watch your friends play and experience these games. It is so incredibly fun to watch your friends and family experience VR for the first time. Whether they’re shooting up vehicles in London Heist, screaming at scares in Rush of Blood, or defusing bombs in Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, it has been one of my favorite parts of owning VR. The only problem with having VR at college is that I don’t want to be a demo station for everyone and anyone to come in my room and try it out. It’s an expensive piece of equipment, and not one that I want open up to whoever, whenever. I hold my VR very close to my heart, and I want people I hold close to be the ones to experience, not randomly people I hardly know. But for those people I do know, I can’t wait to watch them play, and watch them experience VR. It is so much fun, and it is such a cool experience.
Having VR in the dorm room is a challenge though. Besides the strangers factor, space is limited, obviously, and that sometimes makes for a challenge to play games that require a lot of movement. Job Simulator is a super fun game, and it's one that’s just as fun to watch being played as it is to play it, but it’s almost impossible to play in the dorm room given the space limitations. Another fear I have is being unable to hear when something is happening - someone knocking on my door, a friend entering my room, or missing a phone call. Your ability to see your surroundings have already been taken away, and plugging headphones in to get the “full” experience is a scary commitment for me in the dorm. I want to be engrossed in the game I’m playing, but I also want to make sure I can still be aware of what is happening around me. So playing VR in the dorm puts me in a very cautious, self-aware position, as I also want to make sure I don’t hit anything while playing. This all makes me uncomfortable when playing VR, and as a result my drive to play isn’t as strong due to these factors.
However, despite the paragraph above, I don’t have bad things to say about VR itself. All of those issues comes from my current personal situation, and that in no way affects how great the hardware itself is. Yes, it isn’t the most technically advanced or best looking graphically, but it’s very affordable compared to the other VR units on the market and it sure beats the cheap, tacky cardboard shells you place your phone in. There are times when everything seems blurry when playing VR, but usually that isn’t anything cleaning the lenses and adjusting the headset can’t fix. And although the graphics don’t go above and beyond, they are still good and don’t interfere with my experience with games. Additionally, some people have reported that the tracking of games get off, but in all the experience I’ve personally had playing it and watching my friends play it, I’ve only had anything random like that happen once. Rarely ever have I had any problems or odd experiences with VR, and I have yet to experience a game that is completely broken. Sure, some games aren’t as fun or don’t look as good, but I’ve never had a game be just plain broken. Even games I didn’t expect to be good or fun, such as Tumble VR, were fun to mess around with and I enjoyed my time with them. Every game is worth looking into, especially if it’s on the demo disk. It was such a joy to receive a demo disk with a new console again, and get to see what great games VR has to offer that I wouldn’t normally explore.
