PC Gamer Dec 04, 2015
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Virtual reality is almost here
Most of the PC Gamer staff (one or two grumps excluded) are on board with the idea that virtual reality is going to be a thing. Maybe it won't explode into the mainstream right away—it could take one or two more iterations—but using Oculus Rift and HTC Vive prototypes has convinced us that we want to experience what game creators are going to do with VR. The feeling of being somewhere else is so captivating—sometimes even unsettling—that it's hard to imagine the tech won't stick around, at least with enthusiasts.
We've strapped a bunch of VR games to our heads at events like PAX and E3 over the past few years, and we've also tried existing games and demos with our Oculus Rift dev kits. This is a list of our favorite games and experiences so far, which we'll update as the consumer hardware is released and beyond.
Admittedly, not many can put this advice to use just yet—there are developer's kits out there, as well as Oculus' smartphone-powered Gear VR headset, but the big PC-focused VR systems haven't officially released. The Oculus Rift is coming early next year, and the Valve-backed HTC Vive is supposedly getting a limited release before the end of the year. For now, though, it's a sampling of the cool stuff to look forward to, including a couple games that aren't out yet, but that we've played enough of to give a nod to (for now). Note that many of these games may get HTC Vive support down the line, if they don't already have some form of it.
Elite: Dangerous
Developer:
Frontier Developments
Link: www.elitedangerous.com
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK2, HTC Vive (Horizon beta)
The first commercial game to offer native VR support, Elite: Dangerous is still the best example of the power of the tech to date. Strapped into the detailed cockpits of its ships, from bulky battleships to nimble fighters, dogfights are intense. It’s like being in the best Star Wars space battle ever. It’s also practical, because you can move your head to track enemy ships as they scream past you. Look down and you’ll see your pilot’s body, and their hands will mirror your own if you’re playing with a flight stick. You can even stand up and walk around your cockpit, providing it’s big enough to do so and you have a DK2 with positional tracking enabled.
It’s not all about the thrill of dogfighting, though. Elite is impressive in VR no matter what you’re doing: from docking to gazing slack-jawed at stunning cosmic scenery. You’ll never forget the first time you fly into a planet’s ring system. Millions of slowly spinning space-rocks fill your field of view, and you can’t help but just stop and stare. The galaxy is beautiful on a regular 2D screen, but in VR it feels truly massive. Jumping to other stars and docking feel more intimate and intense too when they’re happening right 01 in front of your nose. When you jump to another system, you feel yourself leaning back in your chair as the stars streak past your windows.
It helps that Elite’s flying model is so impressively detailed. The ships feel weighty and realistic, and how they handle varies between models. Flying a Hauler, a chunky entry level trading ship, is a very different experience to buzzing around in an Eagle fighter or a Cobra. In VR, this distinctiveness is even more pronounced. Make sure you play with headphones, because the sound design really helps sell the illusion: especially the engine sounds.
Elite: Dangerous is something of a pioneer when it comes to making comfortable, convincing virtual reality experiences. Many other games have included native support for VR headsets since its release, but none have surpassed it. It’s a rare example of a game that you’ll actually want to play for long periods of time in VR, rather than just as a novelty. Watch out, though: it’s a game where you spend a lot of time spinning to figure out where you’re going, and coming back to the static, non-rotating real world can have a strange dizzying effect if you’ve been playing for a long time. - Andy Kelly
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Developer:
SCS Software
Link: Official site
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK1, DK2
Virtual reality can whisk you away to fantastic, unimaginable worlds, but it’s testament to the power of the tech that even driving a truck down a German motorway can be a mindblowing experience. Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a genuinely brilliant game, and has native support for the Oculus Rift. The game is, as the title suggests, about driving trucks around Europe, delivering goods between depots, and obeying the rules of the road. It’s oddly hypnotising, despite the seemingly boring subject matter, and a polished, well-made game to boot.
And the VR support is fantastic. The detailed cockpits of the trucks, which are all replicas of real-world heavy goods vehicles, give you a powerful feeling of being in a physical, three-dimensional space. You can look up and see the sky moving past through the sunroof, or lean out of the window if you need to squeeze through a tight spot with an oversized load.
And wait until you get caught in your first storm. The way the raindrops streak across your side windows as you pick up speed is a tiny little effect, but an effective one. It makes you really feel like you’re in motion. Small things like this can be just as important as the big stuff when it comes to making a VR experience feel convincing. The illusion is even stronger if you play the game with a force feedback steering wheel, though it’s not essential to enjoy the simulation: just a nice optional extra.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 boasts an enormous recreation of Europe, including Britain and Scandinavia, but the majority of it is made up of grey motorways. Still, there is some impressive scenery out there in the game world, which looks extra cool in VR. Norway is the prettiest location of the lot, with picturesque valleys, lakes, and forests to make your drive a more interesting. In a strange way, the fact it’s so grounded in reality makes it somehow more convincing than a game like Elite, because you don’t have to use your imagination as much. You might scoff at the very idea of playing a truck simulator, never mind in VR, but seriously – give this one a chance. Andy Kelly
Discovering Space
Developer:
SiPhi
Link: Rift Arcade
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK2
This game, made by a single developer in their spare time, lets you explore our own solar system in a ship that can fly at many times the speed of light. This means you can hop from Earth to Jupiter in just a few seconds. The distances are realistic, giving you a clear, and quite humbling, picture of where the planets are relative to each other. When you approach one it feels massive, dwarfing your ship. There’s nothing else to do in Discovering Space but, well, discover, so you might want to stick with Elite: Dangerous if it’s combat and excitement you’re after. But if you have any interest in astronomy or just want to feel insignificant, it’s a must play.
Actually traveling these great distances by yourself gives you a vivid picture of the size of our solar system. It’s such a powerful experience that they should use it in school classrooms to teach kids about space. Discovering Space is widely considered by the VR community to be one of the best Oculus Rift experiences available, and the best thing is it’s completely free. You can even choose your ship in an early build titled ‘Solar System Explorer’ (Google it), including Han Solo’s pride and joy, the Millennium Falcon. - Andy Kelly
UE4 Rollercoaster
Developer:
Teddy
Link: Oculus Share
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK1, DK2
Epic’s Unreal 4 Engine comes with tools designed to make VR development easier, and a few demos have already emerged. This one, which takes you on a rollercoaster ride through a massive, realistic-looking living room, is a great showcase for the DK2’s positional tracking. When you reach the top of the coaster, you can look over the edge and feel your stomach lurch as you realise just how high up you are.
The room is actually a demo created by Epic to show off UE4’s realistic rendering tech, into which developer Teddy has inserted a rollercoaster. There’s a moment when the ride takes you through the handle of an oversized coffee mug, with only an inch of space above you, and you feel yourself instinctively ducking when you go through it. Unreal Engine 4 boasts some beautifully natural lighting, which is a big part of making a VR experience feel real. Shadow and light can make or break a VR game, because the brain is so good at detecting when either are fake.
There are a lot of rollercoaster demos for the Rift, but this is one of the best. They’re an accessible way to give non-gamers a taste of the technology, and it’s a real ‘wow’ moment when one tricks your brain into thinking you’re actually speeding down a track. These feelings aren’t always there when you play VR games because your mind adjusts, but it’s when they catch you off guard, and you totally believe what’s happening is real, that you realise why the technology is so exciting. - Andy Kelly
Minecraft
Developer:
Mojang
Link: Minecrift (mod)
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK1, DK2
Speaking about his workto bring official Oculus Rift support to Minecraft (well, the Windows 10 version, anyway), John Carmack said he has memories of "being inside" the game, as if it was something that really happened to him. That's a really fascinating prospect: that after being present in a virtual world for long enough, it can be internalized as a real experience.
Minecraft's openness and easy-to-read world seem to make it ripe for creating that sense of presence, which is interesting, as it demonstrates that we don't need photorealistic graphics in VR to accept what's around us. We've noted the same thing in other VR games: sometimes, stylized graphics keep us from noticing incongruities that would be distracting if the graphics strove for realism and just missed.
The potential for Minecraft in VR was acted on very quickly—the most recommended mod is the Minecrift mod, which added unofficial Oculus Rift support way back when (with support for other platforms, though I don't have an HTC Vive to test it with). Now Oculus is working with Microsoft to create an official version, and that a person as influential and experienced as John Carmack said he would've criedif he didn't get to make it happen is a strong endorsement. Oh, and Minecraft itself is great, but that doesn't really need to be said at this point. - Tyler Wilde
Don't Let Go
Developer:
Skydome Studios
Link: Oculus Share
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK1, DK2
This might not be the most lavish demo in terms of production values, but it’s still surprisingly effective. It sees you sitting in a chair in an office, and you have to keep two fingers on your keyboard’s control keys. Let go and it’s game over. As you sit there, virtual arms outstretched, set-pieces are thrown at you with the intent of making you release the keys. You’ll be surprised how hard it is to keep them there.
A swarm of bees surrounds you; a velociraptor pads into the room and breathes down your neck; knives fall from the ceiling and slam into the desk inches from your hands; the lights dim and a spider crawls up your arm. Even with the low-quality models, each event does a good job of making you feel exposed and uncomfortable. The demo uses positional tracking, so when you lean back in your chair, or forward across the desk, your virtual body does the same. A strange sensation.
Don’t Let Go is a wonderful example of the VR demo scene that’s been active since the very first development kit was released to the public. Some of the best VR games you can play now are the creations of hobbyists. - Andy Kelly
Alien: Isolation
Developer:
The Creative Assembly
Link: Official site
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK2
If you’ve ever watched Alien and wished you were there on the Nostromo being chased by H.R. Giger’s most famous creation, then you’re in luck. Alien: Isolation doesn’t officially support Oculus Rift, but the functionality is in the game – you just have to know how to activate it. In the game’s data folder, edit the line in the ENGINE_SETTINGS.XML file under ‘stereo mode’ to say on rather than off. It’s very much an experimental feature, but it works well enough. Getting it working isn’t the hard part, though. The hard part is playing the game, because it’s beyond terrifying. If you thought the game was scary on your monitor, wait until you’re actually there, inches from a hissing xenomorph.
Isolation is a survival horror game based on Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 sci-fi horror, and it perfectly replicates the film’s slow, almost unbearable tension. You’re dropped into a room, or a series of rooms, with Giger’s alien. It stomps around, hunting for you, behaving unpredictably, and you have to sneak around it to find keys, unlock doors, access computers, and other simple tasks. When you play with the Rift, the darkness of the stricken Sevastopol station feels somehow even darker. The feeling of claustrophobia, and the fear that the creature will catch you, is so intense that it’s almost unplayable at 07 times—but, equally, totally exhilarating.
It’s also an opportunity for fans of the movie to explore its locations up close. One mission takes place aboard the derelict ship where the crew of the Nostromo sealed their fates, and it looks incredible. Gazing up at the famous ‘pilot’, you feel like you’re there on set. Even if you can’t stomach sharing a room with the alien, it’s worth trying Isolation in VR just to experience this legendary sci-fi set as an explorable 3D space. Horror games are an obvious choice for VR developers. The tech is perfect for making you feel claustrophobic, which is an important reaction when it comes to making an effective horror game. But it won’t be for everyone, and even people who can deal with scary games will find themselves tested when they’re plugged into an Oculus Rift. The Creative Assembly kept Isolation’s VR mode hidden away, but they should have polished it up and made it a real feature. - Andy Kelly
Spirited Away: Boiler Room
Developer:
Nick Pittom
Link: Oculus Share
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK1, DK2
VR developer Nick Pittom has recreated part of the otherworldly bath house from Studio Ghibli’s magnificent animated film Spirited Away. His demo lets you explore Kamaji’s boiler room, complete with tiny soot sprites dashing back and forth with lumps of coal to keep the fire stoked. It’s a surreal feeling to step inside an environment you’re so used to seeing on a 2D screen. Kamaji looks massive as he works the bellows, and you almost feel as intimidated as Chihiro did in the film.
Standing in the middle of the room and looking down to see the soot sprites swarming around your feet really sells it, and Pittom has captured the 10 08 look, sound, and feel of Miyazaki’s film perfectly. He’s also created a VR demo of the bus stop scene from Ghibli’s equally fantastic My Neighbour Totoro. Even though the textures are hand-painted and stylised, the effect is still convincing: proof that photorealism isn’t always the key to a great virtual reality experience.
Exploring places from film and TV is one of the most exciting uses of VR. Other places you can explore virtually include the bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek and The Wall from Game of Thrones. - Andy Kelly
War Thunder
Developer:
Gaijin Entertainment
Link: Steam store
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK1, DK2
Cockpit simulations are well-suited to seated VR experiences for the obvious reason that you're sitting in both of them. Ah, sitting, what a classic! War Thunder, which we quite liked when we reviewed itearlier this year, fits that bill and is a pretty good air combat sim (well, there are tanks, too, but the planes are where it's at).
There's an arcade mode for simpler action, and a more realistic mode which takes some better piloting skills. Whichever mode you play in, so long as you're willing to sort out the befuddling currencies and unlocks, flying up and through the clouds can be magnificent—and even better with the built-in Oculus Rift support. Or, like me, you can fly directly into the ground. It's still pretty cool. - Tyler Wilde
Ocean Rift
Developer:
Llyr ap Cenydd
Link: Oculus Share
Compatibility: Oculus Rift DK2
You’ve explored the depths of space in Elite and Discovering Space, now try the depths of the ocean. This has been a favourite of the VR community for a while now, letting you swim around a realistic-looking ocean that’s filled with exotic sea life. As you bob around in the relaxing blue waters you’ll see giant eels and shoals of fish swim by. But don’t go too deep, because in the shadowy depths you’ll find a roaming prehistoric shark that will eat you, ending the demo.
This is one of the most impressive demos out there for creating a realistic feeling of being in a 3D space. As the fish swim by, you get a genuine sense of them passing you. Swim up to the eel and its face looms towards you, making you flinch. Bubbles, wobbling seaweed, and great sound design play their part in creating an atmosphere, too.
It’s only a demo at the moment, though. The full version of Ocean Rift will feature different habitats including coral reefs, lagoons, and Arctic oceans, and will also have new animals to swim with including great white sharks, sea snakes, turtles, humpback whales, dolphins, octopus, jellyfish, and extinct sea creatures. The animals in Ocean Rift are all procedurally animated, which gives them a wide range of movement and a greater sense of realism. - Andy Kelly
Job Simulator
Developer:
Owlchemy Labs
Link: Official site
Compatibility: HTC Vive
Genuinely funny games are rare. Comedy is tough, and good slapstick comedy is almost unheard of in gaming. That’s probably going to change in VR, where physics and the ability to manipulate objects lend themselves perfectly to physical comedy. What we’ve played of Job Simulatoralready excels at this. It’s one of the most fun (and funniest) VR games we’ve played yet, on both SteamVR and the Oculus Rift.
Job Simulator is set in a far future where robots have taken over all work, and thus preserved the experience of human jobs as simulations. It’s a silly meta excuse to craft a number of different jobs, and that sense of humor pervades each job experience. The ones we’ve played, cooking and sitting in an office cubicle, demonstrate the comedic potential of VR, as well as how much mileage you can get out of a dense space. The office cubicle is packed with goodies to find and interact with, from donuts and a coffee machine to a PC (with a working game playable on its chunky CRT monitor), books, a phone, and much more. You can interact with everything, bend down to find secrets under your desk, and make a mess by tossing objects around. Some light objectives will add reasons to keep playing on top of the inherent fun of messing around in each simulation sandbox.
We can’t recommend it on extensive experience yet, but we’ll be playing more as soon as an HTC Vive is on our heads. As of now, it’s a great way to demo VR’s potential. - Wes Fenlon
Eve Valkyrie
Developer: CCP
Link: Official site
Compatibility: Oculus Rift
CCP is known for Eve Online’s space accounting (and massive, incredible player wars), but its first VR game zooms in on the Eve universe, putting you in the cockpit of a small fighter with a controller (or presumably flightstick) to control throttle, turning, and most weapon functions. Even on an early Oculus Rift prototype, it was a little creepy to look down and see my borrowed legs and hands.
In those early Valkyrie prototypes I played, missiles were locked on by looking at enemy ships through the HUD to encourage players to look around. That's probably still the case, but more recently at PAX Prime this year, I played a newer escort mission using just forward firing guns—a little trickier, but nailing ships felt great. The best part, though, was effortlessly gliding into formation with my squadron. It felt weirdly easy to maneuver gracefully, while also looking around and admiring all the space stuff around me.
I expect we’ll see lots of flight and space sims made for VR, and so far Valkyrie has been a lot of fun. I've played it about four or five times at various conventions, and I'm convinced I'll be playing it much more when the Oculus Rift is out. - Tyler Wilde
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