Developer Beat Games last week revealed a new ‘360 mode’ for their VR hit Beat Saber. Notes can now come from all around the player instead of just straight ahead. While it feels like a fun new way to play, it makes beat mapping considerably more complex. It’ll take innovative and creative mapping to really make 360 mode great, and for that, Beat Games should turn to its community.
Backed by Oculus Studios, Sanzaru Games’ next big title for Rift, Asgard’s Wrath, doesn’t have a release date yet, although at E3 this week I got a chance to try out the latest demo, which reveals more of the game’s story, dungeon crawling, light puzzles, and magical beast companions.
Against Gravity, the studio behind the popular social VR game Rec Room, has raised an addition $24 million in venture capital across two investment rounds.
The developer of Virtual Desktop, a Quest app which allows users to stream their PC desktop to the headset for use in VR, says that after the recent addition of a feature which allowed SteamVR games to be played on Quest, Oculus is forcing him to remove the feature.
This week at E3 2019, Oculus is showing their first ever demo of Lone Echo II, the anticipated followup to 2017’s Lone Echo. While the first game was an achievement in VR locomotion, interaction, and storytelling, Lone Echo II aims to up the ante with more dynamic gameplay, which starts with a new enemy that’s a more dynamic threat than anything seen in the original game.
Neat Corporation, the studio behind stealth VR game Budget Cuts (2018), unveiled a new VR project late last month called Garden of the Sea. The game, which puts you on a magical island where you tend to your garden, gather resources, and raise local fauna, is out now in Early Access.
LOW-FI is an upcoming VR game from the veteran indie VR developer behind TECHNOLUST (2016). The game presents a dark but plausible future where most of the population lives in a VR simulation, while at the same time the city’s poor inhabitants live unseen on the streets of the real-world. They are the ‘low-fi’.
At E3 today, Rebellion unveiled some fresh gameplay footage and revealed more details behind Sniper Elite VR, the critically acclaimed shooter’s first VR game. The studio also confirmed that PS Aim support is definitely coming to the PSVR version of the game in addition to support for PC VR headsets.
You may have noticed Oculus Quest is sold out practically everywhere, and while it’s not certain whether the company’s standalone 6DOF headset is selling famously, or is simply the result of artificially limited quantities to generate hype à la Nintendo, one thing is clear: Oculus has sold $5 million worth of Quest content in the first two weeks since its May 21st launch.
At E3 2019 this week, I got a chance to go hands-on with Phantom: Covert Ops, an Oculus Studios exclusive in development by nDreams. The game plays out over the course of a single night, and follows a special operative as they infiltrate a facility in a tactical kayak. While the kayak part sounds just a little ridiculous, it’s actually a genius bit of VR design which affords the game an immersive locomotion and interaction system that has huge potential.
First Contact Entertainment, the studio behind Firewall Zero Hour (2018) and Rom Extraction (2016), teased a new multiplayer shooter today called Solaris Offworld Combat.
Following mostly silence about the headset from the company after the reveal in January, HTC has confirmed that Vive Cosmos is due to launch in Q3. Vive Cosmos dev kits are now on their way to developers.
One of the most anticipated Oculus exclusives, Lone Echo II, has been delayed from 2019 to Q1 2020.
After years in development, VR stealth action game Espire 1 has a release date set for August. Developer Digital Lode confirmed that the game will be available on Rift, Vive, Index, PSVR, Windows VR, and Quest.
Survios today revealed the first public gameplay footage of their upcoming shooter The Walking Dead Onslaught, showing off some of the mechanics in action that aim to immerse players in the show’s zombie-infested world.
