Steam’s Summer sale has been in full swing for a few days, but now it’s Oculus’ turn to offer up big savings on VR titles for both the Rift Platform and Oculus Go. Sorry folks, no Quest Summer Sale yet!
As the studio behind the excellent PlayStation VR Worlds, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s London Studio has been at the forefront of VR game design since before PSVR even shipped back in 2016. With their latest title, Blood & Truth, the studio sought to deliver its first full-length VR title, and the result is an impressive action-filled journey that delivers the most convincing virtual characters we’ve seen in a VR game to date. To learn from the studio’s approach to VR game design—and to get a glimpse at the artwork that drove and resulted from the game’s development—we spoke with Stuart Whyte, Director of VR Product Development, and Anthony Filice, Art Director, both from Sony’s London Studio.
VR Ping Pong Pro is the upcoming sequel to the 2016 ping pong simulator VR Ping Pong. However now the studio is bringing their 1v1 ping pong game to PSVR as well in addition to HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Survios, the studio behind Raw Data (2017) and Creed: Rise to Glory (2018), is getting ready to release their next big VR soon, a pirate-themed nautical combat game called Battlewake. The game is set to launch on Rift, Vive, and PSVR sometime this summer.
We were a bit disappointed when we found out that you couldn’t properly web-sling as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in MARVEL Powers United VR (2018) last year, but it appears Sony has heard our collective groans and done something about it in their latest VR activation for the new film Spider-Man: Far From Home.
The Valve Index headset is more expensive and less user-friendly than its nearest competitor, the Oculus Rift S, but the experience it offers is the clear choice for VR enthusiasts who want to maximize immersion. Read on for our full Valve Index review to learn if this headset is for you.
Valve released a VR game recently that aims to not only put you through your paces with your brand new Valve Index controllers, but directly in the familiar halls of Portal’s Aperture Science labs. If you have an Oculus Rift and are curious to try it out though, developing studio Cloudhead Games has created a keybinding to let Touch users have a go too.
Borderlands 2 VR (2018) landed on PSVR late last year, although Gearbox Software made it clear at launch that it was going to be a timed exclusive, with a minimum of five months given to PlayStation. Now, it appears a Windows PC version of the game has just gotten its ESRB rating, putting it one step closer to PC VR headset users.
Space Junkies (2019), the zero-G VR shooter from Ubisoft, just got its ‘Episode 3’ update, which adds a host of fresh content to the game on all supported platforms, including PC VR headsets and PSVR.
Survios, the studio behind a host of VR games such as Raw Data (2017), Sprint Vector (2018) and Creed: Rise to Glory (2018), has been a stalwart pioneer of the medium since the birth of consumer VR. Now, Survios CTO and co-founder Alex Silkin is set to share his experience by teaching a full semester course on expert-level Unreal Engine VR development. Plenty of high-profile industry pros will also be available too as mentors.
Got a PSVR and a PS Plus account? Then you’ll be able to play the tactical team shooter Firewall Zero Hour (2018) for free this weekend, going from June 28th to 30th.
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has officially released DisplayPort 2.0, representing the first major update to the audio/video standard since the entrance of DisplayPort 1.4 back in March 2016.
Gearbox Software today released their latest VR game, a title from magic/comedy duo Penn & Teller called Penn & Teller VR: Frankly Unfair, Unkind, Unnecessary, & Underhanded. The game is available on Quest, Rift and Vive starting today, with a version for PSVR coming in July.
While it’s long been technically possible to play Oculus exclusive games on Vive and other SteamVR headsets thanks to an unofficial mod called ‘Revive’, the actual experience has always been decidedly clunky due to the significant differences between controller inputs. With Valve’s new Index controllers—which offer input-parity with Oculus Touch controllers—Oculus exclusive content finally feels truly playable with minimal compromise.
