Though a release date still hasn’t been announced, lightsaber VR rhythm game Beat Saber was confirmed earlier this year to be coming to PSVR. Now PlayStation Underground, Sony’s official video series, is showing the game in action on the system, including a full playthrough of the PlayStation VR exclusive song, ‘Kumquat’.
In the video above, the PlayStation Underground folks play a few songs of Beat Saber on PSVR, offering a good look at how the game plays on PlayStation VR. So far the studio has announced that the PSVR version will have at least one platform exclusive song, ‘Kumquat’, which is played in full in the video. (Though I doubt it will stay exclusive for long, once custom song makers get their hands on its beat layout).
Beat Saber has been quite the hit on PC VR headsets where it quickly hit the 100K milestone despite still being in Early Access. PSVR owners have naturally been eyeing the game, and got good news back in June when the studio behind the title, Beat Games, announced that it’s headed to PlayStation VR.
Last month at E3 we got our first hands-on time with Beat Saber on PSVR and found a promising adaptation generally works well, but isn’t immune from issues caused by the headset’s limited tracking area:
At the game’s first showing on PSVR, here at E3 2018, Beat Saber made a promising impression. While the Move controllers don’t feel quite as responsive as the controllers on the major PC VR headsets, but tracking on PSVR was solid enough that I could handle the game’s tracks on the highest level of difficulty without much frustration. The only major issues came when my controllers exited the camera’s narrow field of view, which happened at one point in a song when I had to duck under one of the obstacles and hit notes while ducking, which ended up leaving my hands outside of the tracking cone, and unable to hit the notes.
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Beyond the tracking limitations, the Move controllers physically feel quite nice for Beat Saber, considering that the shape of the handle is very hilt-like and easy to hold without accidentally squeezing the trigger during play. The haptics in the Move controller is also well suited to the game, offering a strong and satisfying vibration when hitting each note.
In the PlayStation Underground video above, it can be seen that the user is playing from a seated position (which causes trouble with the ducking obstacles). While it seems the vast majority of players on PC play the game standing, PSVR players more often tend to play VR while seated, so the game might need to include seated and standing modes to prevent such issues.
Though there’s no release date for Beat Saber on PSVR yet confirmed, we expect to see it launch by the end of 2018.
