Welcome to 🕶Shades🕶, a newsletter dedicated to reviewing and analyzing entertainment media. Shades will cover the media landscape, diving into TV shows, movies, and video games, and digging into themes across the wider entertainment landscape. I’ll be your explorer, testing the waters, making recommendations, and just being your companion and guide to the entertainment you enjoy. Your entertainment side piece if you will.
This is something new for this newsletter, which has existed in a haphazard state of being for some years, a rather scattershot approach, covering topics of a various nature. Now I want to create something more consistent, a reliable friend to turn to. I want Shades to be a place of refuge in your week, like the media I continue to enjoy.
To begin this adventure I went all out on the PSVR2, that’s the next evolution in PlayStation hardware, a piece of kit more expensive than the console it requires to run it. This is less a brag and more a cry for help.
My brief history with VR
My first experience with Virtual Reality was in 2013 at the first Australian PAX in Melbourne, that’s the Penny Arcade Expo. I waited in line for what seemed like hours to get my head inside an original Oculus Rift development kit. I strapped on the headset but I was seated at a computer, still using a mouse and keyboard. The game on display was Team Fortress 2, in its classic 2Fort map. It felt neat looking around and seeing the full game environment wrap around me, but I really wasn’t getting the full sense of what virtual reality could offer.
Since then the only VR I had tried was Google Cardboard, which as the name implies is literally a cardboard box (with lenses). You strap your phone into the front of it and then hold the cardboard box up to your face. It was really only good for experiencing VR short films.
I was tempted by the Oculus… sorry, Meta Quest 2, which by itself doesn’t require any tether, but whose hardware was rather limited, without a VR-capable PC. And then there’s that whole hypothetical of Facebook tracking my eyeballs to help it sell ads. Zuckerberg’s Orwellian vision of the future to go shopping in virtual clothing stores to attend virtual meetings gives me the ick.
I held off on VR mostly waiting for the software and hardware to come to a point where I could justify investing in such a platform. The first PlayStation VR felt cobbled together, requiring additional hardware like the PlayStation Eye camera, and Move controllers, not designed with VR in mind. But the VR2 finally feels like Sony has caught up with the movers and shakers in VR. With its own distinct controllers and comparative ease of use (and already owning a PlayStation 5) made it a no-brainer.
I’m not recommending everyone jump on the VR bandwagon just yet, because even at this point it’s not clear if this technology is ready for the masses. It’s still a relatively small audience and the barrier to entry is high. Games journos have rightly criticized the lack of games in the PSVR2 launch lineup (most of which are ports from other platforms), but for me, I thought this was the right point to jump in, and I’m curious to see what’s next.
*crosses fingers for Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Half-Life: Alyx*
Move your body
Without having those previous VR experiences to compare to, it actually took me some time to get used to being in VR. Less, the motion sickness thing that plagues some people, and more, learning the language. Over the last few years, the VR medium has carried certain features across games. One of which is teleporting for movement.
Horizon: Call of the Mountain, is the launch game for PlayStation VR2, putting you into the universe of the Horizon games, a lush green world filled with mountains to climb and robot dinosaurs to fire arrows at.
The game gives you the choice of gesture-based movement or using the analog stick. I always thought that when I next tried VR I would go straight to the stick. After all, it’s what I’ve used to play games since the original PlayStation came out with its twin-stick controller. This controller paired with Ape Escape, forcing you to move your character with one stick and to waggle the other to catch runaway monkeys. But I immediately realized why teleportation was a thing. It’s unsettling to see yourself move when you are standing still. It must be some kind of physiological response.
Horizon does have its own unique system for movement, where you hold down a button on each of the controllers and swing your arms as if you’re walking. It must look ridiculous but it strangely feels natural. I think the whizzes at Guerilla are onto something.
Other games I tried in PSVR2 do utilize teleportation for movement. It does the job but it takes you out of the experience somewhat. No longer are you an ordinary human but one with the ability to travel one to five metres in the blink of an eye. Someone needs to make an X-Men Nightcrawler game, stat.
Flailing for arrows
Forget about the floating disembodied hands. That was easy to get past. Something I’ll admit I’m still getting used to is retrieving items from my inventory. In non-VR games or flat games as they should now be called, it’s not good enough to push a button and have you watching idly by as your character reaches for their bow. Now in Call of the Mountain you have to physically inhabit the character and reach over your own shoulder for the bow, and over the other for an arrow. After an intense battle with a machine, my arms are aching.
In games like Resident Evil: Village, now you’re not only having to tend to monsters clawing at you, but also looking down at your jacket to choose your weapon, physically reloading the ammo into your gun, and popping open the cork on a bottle before dousing yourself with a health potion. It’s a whole new level of stress I didn’t need in an already terrifying horror game. As thoughtful as Capcom are for offering a free VR upgrade, having already finished the game in flat, I haven’t gone back in.
One thing that doesn’t carry over from game to game, unfortunately, is interactivity with items in the environment. Games like Call of the Mountain do such a good job of letting you interact with everything—items that often serve no functional purpose but still let you pick up junk and turn it over, before tossing it away or using it as target practice.
Horizon often presents you with instruments left lying around by another tribe. You can shake a tambourine before climbing another cliff face. It just adds to the feeling of actually being there. While games like the otherwise narratively impressive, The Last Clockwinder, only let you interact with items necessary for your progression.
My recs
If you’ve recently purchased a VR system or you’re thinking of splashing out on one, the most fun I’ve had in VR so far, is in the games What the Bat? and Pistol Whip.
What the Bat? is the next game after the entertaining What the Golf? on Apple Arcade. The premise is simple. Your arms are baseball bats. This makes what would have otherwise been an easy interaction more difficult. VR in a nutshell! Levels in What the Bat? are quick and often have gimmicks that are only ever used once. They start with introducing you to the concept then tweaking the formula, and tossing in a few curve balls (see what I did there?) to throw you off the scent.
I’m still waiting for probably the most popular VR game, Beat Saber, to come to the platform so I can wield lightsabres in time with the beat.
In the meantime, I am glad to have discovered Pistol Whip, which I can best describe as Beat Saber but with guns. Like Time Crisis and light gun games of arcade yore, Pistol Whip has you moving on rails as enemies come out of the woodwork. The catch here, to get maximum point potential, is you need to dispatch your polygonal targets in time with the beat. Dual wielding is absolutely the way to go to feel like a slick Keanu Reeves badass, in your own version of John Wick. As you need to twist and duck to dodge bullets I can only go a few levels before wiping off the sweat and retiring to a calmer game like Moss.
Nitpicks
The battery life in the two controllers ain’t the best. They need charging after every session so they don’t die on me the next time I play. I didn’t spring for the charging dock either, so they’re individually plugged in with separate cables. Apparently, this upcoming device might be better than the official Sony one.
The default headphones that come with the device are those earbud style headphones. I’ve never had much success with these. I tried all three sizes, and only the smaller size stayed in (for the most part) but I ended up with sore ear canals after. You can plug your own headphones into the 3.5mm jack but once I learned you can use the 3D Pulse headphones I’ve stuck with those. It is an extra piece of gear on my head. Can’t be great for my neck!
The power button on the VR2 doesn’t turn on the console. You need to do that first before donning the headset.
The View Surroundings display button on the headset is immensely useful when you find you’ve strayed too far of course, but it would be handier to enable it with a button on the controller.
Before I had a haircut, some loose strands would dangle down in front of my vision unless I tucked them back. Finally gave me a reason to get that trim!
There is a long cord. It mostly stayed out of my way, but on occasion if I turned too many times I would notice it begin to weave itself around my ankles.
What’s good
The controllers. It can take some time to get used to the setup. Fumbling around for them I’m not always sure which one belongs in which hand and I still forget where the trademark triangle, square, circle, and cross buttons are. But once they’re on your hands, they’re so lightweight it’s like an extension to yourself.
With its three levers for adjusting to my own head shape, the headset itself fits me pretty well, even in glasses. Plenty roomy without letting light in.
The View Surroundings button displays your room in black and white using the headset’s external cameras. It’s pretty trippy. Not the best for viewing your phone’s screen, requires some squinting.
Setting up for room-scale VR is a quick setup. Initially, you look around your space, as the device paints your room in blue polygons to set up your play area. You can manually edit these boundaries. There’s also a smaller radius for seated mode. Whenever you wander off course the boundaries come up, letting you know you’re about to throw a fist into your TV screen.
The eye tracking. I haven’t seen much use for it yet apart from selecting in menus, but the Before Your Eyes port is coming out soon and will change the scene every time your blink.
Face rumble. It’s a weird sensation but appropriate for when you get hit in the face with a bullet in Pistol Whip.
Only one cable. That’s it (plus one hulking PlayStation 5).
What’s not so good
It can be easy to lose focus of what is referred to in VR as the “sweet spot”. Apparently, the VR2 has a small sweet spot so often requires some gentle tugging on the headset to find it again.
The Screen Door Effect. Even with its OLED panel, because you’re looking at a display and not actual depth, it is easy to notice the pixels if you stop to pay attention to it or try to examine your game world close up. Otherwise, everything is a little grainy.
Many of the original PlayStation VR games haven’t been ported to the platform. I would’ve been peachy keen to try out Astro Bot Rescue Mission or even Batman: Arkham VR and Iron Man VR.
That price. Ouch.