Enter the world of survival horror once again with the Resident Evil Village VR Mode.

The VR Mode supports the entire campaign and lifts the award-winning experience to new heights. A deeper and more captivating adventure awaits with PlayStation VR2, as Ethan Winters’ journey takes full advantage of the headset’s advanced features. VR Mode utilizes the 4K HDR display, eye tracking, and 3D audio to make Resident Evil Village more realistic and intense than ever. Soak in the village’s richly detailed atmosphere in virtual reality, including the ornate chambers of Castle Dimitrescu, and prepare to feel truly dwarfed by the larger-than-life characters and creatures that lurk within.

Beyond stepping into the world of Resident Evil Village with the PlayStation VR2 headset, players will get to grips with their surroundings in new ways with the PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers. These represent Ethan’s famously resilient hands and allow intuitive actions to be performed in-game. Players can hold up their arms to guard against enemies that get too close for comfort. Weapons also feel tangibly more realistic in VR Mode with new gameplay elements that dial up the immersion, such as dual wielding and natural motion controls for reloading firearms and brandishing knives.

This immersive new mode will be available alongside the launch of PlayStation VR2 on February 22nd, 2023 as free DLC for all PlayStation 5 owners of either Resident Evil Village or Resident Evil Village Gold Edition.

The post Resident Evil Village VR Mode Coming to PlayStation VR2 appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Coatsink are excited to announce their virtual reality game Shadow Point, a story-driven puzzle game set between a mountaintop observatory and an ever-changing fantasy world is now releasing on PSVR.

In Shadow Point, you explore a vibrant kingdom, cast shadows and solve mind-bending puzzles as you uncover the mystery of missing schoolgirl Lorna McCabe, who vanished from Shadow Point Observatory twelve years ago.

You play as Alex Burkett.

Guided by the journal of Edgar Mansfield – narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart – you ascend via cable car to the abandoned summit and discover a portal to another realm. As your adventure unfolds, you will manipulate gravity, play with your own reflection, walk on walls, peer through a magical lens to reveal an alternate reality, and much more.

Shadow Point is now available on PlayStation’s PSVR.

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Sony Pictures Virtual Reality (SPVR) and XR Games are proud to announce ‘Zombieland VR: Headshot Fever’; an exciting new VR game set in the “Zombieland” universe.

Inspired by light-gun games of the 90s and the racing games of today, ‘Zombieland VR: Headshot Fever’ rewards skill, speed and accuracy with addictive gameplay, a range of powerful weapons and an exciting new Adrenaline system.

Fans of the hit ‘Zombieland’ movie franchise can step into VR to join Tallahassee, Wichita, Columbus and Little Rock as our four heroes roll up in Silicon Valley to launch a new kind of product; a zombie-killing race course called the Zombieland Invitational.

Survive ferocious zombies and enjoy the dystopian humour of Zombieland as Tallahassee, Wichita, Columbus and Little Rock train you to run the fastest, most dangerous zombie-killing race course ever devised – the Zombieland Invitational!

‘Zombieland VR: Headshot Fever’ combines classic arcade light-gun shooting with split- second racing mechanics. Two quick headshots turn the world slow, giving players more time to rack up combos, get faster times and claw their way to the top of the leaderboards with awesome weapons, powerful upgrades and head-popping, clock- stopping, zombie-killing arcade action!

Holing up in the best tech billionaire’s mansion they can find, they accidentally save YOU, a zombie apocalypse survivor living in the mansion’s panic room. That’s when they decide to train you to become the most badass zombie killer of all time. Play hard and earn their respect to unlock weapons, challenges, upgrades and perks!

But just killing zombies isn’t gonna hack it. This is a racing sport and to be the best you’ve got to kill in style. That’s where our Adrenaline system kicks in. Nail two quick headshots in a row and adrenaline slows down time – making you faster! Line up your next shot, keep the combo going, and pop those zombie heads! The longer your combo, the faster your time – and fractions of a second count in the Zombieland Invitational!

So get out there and start chaining headshots, blasting weapons and bossing your way through eminently blastable Silicon Valley locations. Set record times, challenge friends, then take on the leaderboards – WORLDWIDE.

“With this VR game, we’re bringing the zombie apocalypse right to you in a totally new way while preserving the humor and wit of the hit movie franchise. Now ‘Zombieland’ fans can feel what it’s like to stare down an onslaught of Zombie hordes and make split-second gameplay decisions in order to blast their way to survival.,” said Jake Zim, SVP, virtual reality, Sony Pictures Entertainment. “The team at XR Games not only retained the action, characters and humor of what made the films so successful, but they’ve given fans a new way to become part of the ‘Zombieland’ universe.”

“Being trusted with bringing an iconic Sony Pictures franchise to life is extra rewarding and exciting when you’re a huge fan of Zombieland”, says Bobby Thandi, Founder and CEO of XR Games. “The Zombieland world is a no-nonsense kind of place, and to this end we’ve made one of the purest shooting games for VR. We hand crafted the content, upping replayability, and incorporated mechanics from racing games such as time splits so you know exactly how well you’re doing. It’s about practising ’til you’re perfect. Your speed and accuracy with each shot is imperative to score the fastest time (pro tip: remember the Navy SEALs quote – slow is smooth and smooth is fast). And your performance is being assessed via the witty banter of Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita, and Little Rock. They’re not gentle with their opinions!”

Zombieland VR: Headshot Fever is releasing this Spring for Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality headsets, and later for PlayStation VR.

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Sony Interactive Entertainment invites players to suit up and take to the skies as Tony Stark’s alter-ego, in Iron Man VR for the PSVR.

Back in late 2016, just after I got my HTC Vive VR kit, I downloaded a demo called HVR. It was a VR experiment by one man, Andre Le, that put players in an Iron Man-style armoured suit and allowed them to fly around. It was great. It really made you feel like Iron Man. Sadly, it was never made into a full game. But the demo is still available on the Steam store.

Almost four years later developers, Camouflaj, have released the official Iron Man VR experience that I’ve been waiting for. If ever there was a super-hero suited (no pun intended) to VR, it’s Iron Man.

By and large, the developer has succeeded in reproducing the feel of strapping on the Iron Man armour.

To play, PSVR owners will need to own a pair of Move controllers. I’d assume that most PSVR players will have, by now, picked up a pair of these curiously re-purposed relics from the failed PS Eye phase of the PS3.

If you’ve not got a pair of move controllers, you are missing out on a lot of what the PSVR system has to offer. Iron Man VR is available as a combo pack that includes the Move controllers along with the game.

The game starts with a tutorial sequence flying in the Iron Man armour and shooting targets above Tony Stark’s Malibu home.  After this brief sequence players, as billionaire industrialist, head outside the man with Tony Stark for dinner with his assistant, Pepper Potts. Tony tells her that he is quitting the arms industry and retiring his AI counterpart – based on himself – called The Gunsmith.

The game then jumps forward in time with Tony Stark now established as Iron Man.

The story is, for the most parts OK. Much of the exposition is conveyed using Tony Stark’s voiceover with a black screen with dust or something floating around. I don’t like black screens in VR, and I didn’t like this. The rest of the story unfolds by gimmicky VR “pick this up”, “open this”, press this button” sort of stuff that would have been OK when VR was just a novelty, but not OK now.

The game suffers from long loading times. Ridiculously long loading times for seemingly short sections of superfluous story elements. There is also a lot of waiting with a totally black screen. Another VR no-no in my book. Just to make those black screens more annoying, the scene’s sound starts up a good ten seconds before the image appears.

Waiting for ages for some throwaway story sequences is as annoying as hell, when all you want to do is fly around in VR as Iron Man.

The actual flight mechanics have been very well implemented. I really can’t fault them.

In the comics, Iron Man flies using rocket boots and fires his repulsers from his hands. That works in the funny pages, but doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. The movies take a more physics-based approach with Iron Man’s boots providing the thrust and is boosted by the palms of his gloves providing the flight controls. Look closely at the movies and the suit also has a load of moving control surfaces, as well.

In the game, the triggers of the Move controllers initiate flight, assumedly firing up the boots, which you can’t see, as well as the visible thrust from the palms of your gloves. The orientation of your palms and your head control the pitch and yaw of flight. Double tapping the triggers provides a very satisfying boost.

The Square and Triangle buttons turn left and right, respectively. By default, turns are by staged angles, likely to lower the chance of VR sickness for those inclined- something I switched to smooth straight away. The PSVR want you facing the camera at all times, so if you actually twist, or step outside the ever-present little circle on the floor you will get an immersion-breaking warning.

The X or circle button puts the suit in a hover mode. The basic repulser fire is via by placing palms out and pressing the Move button. As you progress the suit get upgrades to its flight dynamics, armament and weapons. The first upgrade is mini-rockets launched from the suit’s forearms, which are armed and locked by bending your wrist down and painting your target and them firing with the Move button. Unless you are hovering, and a stationary target, using your weapons means relinquishing your flight control.

The developers have done a very good job of implementing the characteristics of flying an Iron Man suit using the PSVR and move controllers. But it’s fair from perfect. And that’s more of a hardware issue than the game, itself.

If you’ve seen the first Iron Man film, you will remember Tony Stark’s first test flight in his garage and how difficult it actually is to fly as Iron Man. Unfortunately, the game also replicates the likely enormous learning curve any real-life rocket-man would need to overcome.

Just like games in the flight simulator genre, the powered flight of Iron Man takes time to master. Whilst I found it, by far, the most interesting part of the games, it suffers from the limitations of the PSVR’s camera-based tracking system and the ergonomic design of the move controller (which was never deigned as a VR controller.

The PlayStation camera can only tack what it sees. Whilst the accelerometers in the Move controllers do a good job of translating the twist of your wrists to alter flight direction the desire to turn your body away from the camera rather than use the imprecise button-bases rotation is high.

The Move controllers’ buttons are too tiny to be used in VR. I fumbled with the controls continuously. Even the use of the trigger for thrush and not fire resulted in some accidental boosts.Whilst all those buttons are a bit of a mission to remember at the best of times, in the heat of battle, when under a bit of stress, they become all over the place.

With a better controller and proper tracked room-scale VR, the flight mechanics and controls in Iron Man VR would shine. On PSVR, they don’t work that well, unless you are prepared to conquer controls that work against you.

The missions themselves are pretty good fun, if a little repetitive. But I’m not sure what else they could do. You are Iron Man you fly and shoot stuff. As you play you unlock points which can be spent upgrading the suits systems and weapons.

Whilst some of the action sequences are quite immersive and really feel like you are Iron Man, I found the time trial events that pepper the game to be a little annoying. The reset of the time it’s a bit of a duck shoot destroying identical-looking drones.

I also faced a number of game-breaking bugs, like one of the Move controller’s illuminations failing just in the game, and object that I just couldn’t pick up. A restart sorted it out.

The visuals look better in VR that any screen-grab. Standing in front of the armour, it looks great. Also, the holographic look of the heads-up display is spot on. The rest of the visual are a little below par, even on the PS4 Pro, but the framerate and overall VR performance is sound.

Iron Man VR is a game that I would have lapped up back in the early days of the PSVR. The flight model and implementation are authentic, but this makes in a hard game to master.

As polished as the game is, overall, it feels confined by the limitations of the hardware. The control issues being annoy, but the long loading times being inexcusable.

I desperately wanted to like Iron Man VR a lot more than I actually did. Other Iron Man fans should like the game, but it may need a bit more patience that most players have to spare to really get to grips with it.

The post Iron Man VR (PSVR) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Gorn VR is goofy virtual reality hijinks at its greatest.

It takes a simple premise and builds upon it without getting too distracted from the core gameplay experience. Gorn is made by Free Lives, the developers of Genital Jousting, so if you’ve played that you may be well aware of the sort of jocular game Gorn sets out to be.

In many ways, Gorn is incredibly simplistic. Step inside a gladiatorial arena, pick up a weapon, and swing it at whatever comes in front of you. Now available for PS4, it’s conversion has been well implemented and is suited to the living rooms where PS4s typically are.

Gorn is, as the developers describe, “ludicrously violent.” Blood spurts out with heavy inspiration from movie classics such as Kill Bill, body parts are dismembered and severed with wilful abandon. It is all in a cartoony, deliberately over the top manner, which evokes humour rather than horror or gore.

At your disposal are a variety of weapons such as swords, maces, batons, axes, and even the shields can be used to get at your foes. You pick up and hold each weapon with the PS Move controller’s triggers, then swing the controllers at your virtual foes. This is a game to be played with a clear warning to spouses, pets and friends to stay well away during play sessions. Walking too is based on grabbing then swinging your arms and controllers as if you’re doing a walk from a Monty Python sketch.

Combat is cathartic, with foes taking a few hits to put into a dizzy state. From there you must quickly take advantage of their temporary condition to get over to them and finish them off. But because this is VR, this requires actually walking over (or teleporting) to them, and bending down to land the final blows. It is satisfying, and a great way to get a workout.

Just to ensure that it doesn’t feel too real, Gorn features some wonky physics that can cause chaos in the arena. Weapons warp around a bit in your hand, and enemies ragdoll decidedly unrealistically, flying around at the slightest hit. It all makes for a laugh-out-loud comedy of gore, one which doesn’t take itself too seriously and asks you not to either.

Gorn is a game that absolutely requires you to move around, so you will need a fairly large space for your setup. You must also use two PS Move controllers, and after playing for a while I’m convinced that not letting you just use a Dualshock 4 was the right decision. Physicality is a massive part of what makes Gorn so enjoyable to play, in a way that sitting down with a controller just wouldn’t give you the same experience. The only downside to this approach is that it is relatively easy to get mixed up and turned around. Especially for owners of the first gen PSVR you should be careful where you step and where your headset umbilical cords are.

Tracking of the PS Move controllers was pretty good, though of course if you’ve come from other VR headsets you will be aware of the limitations of Sony’s hand-trackers. Occasionally it would teleport my hand somewhere unexpected, but luckily this isn’t a game about fine motion control a la Half Life: Alyx. Big, sweeping gestures are enough and the PS Move controllers match well with this game.

Gorn may be a one-note song, but that song is still enough to make you smile and release some tension of a long day locked up at home in quarantine. Sometimes it can feel like each session of a VR game is an extended commitment, but Gorn is a perfect escape for a shorter play session that will still make you feel like you’ve accomplished something great – or gory.

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The post Gorn VR (PlayStation 4 / PSVR) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Marvel’s Iron Man VR exclusive to PlayStation and PSVR is your chance to be Tony Stark inside the Iron Man suit.

Recently the game itself has gone Gold, releasing on the 3rd of July 2020, and has given us a decent lengthy play demo, which I fully recommend downloading free from the PlayStation store.

Thanks to PlayStation NZ Shane was given the rare opportunity to speak directly with Ryan Payton, the founder of Camoflaj Studio and former Halo 4 director and Metal Gear Solid 4 producer, about the upcoming virtual reality game – Iron Man VR.

Ryan Payton – Founder of Camoflaj Studio

Shane: Can you tell us a little bit about Camoflaj Studio and how Marvel’s Iron Man VR game came to be?

Ryan: Oh, sure. My pleasure. So Camouflaj was founded in the Seattle area about close to nine years ago. And it’s a studio that I started with the same ambition of not being a indie game studio, but being the next great independent, high quality game studio that does big ambitious games like Marvel’s Iron Man VR. As you might have known our first game was a game called Republiq, which we’re incredibly proud of.

But the team has grown in size, significantly since the release of Republiq to match the scope and scale and the ambition level of of Marvel’s Iron Man VR.

And to answer the second part of your question, which is like how this came about, it all started with a fateful meeting between Camoflaj and Marvel Games, I was introduced to them through a mutual friend.

Marvel was looking for a developer to build the quintessential Marvel superhero driven VR game. And we were we were challenged with, like, what character we want to focus on. When we talked internally within Camoflaj, it was really quick to come up – we couldn’t think of a more perfect Marvel superhero to pair with VR than Iron Man. When we thought about the way that his helmet works and his 3D HUD works on pairing that with the PlayStation VR headset it’s a perfect pairing, as well as the thrusters where Iron Man flies and then there are pulsars, how Iron Man shoots then pairing that with the PlayStation Move controllers, for example, was also just a perfect pairing.

And then once we actually built our initial prototype, and then drove down to Los Angeles and showed that to Marvel, they were all in from that point on and then we just got started working on the game and it’s been just whirlwind experience as we get close to the July 3 (2020), release date for the game.

Shane: Why was Iron Man chosen as opposed to like, Spider-Man, or any of the other Marvel characters?

Ryan: One thing I thought was fascinating about the development of the game is that literally within the first week or two, we nailed the flight mechanics, which players are now really enjoying and having a great time with with via the free demo that we released last Thursday. And early on in development we also really nailed the combat, the melee attack as you could do like a rocket punch to enemies and how you can blast your pulsors from the palms of your hands and also blast enemies with a gesture so you can fire auxiliary weapons from your gauntlets like missiles and anti-tank missiles and things like that.

But one thing that was missing early on in development, which we of course corrected as soon as we possibly could, is that while we felt like we had a great light based VR action simulator, didn’t feel superhero enough for us. We didn’t feel like we were Iron Man enough. And that’s when we started integrating additional elements that we at least internally call superhero actions.

We have three of those represented in the demo. For example, when you go up in in and extinguish the fire on the jet in that one mission, or you repair the wing or you release the landing gear of the jet. Those are three examples where players are doing unique things that leverage the special strengths of PlayStation VR, but also allow players to really feel like they’re a superhero. And so from that point on, we just started to integrate more and more of those elements throughout the whole campaign. So players are continuously reminded that this is beyond just an action simulator that you are Iron Man, and you’re doing these things in a way that only VR can afford.

Shane: Iron Man VR releases on July 3 (2020), what can PlayStation gamers expect?

Ryan: Well, what PlayStation gamers and especially PlayStation VR enthusiasts can expect is, I think a lot of ways what they are looking for. I’m a big VR player. I’m a huge PlayStation VR enthusiast and along with millions of the other, you know, owners of the hardware I think I could I could speak for a lot of them that they want bigger, more robust, more ambitious VR games that they’ve played up to this point. And I think that they’re going to ask for that because I think the early years of VR are really fun and really important, but developers weren’t given a lot of time to get comfortable with the hardware and to make content. And one of the amazing things that we’ve been afforded thanks to our partners and friends at PlayStation and Marvel is that they understand that what players want is a really big VR, a big and ambitious VR experience with Marvel’s Iron Man VR.

So we’ve been given the amount of time to be able to execute on that. And so I think what players can expect is not only Camoflaj executing on the Iron Man simulator aspect of the game, but it’s what’s coming is that it’s also a really great Tony Stark simulator as well. What I mean by that is that the story is at its core about Tony and Tony facing up against his own demons. And we wanted to put players in the shoes of Tony Stark, this genius inventor, who’s not only tweaking the suit in his garage, and doing all the fun things that Tony is all about. And in coming face to face with classic Marvel characters like Pepper Potts, and Friday and Nick Fury, and villains like Ghost, that they also are able to go deeper into this character, who, like all of us has his own share of struggles. And through VR, we want players to really be able to empathize with a character like this and walk away from the game once the campaign is over, hopefully changes people in some way.

Shane: I know that developing games is not easy and VR probably even more trickier. So what were some of the most amazing, ‘oh wow’ moments?

Ryan: Yeah. So, there are a lot to say. And that’s one of the fun things about game development is that on a daily basis, you’re confronted with challenges. And one of the fun and addicting things about game development is overcoming those challenges and moving on to the next one is as you’re doing that the game is getting better and better and better.

Now we’re at my favorite season of Game Development. Because the game has gone Gold officially, now we’re in that final phase where we’re just bug fixing and polishing the game. And and that’s my favorite part of development.

But to answer your question, one example I can think of where we overcame a challenge, and it was just so invigorating, was early on in development, we were loving the flight mechanics, but we wanted to have a space that really leveraged that mechanic. And I think one of the first environments we built was a downtown Metropolis city environment. Because we couldn’t think of a better place to really test out the mechanics when you’re flying between buildings, ground pounding to the floor and avoiding enemies, and like, circling around an enemy that was chasing you and, like, losing them in between buildings. That environment has stuck with the game all the way until we ship it and is now represented in a downtown Shanghai environment. That is like one of the big, big temple environments and missions in the game.

Shane: So Iron Man VR, 3rd of July. What is next up for Camoflaj after that date?

Ryan: We don’t know. The whole team at Camouflaj is focused on making Marvel’s Iron Man VR, the absolute best PlayStation VR exclusive game we possibly can make. And the only thing else about the future is that the team loves VR, we hope that we continue to develop in VR and we believe that VR has a really, really bright future. But in the meantime, we’re just focused on making this game as awesome and as great as possible leading up to launch on July 3 (2020).

Shane: Fantastic, we are looking forward to the full release of Iron Man VR. Thank you so much for talking the time to talk to us today and also a huge shout out and thanks to yourself Ryan and the team at Camoflaj for making one the greatest PSVR games to date.

Iron Man VR is an exclusive release to PlayStation for PSVR. There is a free demo available now from the PlayStation store, the games’ full release is the 3rd of July 2020.

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Little Witch Academia: VR Broom Racing (LWAVR), the VR racing game from UNIVRS, Inc. based on the famous anime, takes off on Oculus Quest in late 2020 then PSVR, Oculus Rift and SteamVR with support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in early 2021.

Directed by Junichi Yamamoto, whose past positions include opening and ending movie director on The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and storyboard artist of Batman Ninja, LWAVR puts fans in the shoes of a new student at Luna Nova Witchcraft Academy.

Learn to soar with the help and encouragement of fan-favorite characters from the popular anime while UNIVRS, Inc.’s motion sickness reduction technology keeps the focus on the exhilaration of flying.

Become part of an all new story told across more than 10 tracks spread throughout familiar areas around Luna Nova. Pair up with fellow students to be the first to cross the finish line or purify ghosts in single player mode, then join real-world friends via online multiplayer to explore the rich environments of Little Witch Academia in immersive VR.

Little Witch Academia is a Japanese anime series produced by Studio TRIGGER, one of the leading animation studios founded by the creators behind legendary shows such as Neon Genesis Evangelion. The series consists of two short films, the second of which found huge success on Kickstarter with $625,518 raised from 7,938 backers, and a 25-episode TV series currently available on Netflix.

Successfully funded on Kickstarter and Campfire, a Japanese popular crowdfunding platform, LWAVR raised over $165,000 USD in total between the two campaigns in July 2019. It was originally scheduled for release in June 2020, but adopting protective measures against COVID-19 has resulted in a change in plans.

LWAVR will be available on Oculus Quest in late 2020 while PSVR, Oculus Rift, and SteamVR versions will follow in early 2021. It will feature voice acting in English and Japanese from the talents who star in the anime.

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MiroWin Studio, developer of Boiling Steel and Guns’n’Stories: Bulletproof VR announced the release of the free mini VR game – sci-fi first person shooter named “Boiling Steel: Preface”. It’s planned for today, January 9, 2020.

Release of the full version of Boiling Steel, aimed on gamers who love fast-paced action and sci-fi, planned on March 5, 2020, and for the moment it’s available at Steam in early access.

The story for “Boiling Steel: Preface” was written by one of the authors of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. Beautiful graphics, smooth controls, and a bot-killing arsenal of upgradable construction tools provides a truly unique experience.

Set in the far future, Boiling Steel is centered on a colonized planet designed to be a bastion of scientific research and development. Free of bureaucratic, religious, and legal restrictions technology advanced in leaps and bounds.

Here you are one of many who set off in search of a better life in the distant bastion of scientific progress. Your goal is a colony planet, free from bureaucratic, religious and other radical restrictions.

Here they research and freely use industrial teleportation, transfer of consciousness and other technologies prohibited in the inhabited worlds. Factories, power plants, mines and residential complexes of the planet are fully automated. All the dirty and hard work is done by robotic shells controlled by the operator’s mind. It is a high-tech paradise. But everything changed…

The post Boiling Steel: Preface – Free Mini VR Game Release Date Announced appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

For those that don’t already know, Five Nights at Freddy’s is a horror puzzler anthology with a back catalog that has emerged on a number of platforms over the years, notably PC and mobile.

The latest iteration, Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted is mostly a repackaging of scenarios from the previous games reimagined for VR.

The collection of games is wrapped loosely in the conceit of you being an in a digital VR theme park of sorts run by “fazbear entertainment”, and tasked with reliving the experiences of the previous games from a VR perspective. The game sets this up by funneling you through an on rails “welcome” section while a smarmy Themepark PA announcer provides his disclaimer, positing the notion that events of the former games were “definitely a bunch of lies”. I thought this meta narrative was quite a neat way setting up what is essentially a ported collection.

For those uninitiated into the FNAF world, like I was, this game is both charmingly tropey, but also effective in its simplicity making it a very versatile and accessible game across these various platforms. VR is ostensibly the perfect home for this game.

The premise of the initial few games in this collection are simple. You play night security, restricted mostly to the confines of your often claustrophobic control booth where you have to survive for the night.

Making things tense is the fact that during the night, a number of animatronic puppets come to life and gradually close in on you. Your job is to prevent them from reaching you by cycling through security camera footage, then switching lights and door locks without fully consuming the limited amount of power required to do all of these tasks. It’s simple, but very very nerve wrackingly effective.

A couple of additional game modes have you repairing the animatronic puppets while they’re in service mode, a particularly nail-biting experience as you desperately try not to screw up. Other modes have you repairing a series of vents through several mini-game tasks, while using your headlamp to ward off robotic critters as they come at you from the vents all around.

The game knows you can’t keep your attention fixed to any one place at a time, and uses this, as well as cleverly punctuated timing, to great effect.

You get to select these scenarios from a creepy selection menu, and can complete them in any order you wish, which is a great idea because some scenarios may be more entertaining for some than others.

Graphically, the game manages a lot with little. The lighting is minimal, but is used to the best possible effect, whether it be casting ominous silhouettes or providing jus enough light to be suspicious of whats around that hallway corner, or behind that piece of furniture.

The designs for the giant robotic plushies have a weird, demented nostalgia to them and definitely assist with the effectiveness of the creep-factor.

In saying this, the liberal use of jump-scares involving these critters can result in diminishing returns as the predictability sets into routine, particularly in some game modes such as the dark rooms. 

The sound in this game does incredibly well at providing a large contribution to the creepy, tense atmosphere.  You will be spinning in your seat to determine where that last clang came from – hoping that you’re not confronted up close and personal by a screeching demon-plushie.

There’s always a foreboding humming or tune in the air, punctuated at points by sound effects that have come straight out of horror audio library – be a music box, doorbell, creaky door, girl whispering and giggling, or the arching of faulty electrics etc. It’s cliched, but effective. 

This game is perfect for VR, but your enjoyment really comes down to whether you appreciate conventional horror tropes, albeit without the bloodletting.

I’m a baby when it comes to scary games in VR, but for those wanting a tense, creepy experience from a that is perfectly self-aware, you owe it to yourself to check out Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted.

The post Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted (PSVR) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Trover Saves the Universe is an absurd action platformer developed by Squanch Studios, and brainchild of Ricky and Morty creator Justin Roiland.

The premise is inept, but that’s the point. You are placed behind the eyes of a “chairorpian”, an eponymously named race of beings that are permanently consigned to telelporting, hydraulic chairs. This serves to explain the perspective and control of the game in such a ridiculously self-aware, 4th wall breaking way only a Justin Roiland property could.

You, as a chairporpian, are in control of your partner in crime – a purple, anthropomorphic creature with empty eye sockets named Trover. So, it’s first person perspective of a third person character that you control.

The story is something like this: Trover’s puppies have been kidnapped and placed into the eye sockets of the villainous “Glorkon”, granting him immeasurable power and a heightened level of universe-threatening nefariousness. Consequently, Trover is begrudgingly partnered up with you to rescue his puppies and to end Glorkon’s reign of terror. That’s more or less it.

But it’s less about the story and more about the delivery of it.

Trover Saves the Universe carries all the irreverent, almost improvisational, stuttered humour that is trademark of Justin’s humour. Fans of Rick and Morty will be in their element here. What’s remarkable is how long some of these NPC side-conversations will prattle on if you stay still long enough. There must be hours of recorded dialogue here. Much of it is hilariously nonsensical, but for me at least, the humour is unrelenting and does begin to grate in longer stretches.

Characters you meet along the way are bizarre, but generally well realised and there’s always an unpredictable, “I wonder how this is going to play out” moment each time you approach a new character.

Gameplay is a fairly rote affair, but that’s not to say it’s boring. It’s a lot of fun. The camera (or the in game chair you’re sitting in) stays fixed to teleport nodes which you can jump between, but Trover is freely controllable around you. Furthermore, you can elevate the chair to get an aerial vantage for some of the platform elements involving layered cartography.

Trover has a light-sabre as a weapon, and can hack’n’slash his way through a variety of Glorkon minions. He also has the ability to put … ahem… coloured “power babies” into his own eye sockets, granting him an increasing set of abilities. It would’ve been good to be able to swap these power babies in and out on the fly, but the abilities they grant are consigned mostly to Level design. One power baby grants you double jump, another a booster rocket, and another the ability to dive roll etc.

There are some sections in the game that feel like conceits to draw the run time out, and can be a bit frustrating. One section has you destroying waves of Glorkon minions to fill up a cauldron, and if you fail – you start all waves over. It means you also have to listen to the same assault of verbiage over and over again until you progress to the next section.

The graphics are akin to a Rick and Morty cartoon, and Squanch have done well bringing it’s style into 3D space. Colours are often bright but the simpler aesthetics of a cartoon lends itself well to the limited detail pallet of a VR platform. But the animations and effects here are well designed, and the level of polish is top notch, even if by no means a technical masterpiece.

Sound too is well rounded, if you can tolerate the endless bonkers chatter. It’s handled deftly and with unapologetic intent, and can be amusing to hear a sweeping “John Williams” – esque score underpinning two inept guards waxing irreverent on top of a fort rampart.

Since you can control Trover all around your stationed position, the 360 sound is handled well here, so if Trover is somehow behind you, you can locate him without necessarily having to turn around. This is also true of enemies, though generally action plays out in front of you.

Trover Saves the Universe is a lot of simple fun.

As an action-platformer, it’s not revolutionary and there’s likely not much here that couldn’t be achieved outside of VR. In saying that, being placed inside a Roiland universe definitely heightens the esoteric insanity, and so it’s really down to his brand of humour as to whether you’ll see this game as something more than just the sum of its parts.

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