Supermassive returned to the franchise with the weird 2016 PSVR rail-shooter Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. Instead immersing us in the world of Until Dawn, Rush of Blood was only really a shooting gallery featuring environments and characters from the main game.

The Inpatient is a proper VR prequel to Until Dawn. Set in Blackwood Pines Sanatorium, players become patient in the “care” of Dr Bragg, some sixty-years before the events in Until Dawn.

You can choose to play as a male or female character. This doesn’t really affect the game, but will change the sex of your cellmate to match you chosen gender.

The game starts with the player waking up in the Sanatorium with only fragments of their memory. What follows sets up the mediocrity of asylum life before introducing a rather unhinged roommate, in Anna / Gordon Bennet.

Every now and again your character gets pulled into visions / memories that I actually found a bit unnerving. The visuals and audio really immerse you into your eerie surrounding. Add in some jump scares and you’ve most definitely got a game that’s not for the feint hearted.

This type of immersive psychological experience was VR’s stock and trade for early adopters of HTC’s Vive VR kit, a year ago. The PC SteamVR title, Chair in a Room: Greenwater, immediately came to mind whilst playing The Inpatient. Simply placing the player in a realistic environment creates the perfect canvas for a VR horror game.

In VR, even the most innocuous surroundings become something special. Add a supernatural element and regardless of your metal, and the fact that you know that you are in VR, your flight or fight instincts will take over. PlayStation VR owners that have experienced Resident Evil 7: BioHazard in VR, and especially the RE7 VR demo, “Kitchen”, will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Unlike Resident Evil 7, The Inpatient is not a survival-horror game. Similar to dozens of VR experiences that I’ve played over the last year or so, The Inpatient is more of a branching interactive story. It made me think of Telltale’s adventure games.

The big problem that I had with The Inpatient is that when it wants to scare you it does it very well, but the rest of the time you are just a forced participant in a somewhat macabre tale. Thinking about it, the original Until Dawn could be a bit like this. But I forgave it as it was a bit of a homage to teen slasher movies of the 1980’s, which would often feature a bit of melodrama.

You have a few control options available. The Inpatient supports voice commands, but I gave up on this pretty quickly. You can also use move controllers. Personally, being used to the HTC Vive’s super-accurate controllers, I don’t get on with the so-so performance of the Move controllers, especially if the camera loses sight of them. Thankfully, the PS4’s Dualshock works fine with the game.

The game uses free movement rather than teleportation. This may make some players feel a little uncomfortable if they’ve yet to earn their VR-legs. You can, however switch between incremental turns and smooth turns- incremental 15° turns being a lot easier on the stomach.

Supermassive have outdone themselves with the visuals. The characters and environments look almost photo-real. The sense of immersion, of actually being there, in the Asylum, is incredible.

The Inpatient is a great showcase for what can be done with the PlayStation VR, to create interactive movies that offer players a real sense of presence.

It’s not that long and is not really that action-packed, but it doesn’t need to be, to be effective. If you own a PSVR and liked Until Dawn getting the In Patient is a no brainer. Whilst Resident Evil 7: Biohazard offers up better VR scares; The Inpatient still holds its own.

[rns_reactions]

The post The Inpatient (PSVR) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Our time on the show floor on Day Two was much more eventful as we were offered decent hands-on time with highly anticipated games such as Bravo Team and The Inpatient on the PlayStation VR, Day’s Gone, Spider-Man, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Far Cry 5 and Middle Earth: Shadow of War.

We began our day with twenty minutes of PlayStation VR, having a go on Bravo Team with another journalist, with whom we were on a co-op mission. Bravo Team, is an action-based, first person shooter, in which teamwork is key. Verbal communication between players is imperative in order to survive and avoid enemy detection. The game puts you in complete control of the action as you utilise the PlayStation VR Aim Controller (or VR Gun Controller) and movement of your body to look around corners to take down enemies. The experience is entirely immersive and seemingly realistic of what real life shooters are like.

Next on our list was the creepy game The Inpatient, which according to the PlayStation representative who walked us through the beginning of the game, is a prequel to the popular horror game, Until Dawn. The Inpatient certainly took the term ‘creepy’ to a whole other level as you play as an amnesiac patient at what appeared to be a mental institution. The game requires players to make active choices, which affect the nature of the story and gameplay. It was slightly unnerving to have doctors and orderlies stare at you up close and the jump scares were terrifying.

The Inpatient certainly isn’t for the faint of heart and requires nerves of steel to get through. Fans of horror will love this game!

With the VR experiences out the door and once our nerves were a little more settled, we managed to sit through a rather thrilling eyes-on experience with Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man, which was just so good that we had to give it it’s own write-up.

While the PlayStation titles were intriguing, it was the brilliant and colourful graphics of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Far Cry 5 that blew us away. Despite being similar to previous iterations of the games, both Origins and Far Cry 5 were extremely stunning. Origins certainly took our interest with its new setting in ancient Egypt. Being set right at the very beginning, essentially follows one of the first Assassins and leads us through the origins of the Brotherhood through amazing gameplay.

Despite having fantastic graphics, Far Cry 5 felt more or less the same as every other Far Cry title. Perhaps our hands on time was too short, but what we experienced wasn’t compelling. Our hands-on essentially consisted of shooting enemies through a small town without any real story or plot, though it was rather amusing having a dog as our primary companion and assistant. Perhaps a proper playthrough will reveal more significant narrative to the game and allow us to feel a little more connected to the lore of Far Cry 5.

After a long day of running between halls to make our hands-on sessions, our day finally came to a brilliant end with our final preview, Shadow of War. The theatrical introduction to the game by Warner Brothers Entertainment was spectacular as we were introduced to the various characters and style of gameplay. This sequel to the popular game, Shadow of Mordor, is set directly after the events of the first game and sees us continue our siege to take control of castles ruled by high powered Orcs.

After the introduction, we were given a brief hands-on, which was rather challenging but also a lot of fun. Shadow of War allows players to choose the style of game they wish to play, be it through a full campaign, short side missions or endless amounts of fun in a more sandbox environment. Given that we didn’t want any spoilers, we chose to test our skills in the sandbox. Gameplay was fantastic and the movements of the characters were incredibly fluid.

Slicing and dicing Orc minions and their mounts was an enticing challenge as were controlling the enemies and being able to turn them over to our side. The amount of power given to use and the variety of ways to defeat enemies certainly made for a unique gaming experience. The best part? Players need not have played the previous game, Shadow of Mordor, to enjoy the upcoming Shadow of War game.

With such a fun filled day full of hands and eyes-on experiences with some of the best of E3, we’re extremely excited to pick up these games when they release within the next two years.

The post E3 Day Two Experience appeared first on Shane the Gamer.