Adventure Gamers - Forums

I am. I really want one.  How amazing it would be to actually experience an adventure game as though you were actually there. Not that I’ve tried VR since the 1980s in some public place I was at (where it was all polygon graphics but quite impressive nevertheless), but by all accounts it’s pretty awesome now. There’s a new adventure game coming out that makes use of it called Pneuma: Breath of Life. http://www.adventuregamers.com/games/view/27960

It will undoubtedly be more for heavily physics based games, the likes of portal, amnesia, etc. But could it work well (or even be wanted by adventure gamers) with games such as for example Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps remakes of games such as Zork Nemesis, Grand Inquisitor, Myst, Riven? I think it might be quite cool to be able to ‘virtually’ walk through the drunkard infested Victorian streets of London on my way to the Whitechapel Dispensary

I’m intirgued by Oculus for sure, but before I’d buy one I’d have to test it myself first.

There’s no doubt that first person games will benefit immensely from VR support. The sense of thereness when playing with a VR headset such as the oculus is far superior to that of a normal monitor. Games like Amnesia, Portal, et al will indeed all gain a lot from this.

Unfortunately I personall tend to find first person style puzzle games quite boring, as I’m usually in it for the character interactions - which tend to just work out a million times better in third person games.

As a developer I’m extremely intrigued by the idea of developing something for VR, especially something narrative-heavy, as this still doesn’t really seem to be something people are focusing on. Though now there’s the very promising “Oculus story studio” which I strongly recommend checking out (video link here), though it appears to focus less on interaction and more on the actual storytelling and immersion part of it all.

I wonder how a traditional third person game could benifit from VR support, if remade. Static cameras are by definiton not very fun in Vr, but imagine that fanmade real time rendered grim fandango remake, but with oculus support, allowing for truly letting the player soak up the environments… I’d love that. Though probably extremely jarring every time the camera moves to a new position.

It’s a very exciting field and I look forward to seeing it progress.

SoccerDude28 - 04 February 2015 10:24 PM

I personally think it’s a fad that will go the way of the motion controls of the Wii era, but we’ll wait and see.

^ This.

Having said that, I’d love to try it some day. Just not a horror game (or I’d need my brown pants).

I currently own 6 VR systems with my latest from Sony having a 52 degree field of view and full 3D graphics.

For adventure games, they don’t work at all well. Head tracking is very poor so far too.

Reason is alignment of HMD to eyes must be perfect or graphics get really blurry.

Now, for FPS and racing games, they are wonderful.

A compromise is a story based FPS game like the original AVP for Atari jaguar - this on any modern VR system would be amazing.

Today Facebook held an Oculus Rift launch event.

Compatible with the Xbox one controller and can stream games via Windows 10 from the One.

So you can use the Rift as a cinema screen to play games on, but will the Rift be the Xbox’s Morpheous and actually do 3D games. ??

Watch the conference on Twitch http://www.twitch.tv/oculus