EVE: Valkyrie is the VR love child of developers CCP Games that has spawned from a tech demo
and has transformed into the beauty that it is today, the beauty that you see here.
I played Valkyrie back in November 2013 on the Oculus Rift HD dev kit and I'll be honest
although it was beautiful, it made me feel a little sick.
Now I've just tried it on the newer bad boy on the VR scene, Sony's Project Morpheus so
here's a demo of EVE: Valkyrie on the Project Morpheus and what you can expect.
Here I am having a cheeky three minute hands-on and it was immediately apparent that the Morpheus
felt pretty comfy on my head although as you can see here, I had it on a bit wonky.
Anyway, Valkyrie as a game was once again a beautiful thing even more so then my previous
experience because of course development has obviously evolved since my first go.
You can strap the Morpheus to your face, put on the headphones and you're totally immersed
in this dog-fighting simulator.
The external appearance of the Morpheus looks slick compared to the Oculus square but that's
a mere vanity extra as you don't see it when it's on your face anyway.
Once in the game you can look down at your body, not your actual body, but a body, look
around the cockpit and attempt to grasp the actual mechanics before realising these aren't
your arms and you look like a fool and lucky for you, that's not the only way VR will make
you look foolish.
Take this guys mouth here, or this guy shouting here, or I mean this guy couldn't look less
bothered so he got away with it.
I played a head-to-head deathmatch of universal proportions.
Space rock dodging and missile launching is your goal and to confirm kills obviously.
Oh and not die.
I asked Chris Smith, lead game designer on Valkyrie for some top tips on experiencing
the game in VR.
"One thing that we find is that VR is so new and what people tend to do is this...
And it's VR you don't have to do that.
You can... so the top tip to enjoy anything on VR is enjoy VR.
Is look up, look down, don't just look left and it's that movement, it's that exploration
of VR that we are designing for.
I mean you know you can see the state of your guns on the wings."
A new addition to Valkyrie is the ability to lock seperate missiles depending on how
many you've got stored.
You hold your left trigger, lock on with your vision and release.
It's a bit tricky and glitchy as the ships will most of the time zoom right over your
head leaving you spinning in a daze while attempting to sustain your target lock.
On the flip side if you want to escape a missile hit set upon yourself, you can accelerate
away as movement is constant but can be fastened.
Aside from the combat hiccup, a big change to the game would be the transition from the
previous used Unity to the Unreal Engine 4.
Chris Smith let me know why CCP made the move.
"The reason we're going to Unreal is the knowledge base on Unreal is very high, I mean myself
I'm used to Unreal it's got an amazing engine, it's easy to use, we get results very very
quickly and you know, there's no better reason then that."
An absolutely incredible experience and for the first time ever I didn't leave VR feeling
queasy with a hint of unknown sadness like I needed a bit of physical contact to realise
I wasn't alone anymore.
But, you're not alone in the game anymore.
A voice has joined you in the form of Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff and her calming
voice informing you of your movements and what's occurring.
"We have salvage crew still inside the wreckage we need three more minutes.
You've got multiple hostiles inbound I need you to light up as many of them as you possibly
can."
I've been told she'll be even more immersive soon enough.
An experience not to be missed.
Morpheus was delicate, completely immersive and the graphics were outstanding.
Although my time with Valkyrie and Morpheus was brief it will be amazing to see a full
version where you can communicate with other players.
To me, the future's all about VR.