Imagine riding a rollercoaster through your favorite city with rails build in the sky.
With the wind in your hair, you look left and right, and you see! Views of the most
famous touristic highlights and a dragon spitting fire, you feel it become hot… just before
you loop upside down and you... scream! Sounds impossible?
Well, nothing is impossible with Virtual Reality, and it is capable of making it feel real with
haptic feedback and special effects systems that allow you to smell scent or even feel
hot & cold temperatures. We’ve tried several next-level, location-based VR games, but we
also tried ones that… we could have done at home. So yes, not every arcade experience
is made the same.
Since the world is opening up again little by little, VR arcades are coming back, so
we wanted to make a video to show you what’s out there. You can see today’s video as
a couple of mini-reviews of different experiences, and at the end, you should know which ones
are MUST TRIES and which you should avoid! We tried them, so you don’t have to.
This is an episode in VR Discovery, subscribe for more, and now, join me beyond reality.
Over the last 4 years, we’ve played various location-based VR experiences. We’ve checked
out the arcade version of Arizona Sunshine, this arena-scale free-roaming shooter. We
played the Star Wars attraction at The Void, this one had the most epic setup, but due
to COVID they, unfortunately, had to close their doors. They are coming back though with
something else, which I’ll talk about later.
And most recently, this month, we went to try Far Cry VR, which is a Far Cry original
but for arcades only; we also went to a tower in Amsterdam that was full of VR. It had this
strange-looking VR ride and other attractions like this ride and this limited edition Beat
Saber machine.
There is so much out there, but like I said before. Not all these arcades are made the
same. We need to talk about the differences.
Let’s make this fun and categorize these arcades. I would say, we got the:
Salty Level – These are VR arcades with basically same setup as we would have at home.
There’s a PC, a VR headset, and a selection of SteamVR games that you can play for like
40 US dollars an hour? Hmm, maybe I should make a VR arcade here in this studio.
On the Sweet Level are VR arcades that not only let you try out games, but also have
an arena with special free-roaming games that you cannot try at home because most of us
don’t have the space for that. Usually, you can play these games in groups.
Spicy Hot Level – These are LBVR arcades that have all of the above but with special
effects and sensory elements, like wind, scent, or even temperature changes.
We will start with Salty. These VR arcades, I’ve seen them at malls. They usually don’t
have a lot of space and just provide exactly what most of us already have at home.
If you already have a VR headset yourself, easy answer, avoid this. If you don’t own
a VR headset and want to buy one, I would not recommend going there either. Because
to truly know if the headset suits you, you need to spend some quality time with it. This
is time you usually don’t get in an arcade. I think the best way to try VR is to buy it
from a respectable store that allow you to return the device if you don’t like it.
But if you spend some time, how could you not like it 😉 May be I’m biased, though.
It’s a different story when these arcades have something sweeter, let’s talk about
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So let’s go to the Sweet level. Luckily, most VR arcades have a big empty area where
you and a group of friends can walk around freely in a VR game. So no locomotion needed,
immersive and comfortable.
These arcades usually have this setup. You wear a VR headset that’s connected to a
wearable PC backpack. Most of them also have a gun that is tracked in-game.
Examples are the LB VR version of Arizona Sunshine, which you can try in arcades worldwide
and the recently released Far Cry VR, which was exclusively made for Zero Latency arcades,
also available all over the world. These games are specially tuned for these areas with redirected
walking so you don’t bump into walls -without- ever noticing these walls. It’s impressive.
It makes games immersive as some games do it so well that it gives you the illusion
that you’re traversing a large path in a straight line, but you’re actually walking
back and forth without even realizing it. If you’ve never tried an LBVR game before,
then yes, go try it out. It’s fun because you cannot do the free-roaming with friends
at home. However, if you’ve already tried one of these before, then it will highly depend
on the game genre whether you should go again. Honestly, I find LBVR shooters quite monotonous.
Usually, these experiences are between 20 to 30 minutes long, but they consist of many
generic wave shooter levels. Lots of shooting, not a lot of other interaction. I think that’s
just not going to be ~WOW~ for a veteran VR player. Maybe if you’re a big fan of the
Far Cry franchise, then you’ll find it really cool to be face-to-face with Vaas. But otherwise,
I’m not sure if it’s worth 50 bucks for a VR veteran for 30 minutes.
However, most of these arcades offer different game genres, and I think one genre works really
well here. The free-roaming escape room games where you have to work together with your
teammates. For example, we’ve tried Escape The Lost Pyramid, a Ubisoft game, except in
the Assassin’s Creed universe. And here at some point, Chary and I had control of
mirrors, and we had to direct light towards each other and something else to solve a puzzle
– let me not spoil too much, but it required communication and player interaction. It’s
great fun. We tried this at VIVELAND in Taiwan, but it’s available everywhere globally in
arcades, and there are different games like this with various difficulty levels.
I recommend calling these arcades and asking them about which ones they have. If you go,
try out at least two different game genres. If they only have one type, you may want to
go to another. Now the most exciting level, Spicy Hot. The
experiences with sensory elements.
My top recommendation here would have been The VOID. The VOID had everything, PC VR headsets,
backpacks, all sensory elements you can think of and even tracked objects you could pick
up. In real life and also in-game. Unfortunately, COVID happened. But maybe they’ll be back
later? I hope so. However, some good news, they did announce something new already. By
the co-founder of The VOID comes a new hyper-reality experience called JUMP. It’s basically a
wingsuit simulator experience that includes several sensory elements including the feeling
of wind and heat, smell like the scent of pine trees, and the real physical sensation
of jumping and ultimately flying. If this is anything like what we tried at The VOID,
then I’m sure it’s going to be epic and I cannot wait to try it out when we can travel
again.
I would also categorize this crazy thing here. This is a rollercoaster simulator at the top
of a tower in Amsterdam called the A’DAM Look-Out tower. It has some funny elements
in there like you start in the same space, and then King Kong will drag you out of the
building and put you on the rails. It also gives you a quick overview of the beautiful
city of Amsterdam, not that you have a lot of time to look around. This experience really
reminded me of the Yaw VR chair, so if you wanna know what that’s like. Except it has
one extra sensory element, and that’s the wind blowing at you.
I do have to say; this is made for tourists and for those who may never tried VR before.
So it is intentionally a mild experience, at least for the veteran VR player. On the
other hand, it is very comfortable for a rollercoaster experience as it should not make you motion
sick which is pretty hard to achieve with rollercoaster games. A try once, why not,
type of experience.
They also have a VR arcade in the same building with multiple things to try. I would say at
the sweet level. Pretty interesting because this is like a tower full of VR. If you’re
ever in Amsterdam, go check out this ADAM Look-Out tower, not just for VR, because it’s
also a beautiful touristic spot.
I also want to thank all the other arcades for inviting us so we could make this video.
Zero Latency has arcades all over the world, check out their website for that. VIVELAND
is only in Taiwan as far as I know, but I recommend it if you are there.
Of course, I’ve linked everything below and I hope you enjoyed this kinda different
video. I love making these as it’s my passion trying out and covering new VR experiences.
Telling you what’s out there. However, these videos do take a lot of work, so if you like
it, please give me a thumbs up, and support us even more by commenting what you think
about this below so I know I should make more.
A special thanks go to all our Champions, especially these Patrons down below. As always,
VR on!