hey everybody its norm from tested and welcome back to projections our VR and
AR show where this week I'm gonna be talking about two games one that's out
right now that you can buy and one that's coming out in about a month's
time that I had a chance to play the latest build of let's talk about that
first the game is phantom covert ops I'd been
hearing a lot about this it's an oculus exclusive from developer
and dreams and it's a stealth stealth action game in the vein of Metal Gear
Solid or a splinter cell but in VR and what makes this game unique as you may
have heard is it's locomotion mechanic the whole game is designed for a seeded
experience because you as the operative explore the world in a kayak yes a kayak
now hear me out because it's a very little concept but
the story goes you are infiltrating an old Russian base and the Russian base is
basically divided by canals by water so you are navigating it on a kayak in the
dark and you get around the world by basically paddling around you're in a
virtual kayak seated you have a pistol on you a sniper rifle ammo SMG on your
back binoculars basically everything that you would need for an action game
is accessible on this virtualized kayak and you get around by paddling by
holding the touch controllers now in dreams I think did a really good job
with simulating the paddling because you don't have to actually hold a real
paddle like it's a two-handed thing you can use one hand but if you think about
how you're holding the controllers you would normally have to hold paddle like
this or one hand like that and paddle back and forth but in the game if your
hands are misaligned if they're not even off access it'll still work what's
important is how you've had all the movements you make and how kind of
whether it's back and forth of you've ever gone Chi
it's very very similar to that experience and there is even some haptic
feedback for example when you dip the paddle into the water you feel the
vibration on the controllers that combined with I recommend wearing
headphones for this made it very the sense of presence of being on the kayak
it totally is believable and it has a very almost floaty feel to it you know
it's all about momentum you're paddling fast you're making these turns and then
you're kind of hiding as you're going through the space avoiding the
spotlights avoiding the AI and kind of finding your way around the nooks and
crannies of these canals and of this old installation now because you're on a
kayak you have to be able to turn turning it's like a big part of this
game and one of the things that I notice immediately is it is a game that's gonna
take some VR legs some VR sea legs almost because well n Dreamz has done a
bunch to try to make the game comfortable including vignetting if
you're making these fast turns and they don't do anything like roll you as a
player you know you're still rolling your head as you move and there's no
rocking of the kayak it's basically just lateral movement with some turning that
turning that's smooth turning it's basically smooth locomotion is gonna be
uncomfortable I think for a lot of players and including me now the game's
gonna come out on both the rift and the quest and it will have cross by then the
build that I was able to play was the desktop build the rift build and I tried
to wet both the rift as well as with a quest had set via the link cables wasn't
running natively on the quest and I couldn't do more than ten minutes at a
time with the quest via the link cable it's just whether it was the added
latency of the link cable or the compression because it's kind of crushed
black it's all dark it just wasn't comfortable
at all thankfully it will play natively on the quest when it comes out and
they'll probably the way if you have a quest to play it rather than a link
cable and my experience was better playing on the rift headset at a high
refresh rate it was 8 Hertz as opposed to 72 on the quest and didn't have any
of those latency problems but still it was pushing limits of even my sense of
comfort and I can do smooth locomotion I can do smooth turning on first-person
shooter games there's something about this game that just made me feel
nauseous by the end of the first of the tuitions I was able to play now that's
not gonna be the case for everyone so it is gonna be something that's at least I
think worth trying but we didn't have access in this preview build to all the
comfort options so I don't know what they would go into I don't think they
can add snap turning because I would feel awkward with the paddling so much
of it is about the acceleration the deceleration that kind of floating as I
was mentioning cuz you're on water and you're kind of gliding into these hidden
spots as you're obscured by foliage and remaining hidden now there are
definitely stretches of the game where I felt really in the zone and I was
comfortable and it was more about just hiding and observing the environment I
was looking to see where these AI soldiers were where they were patrolling
putting on putting on the binoculars and spotting them finding places where I can
distract them and all that was was pretty fun I wouldn't say the AI felt
super intelligent it was almost kind of like the best version of an interactive
Pirates of the Caribbean ride where you know I'm paddling and going through this
water and watching them go through the routines and then timing ways and
finding ways to basically puzzle solve out of these environments without being
spotted and there are a couple times where I just went guns blazing and try
to shoot my way through didn't work well at all died multiple times I do think
it's gonna be something that's gonna be worth looking into when it comes out
there is supposed to be a lot more game left beyond this build and very clearly
there trying to for the Metal Gear Solid vibe I mean
they even got David Hayter to do some voice acting for it but I'm not sure
look it's still waiting for that Splinter Cell analog in VR I think
that's that type of game play can work very well that stealth cat-and-mouse
hunting game we've seen a lot of attempts at that genre in VR and I'm not
quite sure if animal covert ops is gonna reach that point but it comes out in
June 25th in a little over a month's time and I'll be revisiting that when it
does come out
now the other game on talk about that is out today is it's a cop it's a party
game and it's space team VR no space team sounds familiar it's a very popular
mobile game and this is taking that exact concept that license and bringing
that to V arts cooperative up to six players and it's a game that feels right
for this moment as we're all feeling a little isolated from each other I've
been waiting for game that can bring us in the VR and you know we there are
things like big screen there are meeting rooms and their social game is but this
feels like a right short form I can drop in and play for 10 minutes play for half
an hour with just one buddy with three other friends and just have something
without a purpose just play the game for fun now the gameplay is pretty simple
and should be very familiar to you if you've played the mobile game up to six
people are dropped into essentially the bridge of a starship where your console
is arranged in a circular donut pattern everyone's facing each other
so where's games like Star Trek bridge crew the layout is a more traditional
Star Trek ship where the ops and tactical are in the front and the
captain's behind them here everyone's facing each other and looking at your
cartoonish avatars and these consoles are basically dynamic with increasing
progression with every level you get a new layout of console with these
randomly generated names or these different operations and then a display
on top tells you the operation that you need either activate on your console or
have someone on the team activate so it's a communication game and one of the
fears for this game that I had was would it work in VR with communication being
so important with gestures would you know spatial audio voice medications be
effective enough to simulate that in-person experience the tabletop
experience that we've seen with space team they've been so successful with a
party game when people sitting around a living room coffee table yelling at each
other and when there was a lot of yelling at each other
I played in both a two-person game with just me and Jeremy and that was that
worked just fine we're able to get pretty far and still required a lot of
communication a lot of figuring out how to communicate as they would throw these
curve balls at you distort or a voice you know drop some letters some of the
names of the things you need to read a lot of the fun is in the trying to
pronounce all these crazy signings fiction you know thingamabobs that
they're putting on the consoles and putting on the screen and I also played
up with four people through other people with will cash or and Jeremy and we
played for I think about 20 minutes without much longer than that and it got
really heated a lot of talking over each other but we naturally figured it out we
figure out a pace of how to signal to each other
secrete their revolving half piston
secrete the revolving half piston
varnish please while we were playing with friends that definitely work I'm
really curious how this is gonna work when you jump into a server with a bunch
of randos and I do think if everyone's into it if people are in playing in the
spirit of the game you can have a lot of fun but it's also the kind of game that
if you just have a handful of people not playing for it you can get a bit
frustrated but I do think it's one of those things I'm gonna we're gonna go
back to there's so much replayability with all the levels being randomly
generated basically limitless levels and cross-platform play on a desktop on the
quest and even on the mobile side if you want to have play in the same room have
someone on their phone along with someone in a VR headset so space team VR
I would recommend that that is out right now and will again revisit phantom
covert ops in about a month's time when that gets finally Reese and we get a
chance to see all the different comfort options for that game because I still am
very interested in how that plays out but thanks for watching that's
projections for this well more stuff next week I love know
what you're playing in VR during this quarantine time hope you're staying safe
and I'll see you next time bye Omega scale to one kick the ball cock
someone kick the ball cock