Batman: Arkham VR – the best PlayStation VR experience so far

GameCentral reports back on the five most interesting PlayStation VR games from E3, and the headaches they cause.

From just watching the pre-show conferences you might have got the impression that virtual reality was already yesterday’s fad, but the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets were at E3 (Oculus VR’s John Carmack even made a brief appearance at Microsoft’s conference). And the PlayStation VR (PSVR) could be found on almost every major publisher’s stand. As such, we thought it would be a useful opportunity to come to some sort of initial verdict on the device. But instead we’ve come away more conflicted than ever.



We’ve played around with the PSVR plenty of times before, but previously only via tech demos. At E3 though everything was intended to be a sold as a real game. Although in almost every case no decision had been made on how much they’d cost or how exactly they’d be sold. Many of them, such as Batman and Until Dawn, are only two or three hours long and the current thinking was that they’d probably be priced similarly to an indie download, i.e. somewhere around £15.

Resident Evil 7 was the first game we played and was so problematic we almost wrote off PSVR immediately. The resolution of the game played through the headset was awful, and despite never having had any adverse effect from VR before it caused us significant discomfort. Many of the other games did too, albeit to a lesser degree – so we’ve given them all a woozinosity rating out of 10.


Talking to various developers the consensus was that the problem didn’t lie with the PSVR itself but that the games being made for it play and control much more like traditional video games. That said, the PSVR is technically less advanced than the PC headsets, in order to make it relatively affordable. Many of the games will be available alongside the launch of the PSVR, which will cost £349 when it’s released on or around the US release date of October 13.

We’ll go into the details of each game we played below, but you can certainly understand why Microsoft is taking a more sceptical view of the situation. They’re being cagey about the details, but in our interview with Phil Spencer he implied that they were waiting for the Project Scorpio console to be released next year, which should be considerably more powerful than the current PlayStation 4 model. Although it’s unclear whether Microsoft will look to support the Oculus Rift or make their own headset, or do both…

Resident Evil 7 biohazard One of the most hoped for surprises of E3 was the reveal of a new mainline Resident Evil game. And it actually happened too: announced as a first person game inspired by Capcom’s earlier Kitchen virtual reality demo. As far as we understand the demo we played is the same as that currently available for free on PSN (we can’t actually check because we’re still in L.A. and didn’t pack our PS4) but the big difference was we got to play through the whole thing in virtual reality. With the (extremely comfortable) PSVR on your head, you can look around in any direction, while the standard DualShock 4 is used to move around in the normal first person fashion. The most immediate problem this creates is that although the game runs on a TV at 1080p and 60fps the view through the PSVR appears much lower resolution, as if you’re viewing the world through a sheet of gauze. You get used to it to a degree, but it has the odd sensation of feeling both state-of-the-art and as if the game is several generations out of date. The more severe problem though was that the game appears to make no concession to the fact that the more your character walks around, without you physically moving out of your seat, the more confused your brain gets. In Resident Evil 7 you can move at a fair speed in any direction, and so we ended up with something very close to a headache within seconds. And yet some people we spoke to had no problem, while others had to stop playing before they reached the end. Whatever you think of Resident Evil 7 itself, it seems to expose not just the potential pitfalls of virtual reality but also the inconsistency of the experience for many people. Wooziniesty: 7/10 Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

Release Date: 24th January 2017

Batman: Arkham VR After our experiences with Resident Evil 7 we were beginning to feel very down on the whole question of virtual reality, and particularly the PSVR. So it was a good job that the next game we played was Arkham VR – our favourite VR experience of the show. Although it did feel a lot like a tech demo at times, the final game will apparently be a two to three-hour experience that focuses on story and detective work. Or rather, it focuses on making you feel like Batman in a way the existing Arkham games never could. The preview we played started in Wayne Manor, with a brief conversation with Alfred. A pair of PlayStation Move controllers are used to control a virtual hand each – as demonstrated by a neat sequence where we have to take a key, turn it in the lock of a piano, play a few keys to reveal a lift, and then slowly descend into the Batcave. The graphics are fantastic, at least as good as Arkham Knight, and viewing it all from a first person perspective makes it seem impossibly real. What follows is what we’re tempted to describe as Batman porn, if that didn’t have entirely different connotations to what we actually mean. What you do is slowly put on the suit, gloves, cowl, and gadgets; placing them onto your virtual body and testing out the batarangs and grapnel gun. It’s such a perfect example of fanboy wish fulfilment that our grin while doing so must’ve rivalled the Joker himself. The game proper starts with Batman investigating the death of Nightwing in a dank looking alleyway. But here the view was even more extraordinary, as we peered up at a looming bridge and other buildings – as rain constantly fell from the virtual heavens above. The gameplay involves a variation of the detective elements from the regular games, as you forward and rewind a holographic recreation of Nightwing’s death in order to find out what happened. Once you get to grip with the controls it’s very simple, but still extremely atmospheric (especially as Kevin Conroy returns as the voice of Batman). Unlike Resident Evil 7 the game doesn’t let you move around yourself, but instead you teleport between indicated spots, a bit like a point ‘n’ click adventure. It’s not a very elegant solution to the problem of wooziness but it works, and has already become an accepted standard with many Oculus Rift and HTC Vive games. Wooziniesty: 0/10 Publisher: WB Games

Developer: Rocksteady

Release Date: October 2016

Until Dawn: Rush Of Blood We don’t know what Sony is going to do when the first gamer drops dead of fright when playing PSVR, but it seems inevitable given just how many survival horror games have already been announced. There was a rather promising looking one at E3 called Here They Lie, which seemed to be a cross between Outlast and Manhunt, but we didn’t have time to play that properly. Instead we opted for this spin-off from Until Dawn – although the connections to the 2015 original are tenuous in terms of story and non-existent when it comes to gameplay. Rush Of Blood is basically an on-the-rails lightgun game – part haunted house ride and part roller coaster (we assume you’re meant to be dreaming or something, but the story was never explained to us). The effect is infinitely scarier than the original Until Dawn, as you point the torchlights on your guns at the darkness around you – desperate to locate the source of the various ominous noises. There’s not actually much shooting though, at least in the demo we played, but an awful lot of ducking out of the way of giant saw blades (there are sensors in the PSVR headset that can tell how your head’s moving) and swinging butcher’s hooks. The giant, moving pig carcases were particularly revolting and the surreal atmosphere enjoyable unpredictable. How long that can all be maintained for, we’re not sure. But as a sort of modern day The House Of The Dead it already seemed to work very well as it is. Wooziniesty: 1/10 Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Supermassive Games

Release Date: October 2016

Farpoint Although we’d never heard of it until now, one of the most popular new PSVR games at E3 was this first person shooter from American studio Impulse Gear. A lot of that was probably due to the fact that it has its own special gun controller, that looks a bit like a Wii Zapper and can be used instead of PlayStation Move controllers. It was designed with Farpoint in mind, but will be used with other games in the future. There’s a little analogue stick opposite the trigger, and a second one on the back. The latter wasn’t available in the demo though and the developer admitted that it did take some getting used to and could cause discomfort for new players. Even just using one stick is bad enough, as you’re basically moving around like a normal first person shooter. Except you use your head’s position to direct yourself, which made it feel uncannily like you’re driving around on a Segway. The game seemed to avoid the more extreme sensations of Resident Evil because you were mostly always moving in a straight line, rather than constantly changing direction and performing tight manoeuvres. Although considering the game is a riff on the Starship Troopers movie, as you shoot spider-like enemies on a desert planet, our primary direction of travel was always backwards. Many of the games we played, including Batman, only offer you a pair of fake hands to control, but Farlight gives you a proper virtual body complete with arms – which immediately adds to the sense of immersion. Although the game itself was very simplistic and in terms of the demo at least relied solely on the novelty of the technology. Wooziniesty: 5/10 Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Impulse Gear

Release Date: TBA

Battle Zone One of the basic principles of virtual reality is that forward movement is fine as long as you’re simulating something where you’re already sitting down. So if you’re flying a spaceship or driving a car it works perfectly, because the sensation of movement is exactly what your brain would already expect. But things aren’t quite that simple. Battle Zone is an update of the venerable old coin-op, where you’re sitting at the controls of a futuristic hover tank. But the tank controls much like any first person shooter, and so we found the wooziness to still be fairly significant. We were great fans of Pandemic’s late ‘90s reboot of the franchise, but inevitably this doesn’t include any real-time strategy elements. The tank does control similarly though, and there’s some interesting tactics in terms of which weapon to use and how to prioritise enemies. The Tron-like graphics are nice too, and the developer promised that the final game would have a roguelike element that ensured more replayability than some of the other more on-the-rails experiences. Wooziniesty: 4/10 Publisher: Rebellion

Developer: Rebellion

Release Date: Launch window

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