“When you say ‘on-rails-shooter’ people roll their eyes.”

Executive Producer Simon Harris is talking while wiping my sweat off a Playstation VR headset. I just finished playing seven minutes of his new game, Until Dawn: Rush of Blood

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It’s funny that he mentions people rolling their eyes because less than 24 hours before this, I was sat in Sony’s Paris Games Week conference rolling my eyes as Rush of Blood was announced as one of Sony’s new virtual reality experiences. Here’s a studio that created one of the best horror games in recent years, Until Dawn, now busying themselves with something as antiquated as as on-rails shooter. This, however, is exactly where Harris and his studio Supermassive Games want us.

“People expect a certain something with an on-rails-shooter, and we can play with their expectations and those conventions to really frighten players.”

“ We can play with their expectations and those conventions to really frighten players.

“Jump scares are great in VR,” Harris reckons, and there’s a few times during the Rush of Blood demo where the horror movie fan in me recognises the telltale signs of an impending fright, only to find that the terror comes from an entirely different part of the screen that I wasn’t watching in fear. In the same way that Until Dawn took instantly-recognisable horror tropes that we instantly recognise and turned them on their heads, Rush of Blood is attempting to do the same thing with an on-rails shooter.

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When asked how Supermassive Games is dealing with the common complaint of motion sickness, Harris with a tiny glimmer of evil in his eye said: “We’re experimenting with what people can stand.”

I love the idea that developers can intentionally push people’s bodies to the limits with virtual reality and horror seems like the perfect place for this to be implemented. The fact that my Rush of Blood demo starts off on actual roller coaster prepared me for feelings of nausea, but if I’m honest, the roller coaster sections were actually the weakest part. I’ve played some theme park demos on Oculus Rift where I didn’t dare open my eyes, but the coaster sections in short Rush of Blood demo I played plodded along a bit. I think the reason for this was that I was meant to be shooting targets (pigs’ heads and creepy dolls, obviously) from the coaster but I expected these sections to be a bit less-shooty and bit more thrilling.

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I think what Rush of Blood does extremely well though is to maintain the level of fear throughout even though they’ve armed you with some guns to protect yourself. I always find it pretty hard to be scared in games where I’ve got firepower but I still found myself consistently scared in Rush of Blood despite having a shotgun, which is something that’s rarely happened to me before.

I only played for seven minutes, but I didn’t pick up on any strong connections with the original Until Dawn. The main connection is an awareness of horror and how best to adapt it into an effective video game experience. If Supermassive Games can introduce execute its smart ideas regarding horror and VR, Rush of Blood will easily be up there with the best early offering on PlayStation VR.