Today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I finally experienced a virtual reality game, not just a tech demo or interactive movie. While Oculus Rift showed off a graphically gorgeous demo at CES , and Samsung's VR demo can make you feel like Tony Stark , Sony's Project Morpheus feels like it's getting close to developing a killer app. It was The Heist, and while not every demo I tried for Sony's Project Morpheus offered its combination of excitement and interaction, it's got me beyond excited for the future of VR.

I began The Heist by dropping my butt into a chair, with a PlayStation Move in either hand, and soon found out why I had to be seated: so a jacked British thug brandishing a blowtorch could loom over me and shout in my face. I was laughing at first, but couldn’t help but jump when he knocked over a table behind him and really kicked the screaming act into high gear. Make no mistake, sound is just as important to any VR experience as the visuals are.Then, just as I was about to get the third degree from his torch, a phone rang, saving my skin and giving me my first opportunity to interact. A single floating glove representing my right hand appeared, and I reached up and took the phone from my captor’s beefy grip. The voice of an unknown caller sent me into a flashback of a robbery gone wrong.I appeared in a darkened Victorian style study. I couldn’t walk around, but I now had two gloved hands I could control and a flashlight sitting before me. I reached out and grabbed the light with a trigger pull on the Move, shining it into drawers as I opened them. I quickly found pistol and several clips. I dropped the flashlight and grabbed the gun. I pulled it closer to my face and inspected a dragon engraving on the mother of pearl handle. I grabbed a clip from the drawer and brought to the bottom of the hilt. It snapped into place as though magnetized, with a satisfying click.I got back to my search and found a key, which opened a locked cabinet on the desk. Inside the safe was a golf ball sized diamond. The moment I touched it, an alarm sounded, lights flipped on, and guards began to flood the room.I surprised myself by dropping the first guard with a single headshot. The next two weren’t so easy, they made good use of cover while we exchanged fire. I did the same, ducking down behind the desk to the point where I could really feel it in my kneesI was amazed with how quickly the immersiveness of the demo overtook me. Just moments before I was smiling, amused with the angry Englishman who was trying to intimidate me. Now I was hunkering down behind a desk, feeling overwhelmed as I desperately sprayed lead in enemies’ direction. Right as my last bullet left the chamber, the timer on the demo ran out, and “to be continued…” appeared on the screen.The next demo was a lovely change of pace, and should be familiar to anyone who has a PS Camera. It starred those adorable, Minion-like robots, all hanging out in a dollhouse of sorts. It was less of game and more of a semi-interactive cartoon. Robots were swimming, watching TV, even playing with Morpheus (meta!). And when you leaned in toward one, a little animation played.I’m not easily won over by cute stuff, but it’s hard to overstate just how charming these little guys are. When I leaned in toward floating on an inner tube in a pool, a shark popped and dragged him under. I was genuinely relieved when he surfaced and got back on his tube.The final demo I tried was the least game-like, but the most moody. This was The Deep, an expanded version of the undersea dive simulation Sony used when it first demoed Morpheus at GDC last year.The Deep did the best job of showing the range of emotion virtual reality can run you through. First you’re going deeper and deeper, taking in the tranquil beauty of seat turtles and schools of fish. Then, when you encounter a wrecked sub and underwater heat vents, things start to get ominous.However, when a great white shark showed up, the tension was majorly undercut by the fact that I couldn’t really do anything. I could only watch as he burst my oxygen tank and ripped into the cage. I knew that whether or not I escaped or became a shark’s breakfast was simply up to the game, not my performance, so I was more into observing the details in his cold, beady doll eyes than I was cowering in fear. The Deep did tranquil beauty far better than horror or suspense.All in all, I’m a believer. Project Morpheus was incredible, and showed how versatile VR can be as a story telling device, and a medium. The bite size demo nuggets Sony offered at GDC were savory, but I can’t wait to sink my teeth into a full blown VR experience.