I had just played a couple rounds of EVE: Valkyrie against the members of the press here at EVE’s Fanfest. The game looked amazing, even on the DK2’s now long-outdated display. So when I heard I would get a chance to play the game on Crescent Bay I was positively giddy.

I eagerly hustled up to the top floor of the press lounge, and got in line. While this was far from my first experience with the Crescent Bay it was my first experience on it with a real game and my first experience with input on the device. That alone made an entire world of difference, as I was finally able to have an interactive presence on the device.

As the ship began it’s preflight check I giddily examined every minute detail in the cockpit, which simply was stunning on the Crescent Bay. In the DK2 version of the game, there were some details in the HUD that were difficult to make out, although not nearly as difficult to read as the HUD in Elite: Dangerous. Text looked crisp, and the colored lights in the cockpit really popped.

As the ship rocketed on the magnetic catapult into space I could’ve sworn I felt the momentum, it was truly great, but it was nothing compared to the moment I actually entered space. Seeing the highly detailed debris field on the map in the Crescent Bay vs. the DK2 was like night and day. Textures and details were far more clear, which also worked to improve the gameplay. In the DK2 there I had some issues with targeting an enemy who was more than a certain distance away with my gatling guns because it was difficult to pinpoint the speck against the wreckage. This was not nearly as much the case with the Crescent Bay, which while not perfect still managed to make it possible to target a ship hidden in the debris.

The improved positional tracking of the Crescent Bay didn’t add nearly as much to this experience as it might to other non-seated ones. That said, the tracking on the Crescent Bay didn’t break once during the five minute play session I had on it, where as the DK2 occasionally would lose tracking for a second when I was quickly whipping my head around tracking ships.

Overall I cannot overstate how much better it was for me playing this game on the Crescent Bay, the first time I can say I truly did play a game on the device. I have written a lot about the Vive recently, but even adding a simple input device like an Xbox controller to the experience of the Crescent Bay truly elevates it. It’s still not room scale with beautifully tracked controllers, but it is more than mildly impressive and truly reignited my passion for Crescent Bay which had gone slightly under appreciated over the last few weeks.

For a full gameplay review be sure to check out our other post on the game here.