First Impressions: PSVR
I’ve been banging on about PSVR on my blog for ages and it’s another one of my latest obsessions. If you know me well enough you know that I go through a lot of gadgets. \”Monkey see, monkey wants\”, that’s me.
I’ve owned so many versions of consoles over the years that I’m afraid to count how many times I’ve sold an Xbox One or PS4 Pro, only to buy it back 6 months later. One day I will just have one console, but until that day I’ll keep buying and selling.
So my latest obsession is PSVR. After months of convincing Sandra (my wife) to let me have one, I finally wore her down.
I picked one up from the \”smelly shop\”, or as I like to call it “CEX my favourite place in the world”. Yes it’s secondhand, but nothing some antibacterial wipes won’t put right.
I got it home and wiped it down with the wipes. It came in its original box, so after unboxing it, I put it together. This involved wires…and more wires. Two HDMI cables, one to and from the PS4, the other from the TV/Monitor. A micro USB from PS4 to the PSVR power box. Then two more going to the PSVR headset.
The headset itself is light it doesn’t feel heavy when using it, so that’s a plus. You do get sweaty after about half an hour of using it, although it’s probably not the best time of year to use it in this current heatwave.
Once you get the headset sitting correctly on your head (first time takes a bit of jigging) it’s all good to go.
I can understand what Chris was talking about back in 2017 on \’The Same Coin\’ podcast when he called it his game of the year. After Chris kindly sent me a code for \’PSVR Worlds\’ I tried most of the games: The London Heist is short but awesome. Just being in the world it’s very immersive and I can see this is the next level of gaming immersion, being able to look around the game world is just mind blowing. Coming from the age of \’Pong\’ this blew my mind, the same way being able to play Pong on my black and white TV did back in the day.
I also tried Ocean Descent, Scavengers Odyssey and VR Luge.
- Ocean Descent: In a word: awesome. There are two types of games, one just ocean descent and the other was shark attack. Shark Attack was fantastic and so real, and it t was great just being able to look around the world.
- Scavengers Odyssey : A space-mech type game. I have to admit my stomach was feeling a little queasy with all the jumping, but it settled down after a few mins. You are in this mech-type machine, a run and gun shooter with some space jumping from rock to rock. It works seamlessly, but I only played about 20 minutes of this.
- VR Luge: Is a \’laying down on this trolley board thing\’. You’re body is lying flat and you are speeding down a road while moving your head left and right to avoid the vehicles. I didn’t like this at all and I managed one or two goes before leaving this well alone. It was good but not for my spinning head.
Of course I had to get Skyrim VR and I now own all versions of Skyrim: Switch, PS4 x 2, PC and Xbox One. However, I’ve only ever managed to complete the main campaign once not including the DLC.
I came out of the cave and into the open world and my jaw dropped. The right thumb stick moves the character as usual, but it’s set to a click based movement, so moving left and right it’s as smooth as the normal version, but I’m sure it’s done like this for a reason as it’s in VR.
I’ve also watched Dredd 3D. I don’t go to the movies that much these days so to get the movie experience when viewing movies in PSVR is a great bonus for me.
The 3D works brilliantly. The quality of the picture isn’t 4K or anything like it, but it works when you have to get the big screen experience while looking at movies using the PSVR headset.
Pros: Total immersion, feels like the next evolution of gaming.
Cons: Sweaty and I can’t see myself using it for long gaming sessions.
Collie Score of 9/10.
Review by Colm.
