In the era of Virtual Reality gaming it was not surprise that V.R. games
and tech were featured often during E3 2016. Oculus had a large booth on
the floor, and Sony featured their pending Playstation VR at their booth
and at the conference.
Capcom showed off the latest Resident Evil game as well in VR to the
delight and reported nausea of some who played it.
I got the chance to try a couple of smaller titles from developers during
our coverage of E3 2016, and here is our report.
Narcosis is a underwater survival horror game from Honor Code which is
coming for the Oculus rift system in summer of 2016.
I had a bit of an issue getting the headset focused but the developers
improved this by tightening the strap. While it never was optimal for me
during my playtest, it did allow me to take in the lavish visuals of the
game.
Clad in a diving suit, I could see O2 displays when I looked down below my
field of view and also had a full range of visuals as I walked through an
underwater locale that had been flooded.
The light from my suit moved whenever I moved my head and allowed me to
explore the locales which had seen better days.
With bubbles around me and searching for Oxygen always a necessity, I
heard the steady pace of my breathing and kept expecting all manner of
dangers to emerge from the shadows. One moment featured a gigantic crab
who was motionless and eventually came to life to beat a hasty retreat.
From gathering items from corpses and fighting off attacking underwater
dangers, the game did keep my attention. While it was not nearly as scary
as Alien Isolation in the segment I played, I can say that I would pull
back from a door when I opened it expecting something to pop out at me.
I did have some disorientation at times while playing and one segment that
had me in a chamber surrounded by dive suits was severe and made me wish I
had brought the motion sickness band we were asked to try, but since this
is usually not an issue for me, I did not bother with it.
While the demo ended for me without any big scares or action sequences, I
did enjoy what I saw and hope to see more of the game in the future,
hopefully on other platforms as well.
Next up was the World War II fighter game which puts players in various
fighters of the era over numerous locales. I flew a trainer, a Hurricane,
and a Spitfire over Hawaii as I battled German fighters. The graphics were
solid but I did note that at a distance, details were a bit hazy at times.
The developer told me that they were really looking forward to 4K becoming
more standard as it is a more ideal platform for V.R.
I experienced some disorientation when turning the plane but it did become
more manageable as I went along. Operating thrust with my left hand and a
joystick with my right, I chased enemies around the map and attempted to
bring them down. It is much harder than it looked as enemy planes were
often faster so closing on them was a challenge. I also ran out of ammo on
several instances and had to wait for it to rearm.
Hitting an enemy does result in a smoke screen, but hits on you can limit
your visibility, especially when oil splashed the cockpit.
One enemy plane went down when I was able to tag it while it evaded my
wingman but one took me an extended battle to bring down. I was able to
achieve this by herding it towards a mountain and knowing it was faster,
I assumed a path above it and peppered the ascent angle with fire to make
it cross into the kill zone I set up.
After chasing it around the map, it was highly satisfying seeing the
parachutes emerge after shooting down an enemy.
There are several planes for players to select from and multiple arenas to
battle in. I was also told that the game would be coming to the
Playstation as well.
While the motion discomfort passed, it was great to look down at the
cockpit and see my VR legs and flight controls while cruising between the
islands to take down the enemy units.
With sharper clarity and framerates in the future, this tech will really
pop, but for me, I had to limited my gameplay as it did become a bit
uncomfortable after a while.
