As an owner of the Playstation VR system, I have been very happy and impressed with it since I first demoed it at PAX Prime 2015. Further sampling at PAX West 2016 only confirmed to me that my decision to order one was a good one, and I have enjoyed playing games with it whenever my schedule of reviews and other deadlines allow.
While the system has done well in terms of performance and price, there are those in the gaming community who still see Virtual Reality as just a fad, and one that is destined to fade away much like the 3D gaming that was offered on the PS3 gaming system.
My take is that it is a solid piece of hardware but like any such device, it is up to publishers to fully support it and offer titles that enhance the technology and gaming experience and games that people will actually want to play.
There is nothing worse than feeling compelled to purchase a title that you might have otherwise overlooked because it supports VR and as such, believe that you need to get as many VR enabled games as possible to justify the purchase of the hardware.
Many of the launch games have been decent enough and some have been very good experiences despite some shortfalls.
One of the biggest issues has been that many of the bigger name titles have had short gameplay lengths such as the recent Batman game.
I find myself playing games like Headmaster and Until Dawn: Rush of Blood often but do wish for more depth in the games. Recent releases have shown promise but I can say that as for now, there are not any huge pending VR games that really excite me. That is not to say that some will not pop up and capture my attention or that I will not be pleasantly surprised by something that has slipped below my radar, but since I play EA Star Wars Battlefront on PC, the VR mission that is upcoming is not an option for me as I do not plan to get a PS4 version of the game simply to play that mission.
As we get into 2017 the PS Pro will hopefully keep gaining momentum and as such, hopefully bigger and better games for the PSVR will be coming sooner rather than later.
I do believe that the potential for the hardware may have the most potential for gamers since 3D cards became all the rage for PC users. That being said, it is important that this does not become what so many Wii games did, and that was a gimmick that relied on the motion control aspect to sell stripped down and underpowered titles rather than advancing the technology. For me the Wii Sports game was the best of the games for the Wii in terms of making the best integration of the control system and keeping fun and interactive games that people wanted to play again and again. I am not saying there were not other good games as there were, but for me they never captured the full potential that Wii Sports did. Hopefully Sony and their publishing partners will continue to push the envelope of this new frontier with compelling titles that will keep us playing well into the future.
