Devolver Digital E3 Hands-On Preview: "Absolver," "Serious Sam VR," "Shadow Warrior 2"

[Guest]

Devolver Digital invited the Tom's Hardware Community to check out E3 showcase. We got a hands-on preview of "Absolver," "Serious Sam VR," and "Shadow Warrior 2."

Devolver Digital E3 Hands-On Preview: "Absolver," "Serious Sam VR," "Shadow Warrior 2" : Read more

 

[Jeff Fx]

I expect that you're stuck in one spot in Serious Sam VR because there's no way to run and gun in VR. You can move around a bit in room-scale VR, but not the distances you'd need to run in SS. If they allowed movement with a controller, it would make many users sick, which is not the reputation any game developer wants.

 

[Jsimenhoff]

I expect that you're stuck in one spot in Serious Sam VR because there's no way to run and gun in VR. You can move around a bit in room-scale VR, but not the distances you'd need to run in SS. If they allowed movement with a controller, it would make many users sick, which is not the reputation any game developer wants.

You are right about the motion sickness issue. All of the VR developers I talked to were aware of this issue and were desperately searching for ways around it. One such way was to allow players to teleport around the level, usually with a cool down (put in place mostly to prevent motion sickness and not for game balancing purposes).

My biggest qualm with Serious Sam VR is that the stationary gameplay is such a strong departure from what Serious Sam is known for. I expected an exciting action game, not a basic turret shooter.

 

[Brandon_29]

Well it depends really. I pre-ordered the Omni for this exact purpose. SS VR with an Omni and my Vive will really be a perfect combo. Sure just room scale is not enough, but the port system works surprisingly well if they integrated it. I can see that working out ok, but the speed would have to be dumbed down a little bit or your reaction time will just not be fast enough. The perfect VR FPS game for me is Vive and Omni, duck down, pop-up, run, and strafe (side-step) all in full motion. Yes please. I can't speak to how good the Omni is since it is still just a pre-order. The Vive however blows me away every time I use it. Amazing!

 

[Zapin]

The Omni indeed looks intriguing to me since I do feel the instant uneasiness with traditional dual stick movement in games while in VR. Did not know that you can duck using it also. I may look into getting one. It really is something for playing games ported/modded for VR rather than anything designed for it though.

 

[Brandon_29]

Zapin - Ya the ducking is part of the Vive system. It senses your head height and drops down accordingly although it won't be as easy as room scale since you are inside the Omni device and a bit more limited to space then open room scale is. The Omni itself can sense jumping as well which is cool, but I wonder how sturdy it is to handle someone 250 lbs jumping on it. I am not 100% convinced it will be as good as the initial impressions have been, but the Vive blew my expectations away so I am willing to risk it. The Rift on the other hand was far far below my expectations and I am very glad I cancelled my pre-order for it. Without room tracking the Vive feels like a TV on my head. The room tracking is 100% a make or break for me. Since the Rift does not have it I cancelled my pre-order right after I figured that out. I am using that money to buy the Omni instead.