Hey! Over this weekend I got to try PSVR at Pax east, twice!  So I thought I'd give my impressions both of the hardware, and of the games I got to try. So lets jump right in.

London Heist: The Getaway

This was the first game I got to try and for those who don't know. It's a game that uses two Move controllers and has you shooting at badguys from the passenger seat of a speeding car.

The game was fun, and managed to be more interestign than the pretty standard rail shooter it is. The best part was having the feeling of actually being in the car and being able to interact with things in the car, and open the door, ect. Having the extra freedom of movement made the action more fun by letting you move and duck and making you manually reload the gun.

I've heard some complaints about the motion tracking on the Move controllers. But I didn't have any trouble when I used them, they aren't perfect, but they work well and I'd have no issue playing a full game using them.

Thumper

I was hoping to get another chance to use PSVR at the Sony booth, but the slots were full for both days I was at PAX. But! The developer of Thumper had PSVR setups at their booth for people to try the game out (though, you could play it without VR aswell).

Honestly, going in I had concerns that Thumper was too intense. That it would just be a VR nausea machine. Good god was I wrong! It is a very intense game, but it's so easy to get sucked in because it has such a great atmosphere and gameplay loop. The music is great and it feels an awful lot like Guitar Hero on acid.

Speaking of gameplay, this game is HARD. There is very little margin for error and the pace as the game progresses is insane. Controlls are very simple though, requiring just the X button and left stick to play.

This game would be great on a TV, but it's flat out amazing in VR. Flying down the track towards a giant demon tiki head in VR is something I can honestly say I'd never thought I'd do, but I'm really glad I've done it!

I need this game in my life.

Hardware!

So, you've read this far and I haven't even talked about the headset yet! How dare I wait this long! Let me rectify that!

There's actually a very good reason I waited until the end to talk about the headset itself. At the begining of my first demo, I noticed that the resolution is fairly low, and wearing the headset and a big pair of headphones feels like having a lot on your head. But the moment the game started, the moment I actually had something to do in VR, I totally forgot about all of that. The headset is really light, and was easy to put on and get adjusted, though it was faster, and better set up when I did it, rather than having the person from Sony do it.  I also had no issues with nausea despite feeling like I was going to fall out of my chair everytime I had to make a turn in Thumper.

My only ergonomic gripe, is that I don't think every pair of headphones will work well with the headset. Due to the way it sits on your head, the weird, square headphones I used with Thumper had to be at an odd angle to sit on my head properly.

Overall, it's a great headset and I would have no issue playing a game for a few hours with it on.

So, those are my somewhat quick impressions of PSVR. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer them in a timely fashion.

Has anyone else here tried it? Do you guys think it's worth buying yet?

I think it is worth buying, just not the first version of the device, it really will need to build a strong library as well. 

Can you explain a little bit more detailed about the resolution of the screen?

Sure! So, as you might be aware, it uses a single 1920X1080p screen which makes for 960 by 1080 per eye. Which is lower than most other headsets, but it uses an RGB display instead of a pentile one. So it has an extra subpixel. Which actually works out great to my eyes. Because though the imagine did seem pretty low res (think...dvd instead of blu ray) I saw almost no screen door effect.

I heard great impressions about Thumper and glad you felt the same.

I know this somewhat defeats the purpose but do you think PSVR games can be used with just the DS4 controller?

Was there any setups that let you use PSVR and watching videos or non-VR games?

Sadly, I didn't get to try the theater mode and I don't even think they had it set up at all.

Thumper just uses a DS4. Actually, when the guy went to hand me the controller I could actually see the controller in the game. Which I thought was cool. Honestly I think that as long as you aren't supposed to be just a normal human in a first person game, there would be no reason why you can't use a controller in a VR game.

Awesome, sounds great, I'll be curious to see if the lower res is a product of games, or if it translates to actual blu ray play as well (as in movies). Part of my interest in the headset has been for a display alternative to monitor/TV for movies/TV shows etc...

Really hope the Gamestop in my area gets a kiosk in, would love to try it out for myself. Thanks for the info, Norm!

the DS4 will probably be the main input device for most PSVR games and afaik I even read Sony mandates DS4 control-schemes to be added to every PSVR game, however that one might have been from the rumor-mill and not officially confirmed information

Thanks for your response! Also glad to know you didnt get nauseous, rare cases that happens to me when playing games under certain light conditions.

I'll bet they actually had to do that.  Part of the motion sickness aspect of VR, is lack of a fixed object.  I recall Insomniac saying they had initially designed RIGs sans cockpit view, but added it in to stave off motion sickness.  They spoke specifically about that in one of their videos.