PSVR hands on impressions! (Pax East)

[Normchacho]

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?