As far as gaming goes, no you really cannot. While a lot of progress has been done, notably thanks to Valve's efforts with Proton, it's still not ready for mainstream. Anti-cheat software incompatibility, peripherals drivers unavailability and overall jankiness are as many hurdles that make it interesting for tinkerers, but unrealistic for the general public.
And since Epic is publishing the game, this is one rare case where it's legit for them to make it exclusive to their storefront on PC (as opposed to swooping in and offering timed exclusives deals to third party devs for distribution). Then again, it likely means this one will not be coming to Steam for a long time, if ever.
The early times of this wave of VR (which really started with the commercial launch of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive) were very exciting. Lots of "experiences" back then: sometimes mindblowing, often half-baked, always interesting. After a couple of years people realized there was no money in it and lots of them moved on.
7 years in, I'm pretty much over early access promising prototypes and flat screen games being modded to support VR. I want VR-native games-ass games of the caliber of Half-Life: Alyx, or Moss. I want VR support to be a standard feature of any new cockpit-based driving or flying game, not an afterthought. We are not getting the former, and slowly maybe getting there for the latter.
Elite Dangerous is the perfect illustration of this cycle: Frontier started supporting VR very early. My first VR experience was Elite Dangerous on a loaned Oculus DK1. It was mind-blowing ! It was also very very puke-inducing ! Then proper hardware came with the Rift and Vive, Elite had full VR support, and it was fucking great. And now, well VR support is still there, but it's no longer first class, and slowly decaying.
The lack of VR support for in Odyssey, on top of numerous issues at launch, soured me on the whole thing. I know VR is a niche that did not take off so it likely did not make sense for them to prioritize it ; but Elite was the quintessential early killer app for VR, so it stings. Shame, I spent hundred of hours in Elite and would have liked to spend more.
Friend and I were looking for our next co-op game after Remnant 2 (very good btw) and were somewhat eagerly awaiting this one. Turns out it has the same PvP invasion mechanic as the Souls game unless you play offline. That's a deal-breaker for us unfortunately.
Honestly even the very best VR-only games are only interesting because they are in VR.
Half-Life: Alyx is IMO still the best of those and it can be played outside of VR thanks to mods... But in that case it's a curiosity, not an actual good traditional game.
HLA in VR is incredible though and I wish there were more games like it.
It's the best of those so far: quite faithful to the original, but also constrained by live-action limits.
On one hand the over-the-top expressions and physicality (body types, wacky combat, etc) are missing. On the other the main actors are doing a pretty good job with their characters. It's well above painful to watch, which is a low bar, but also where most live-action manga adaptations fit, IMO. Let's say it's almost good, but not quite.
The assisted reload was also in the first game (notably for the recoilless rifle also featured here) and requires a great deal of coordination. A great co-op mechanic with high rewards when playing it right.
That's a shame that even a 30 year-old studio is just one commercial failure away from closure, even when part of a larger company. Then again, Volition's output after Saints Row IV has been pretty middling... So it's not that big of a surprise that they were on the chopping block.
NeryK @ NeryK @sh.itjust.works Posts 6Comments 191Joined 2 yr. ago
As far as gaming goes, no you really cannot. While a lot of progress has been done, notably thanks to Valve's efforts with Proton, it's still not ready for mainstream. Anti-cheat software incompatibility, peripherals drivers unavailability and overall jankiness are as many hurdles that make it interesting for tinkerers, but unrealistic for the general public.