It remains frustratingly difficult to convey what is good or interesting about new VR games, especially to anyone who hasn’t already played games while wearing virtual reality goggles.VR will blow us all away, we're told, if we'll just strap on a VR headset and give it a go ourselves.
Well, Sony seems to have taken this criticism to heart, because they're setting up shop in big retail outlets and probably at a mall near you, to let you try virtuality in actuality:
The excitement around PS VR has been enormous and once you try it, you’ll understand why. As all of you would expect, it’s our goal at PlayStation to deliver the best and richest VR gaming experiences, and we can’t wait for you to put that headset on and be transported into these worlds. If you get some hands-on time with PS VR this weekend, be sure to let us know what you think in the comments!And when I say a mall near you, I mean a mall near me. As in, the mall I happened to be passing through earlier this evening, on my way to somewhere else. So, I did what any self-respecting gaming geek would do... I gave it a whirl.
The experience was rather underwhelming.
First things first. In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I'm not a big fan of first-person perspective games in general. I find that that I'm almost always aware of the game's interface and I/O elements in a way that spoils my sense of immersion when playing first person games. Every time I try to do something in a game that should be possible, according to real-world logic or even the learned rules of the game space, but can't because of a game engine or UI limitation, I get knocked out of the game, and back to reality.
Ironically, I often find it easier to immerse myself in games that aren't trying so hard to be immersive, only to fall short. It's like a pseudo uncanny valley effect, I suppose; the closer the game gets to simulating reality, the more I notice the places where the simulation is less than perfect.
I don't think that I'm the only one, either, because others have commented on how visually simple (or "stylized") games often work best for VR, while attempts at photorealistic virtual environments cause the most disorientation, VR sickness, and performance problems. Which is perhaps why Sony had, among their other offerings for this VR demo, Battlezone.
Yes, that's right: Battlezone. It's literally an updated version of this game: 
Which brings us to the next point of disclosure: I've played Battlezone before. In a coin-op arcade. When it came out. 36 years ago.
So, obviously, when the very pleasant young person was strapping me into a VR headset and telling me about the games available for me to try, Battlezone was the one that jumped out at me. Honestly, I don't even remember what the other options were; this was obviously the best option, in part for its nostalgia value, but also because I'd played the original, and thus had a bit of baseline for comparison.
Of course, it is 2016, an even Battlezone has changed a little bit. It now looks more like a mashup of Battlezone and Tron: 
So... super-stylized graphics, with lots of relatively simple geometric shapes and bright colours, designed to look good but not to look like reality... check. In short, it appears to be designed to be easier to render in VR at a stable, VR-sufficient frame rate, something that Sony's Resident Evil VR demo reportedly wasn't able to do at E3.
So, does it work? Yes... and no.
Let's start with the game itself. Battlezone is a 36 year old game, and Sony's VR version adds nothing to its simplistic gameplay that I saw. This isn't a bad thing, especially for a VR tech demo: the simplicity of the game limits the number of unfamiliar elements on display, and should allow people to focus on the VR experience itself, rather than being distracted with trying to learn how to play a complicated new game for the first time. And there's a reason why Battlezone is considered a classic of early videogames: its gameplay was solid.
But Battlezone's gameplay, while solid, is pretty simplistic by modern standards. In the same way that HTC Vive's Space Pirate Trainer demo is basically Duck Hunt with a VR gloss, Battlezone is also a 36 year old game with a VR gloss, and while its gameplay is solid, I doubt that it'll be complex enough to be satisfying for modern players for any significant length of time.
In fact, what changes were made as part of that VR gloss actually make the game feel slightly worse than I remember it. The visuals are prettier, yes, but they're also harder to "read," and swapping out the original game's tank-style two-stick control scheme for modern console FPS dual-stick controls might make the game feel more familiar to fans of console FPS games, but did nothing for me as a long-time keyboard-and-mouse gamer except rob Battlezone of some of the feel that made the original game distinctive.
And then, there are the issues unique to VR itself. PlayStation's VR manages to pump out some impressive visuals using a standard PS4, so that part works, but they haven't solved the problem of how to traverse virtual spaces, and they haven't solved the problem of how to interact with objects in that virtual space. Much like the Oculus Rift, PlayStation's VR demo sat me down, put a dual shock controller in my hands, and didn't once ask me to do anything that I hadn't already done in any number of other games.
Also, Sony haven't solved the problem of simulation sickness.
I'm apparently (thankfully) not especially prone to this problem, experiencing very little nausea or headache during my ten minutes or so of game time, but I was nauseous afterwards, and had a headache that took a half-hour to recede. Both symptoms went away on their own, but I can easily see how someone with greater sensitivity might find VR to be an unpleasant ordeal.
My VR demo ended with an optimistic slide show of other Battlezones that I could play in, apparently to tempt me into buying PlayStation VR and the full version of Battlezone VR, but I wasn't tempted: after clearing one zone, I'd had all the Battlezone I wanted, thanks very much. I felt very little desire to play Battlezone again, no desire to play any of the other demos that were available, and felt no inclination to buy a PlayStation VR system, no matter how (relatively) reasonable its price.
I probably could have tried Sony's VR demo again, too, if I'd wanted to; of four available demo systems, only two were in use when I arrived, and none were in use when I was finished. The mall wasn't very busy, it being a Tuesday and all, but even so... everyone that I saw walking by just kept on walking. If there's any VR fever to be found among average consumers, it's hiding well.
So, my verdict remains unchanged. PlayStation VR is a very polished piece of consumer electronics that reminded me of a Star Trek TNG prop.
It's comfortable to wear, even with glasses (athough my glasses fogged up a little with the unit on -- there's not a lot of air flowing under those goggles), works pretty much as advertised, and the tech is impressive enough. But it's not life-changing, and it's not going to revolutionize gaming or anything else until they solve the challenges posed by virtual worlds, beyond merely displaying them.
If you get a chance to try VR, by all means do. It's a neat toy. But don't go out of your way for this experience, don't expect to be blown away by the experience, and don't worry about what you might be missing by not having this experience. You're really not missing anything all that special. I promise.
One final note: While writing my post, I came across this article on VR by Cliff Kuang at Co.Design:
As tantalizing as these platforms are, there are still some significant barriers to widespread adoption. The Vive and Rift need to be hooked up to powerful, expensive computers in order to work, pushing their true cost into the thousands of dollars. And HoloLens currently suffers from limited processing power and a relatively small field of vision. To put it another way, none of these products is likely to be the iPhone—a breakthrough technology that immediately and radically remakes the landscape.It's gratifying to see that I'm not the only one who drew the comparison to smartphones, and concluded that VR is not as transformative as the smartphone.