It's a very pretty video, with very pretty music, and it takes just over two minutes (2:10, to be precise) before actually fading into any gameplay from the game itself. And yes, it's Tetris. Like, literally, just Tetris but with Tron's aesthetics.
According to the game's Wikipedia entry, Tetris Effect has been in development for 6 years. It took them 6 years to add Tron's glowy graphic style to the now-34-years-young Tetris. Oh, and a pause button, or "an all-new Zone mechanic that allows players to stop time," as it's gushingly called by UploadVR.
Available soon on Windows, PS4, and PSVR, Tetris Effect should be all the proof you need that creativity is dead. They spent six years making a VR version of Tetris, in an environment where you can't turn around and spit without hitting a free version of Tetris, and thirty four years after Tetris was first released. In thirty-four years, nobody has succeeded in adding anything of worth or note to the gameplay of Tetris, and I don't expect that Tetris Effect will succeed where everyone else has failed.
The fact that this utter failure of creativity features prominently on UploadVR's list of E3's Biggest VR Announcements should tell you everything you need to know about the state of VR, right now.
Here's the whole list:
- Beat Saber
- Creed: Rise to Glory
- Ghost Giant
- Stormlands
- A closer look at Stormlandsx
- Tetris Effect*
- The Elder Scrolls: Blades*
- Wolfenstein** and Prey**
- Trover Saves The Universe*
- Deracine?
Of the four actual VR games on the list, one, Beat Saber, isn't exactly new; it just got a PSVR version. Taken together with the six questionable inclusions already mentioned, that adds up to 70% of UploadVR's list being pure padding. And Creed, Ghost Giant, and Stormlands all look good enough to receive non-VR versions within a year of release so that they can actually find audiences.
And this is pretty well indicative of the state of VR, right now. Elijah Wood popped up at the PC Gaming show to announce Transference, a fairly interesting-looking VR game from Ubisoft that will also launch day-and-date "on traditional platforms" -- that was such a non-event that it didn't even make UploadVR's heavily-padded list.
This is why I haven't been posting nearly as frequently about VR, lately. There's just nothing much happening, and really nothing to talk about where VR is concerned. VR is still not a thing, and there's no sign of that being about to change anytime soon, and it's just really, really hard to keep talking about a subject when nothing new or interesting is happening there.
Which means that it's once again time for my...
Prognostication Scorecard: 4-1-1
(Four right, one wrong, with only one still To Be Determined.)
My Nintendo Switch prediction was WRONG!
- Sony trying harder? RIGHT! They started the year with price drops, which counts.
- PSN/Steam crossplay? TBD. Recent pressure from Fortnite's player base may help move the needle, here, but there's no sign of any change yet.
- Microsoft ending 2018 as the #2 console, but not by much. RIGHT! The Switch outsold XBox One in Q1, but it isn't selling fast enough to pass XBox until next year.