VR Games Suck

[inpurpleshadows]

Virtual reality is a subset of technology that on a technical standpoint, is impressive. For the past few decades, virtual reality has advanced to a massive degree and has shown the potential of interactive technology. However, there is one aspect of VR I was (keyword: WAS) excited for, that being video games. Getting to experience video games in a whole new level of immersion is a damn great idea, but the execution has been ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ abysmal and still is. From the release of the ill-fated Virtual Boy to the horrors of VRChat, VR in video games has consistently failed over and over with companies repeating the same mistakes and never learning their lessons.

I would first like to discuss the Virtual Boy which has gone down in infamy as not only Nintendo's worst-selling system, but as one of the biggest commercial failures in gaming history. I actually played the VB myself... and it was garbage. The VB was Nintendo's first attempt to integrate virtual reality into video games and it failed both as a VR system and as a gaming console. There were only two colors, red and black, so most of the games were visually unappealing. Some games on the system utilized psuedo-3D effects, but execution varied. The sad part is that some games for the VB were actually pretty fun like Wario Land and Teleroboxer, but I wouldn't exactly call them immersive experiences. Speaking of which, none of the games were immersive at all and barely utilized features exclusive to the VB. The system also caused headaches after minutes of play time, so there wasn't really much lasting appeal.

Another attempt at VR was the Kinect. I am cheating here as the Kinect wasn't exactly a VR system, but I remember it being marketed as an accessory that would make games more "immersive". The Kinect was originally released as an add-on for the Xbox 360 which would allow people to play games without controllers. The day this thing was announced, every Xbox fanboy lost their ♥♥♥♥ because they believed Microsoft was abandoning them for "filthy casuals". I was one of those who owned a Kinect. I used it for a few weeks and dropped it immediately afterwards. I recently played some games with the Kinect and didn't have a good time with it. Some of the games barely functioned and were only worth a few hours of play time, so replay value was out of the question. I don't think the Kinect is deserving of its hate and there is some fun to be had out of it, but as an immersive experience, it didn't impress.

Since the mid-late 2010's, VR gaming has been thriving commercially and there has been a notable influx of both headsets and games making use of the medium. The headsets themselves are of a very high quality, are great performance-wise and are pretty comfortable. I recently got a Meta Quest 2 and so far, it has worked as intended. As for the games... most of them barely qualify as games. A majority of VR games consist of shovelware slop, janky porn or Habbo Hotel rip-offs. There's one "game" in particular that's the most popular, VRChat. VRChat is a VR "game" where you can hang out and chat with other people online. My relationship with VRChat has been a largely personal one and I've been through both good and bad moments. My initial experience with VRChat was relatively positive. I first played VRChat when a certain pandemic hit the entire world and at the time, I needed some form of social interaction. Throughout 2020, I met a lot of really nice people, I made many new friends which I consistently hung out with and I even got over my chronic fear of furries. Despite that, the following year of VRChat was... different. Many of my friends stopped playing and the people I met were kinda ♥♥♥♥♥. The game itself also degraded in quality. The performance was worse than before and the loading times lasted up to half an hour. Even when all of the map's assets were loaded, character models were colorless and I suffered numerous crashes. At first, I thought my headset was the problem. I eventually entered desktop mode and I found out it wasn't the headset, but the game itself. Some of you may be thinking that it was my computer. The thing is, my PC had some moderately powerful specs and I was able to run demanding games at a relatively stable framerate. It got so bad to the point I needed custom clients in order to actually run the game. That was, until 2022 when VRChat implemented Easy Anti-Cheat which didn't allow me to use mods. VRChat promised that since then, they would implement features that would improve performance and accessability. They have not kept their promise as instead of actually fixing their game, they have banned people using mods. Since this awful update, VRChat has been in a near-unplayable state. From what I have heard, there has been some similar games like ChilloutVR that are better in terms of performance and accessability, but the player count is significantly smaller than VRChat.

[vkobe]

i dont regret my vr game, they offer special experience, it is not perfect, but in vr it is like if you go to your own pockt dimension ^_^

[Sigma957]

I don't like the FOV of your arms in VR. It's wrong. They don't look like that to the naked eye. Also floating hands with no arms attached to them is just primitive.

[always superspecial]

I have played beat saber, gun gal 2 and Alyx, all the games were perfect, it all depends on the game.

[Pierce Dalton]

They suck because they're still in its "infancy" phase, just like standard videogames in the 60's.

[Pierce Dalton]

Originally posted by Temptation:

I have played beat saber, gun gal 2 and Alyx, all the games were perfect, it all depends on the game.

Beat Saber looks fun as heck, it's one of the few VR games that looks appealing to me.

[Electric Cupcake]

Dactyl Nightmare getting a remake is about the only thing of interest to me. Important bit of gaming history.

I do enjoy Tetris Effect and might try it in VR mode at some point.

YouTube™ Video: Forgotten innovators 1: Dactyl Nightmare (VR FPS from 1991) 

Views: 19,364

I've been meaning to do this video since October but took awhile before I could get my hands on an Oculus Rift unit.

[Duck Twacy]

TLDR; I don't do VR. If you can't put it on the computer screen, and are asking me to invest in some expensive equipment just to play your title, then I won't go for it.

I've spent too much money on joysticks that fell apart for flight sims, and refuse to invest in some super expensive and unnecessary VR goggles for titles that seem hokey to begin with.