Consumer VR is a little over two years old now, creeping up on three years next April. There’s been plenty to talk about in VR gaming over the course of 2018, with even more ambitious indie studios and AAA game companies getting into the medium for the first time. Now in our second annual Road to VR Game of the Year Awards, we’ve again put the top VR games from the industry’s leading platforms through their paces.
Like last year’s awards, we aren’t breaking down the award categories into individual genres simply because the medium is too young to provide any meaningful level of competition. We’ve again centered on broadening the task of weighing games according to the most immersive platforms available: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR.
That said, 2018 has been a year of cross-platform pollination, so deliberation has been even more difficult this time around. To that end, we’ve combined Rift and Vive into a single category this year for two reasons. It’s partly due to the lack of compelling exclusives—good or bad depending on how you look at it—but it’s also partly because of Steam’s new keybinding tool lets users change how they control VR games, a one-time major factor in whether a game played better on one platform or another. With less of a distinction between the two in terms of functionality and content, the decision for this year’s format was clear.
Now for Road to VR’s 2018 Game of the Year Award winners.
Beat Saber
Developer: Beat Games
Available On: Oculus (Rift), Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR), PlayStation (PSVR)
Release Date: May 1st, 2018 (Early Access, PC VR)
The words ‘killer app’ always rear their head when new consumer devices spring to life. Everyone wants to know what game, app, or tool will draw in the crowds and give them a reason to not only show off their shiny new toy to their friends and family, but also come back on their own for more.
Whether you believe in the idea of a ‘killer app’ or not isn’t important though, because a few things about the block-slashing rhythm game Beat Saber are: it’s an honest-to-goodness VR native that delivers a heart-pumping good time to everyone regardless of age, musical ability, or expertise with virtual reality headsets.
When we met up with Czech Republic-based indie studio Beat Games (then Hyperbolic Magnetism) at GDC 2018, it was apparent the small team had something special on their hands. The atmosphere was electric, the music was super high quality, the game’s haptic feedback made you feel like you were actually slicing through the colored directional boxes. Beat Saber was destined to compete with larger studios thanks to it’s ability to serve up something fresh, something insanely well done, and something we didn’t want to stop playing.
That premonition came true when Beat Saber launched into Early Access a few months later on Vive and Rift. While the game is still due for more updates, the community has stepped up in a big way to support the massive Beat Saber addiction that soon followed. Awesome mods aren’t a prerequisite for an awesome game, but they can oftentimes mean the difference between 10 hours of gameplay and 100 hours. As an indie studio working on a small budget, Beat Games understood it couldn’t promise a ton of chart toppers in its selection of music, but left a door wide open for groups such as Beat Saver to fill in the gaps, giving individual users the ability to map their own levels and serve up their own music, resulting in a mind boggling number of well-realized levels for you to play with multiple difficulties.
Even then, if you stick to the standard level offerings—many of them created by the talented musician and composer Jaroslav Beck—it will be hard to come out of Beat Saber without a grin on your face, sweat on your brow, and the thought crossing your mind that we’re truly living in the future.
ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission
Developer: SIE JAPAN Studio
Available On: PlayStation
Release Date: October 2nd, 2018
From its origins as a mini-game released alongside PlayStation VR’s launch in 2016, finally culminating in a full fledged title in 2018, ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission’s path to game of the year was long but definitely deserved. At first glance you might not peg this seated, gamepad-based third-person platformer as something that makes great use of the immersive power of VR, but Astro Bot confounds that expectation with smart design that plays to PlayStation VR’s strengths while avoiding its weaknesses.
Taking advantage of the motion-tracking capabilities of the PS4 gamepad, Astro Bot allows the player to feel like they’re there inside the game’s world by controlling a variety of entertaining ‘controller gadgets’ which are essential to battling through varied and beautiful environments as you track down Astro’s missing friends.
And then there’s the hulking robo-bosses which tower over the player (and especially little Astro), setting them far apart from the game’s otherwise tiny baddies. Astro Bot’s boss battles are engaging challenges, each of which play out like like a unique interactive puzzle that you have to solve in real time, usually involving some teamwork between yourself and Astro.
On top of being easily one of PlayStation VR’s best looking games, Astro Bot also manages to be delightfully accessible. It’s easy enough for novice players to jump in, have fun, and be wowed by VR, while still managing to engage experienced players with challenging coin placements and secret areas. Those who are especially dedicated will find a hidden chameleon on each stage which unlocks one of 26 challenge stages which are totally unique mini-levels which that players’ skills to the test.
Astro Bot Rescue Mission is a superb game; the promising result of tasking a group of clearly talented game designers and developers with building a game around a brand new medium like VR. The game expertly executes every idea it brings to the table. There’s charm throughout, derived from excellent animation, art direction, FX and SFX, right down to the interactive credits sequence.
Note: Games eligible for Road to VR‘s Game of the Year Award must be available to the public on or before December 1st, 2018 to allow for ample deliberation. Games must also natively support the target platform as to ensure full operability.
The post Road to VR’s 2018 Game of the Year Awards appeared first on Road to VR.
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