Space Salvage delivers a retro-themed VR sci-fi adventure, mixing corporate satire with space adventure this week on Quest and Steam.
Developed by Fruity Systems, Space Salvage is an 80s inspired adventure that hopes to capture the attention of Red Dwarf, Firefly and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans. Joining an intergalactic corporation as a trainee, your goal involves gathering resources from 30 different environments and crash sites, accompanied by a cold-hearted AI companion.
Successful missions let you slowly climb the corporate ladder, awarding credits to gradually upgrade your ships. Missions often involve fending off enemy units in space combat, too. Finally, Space Salvage contains three narrative paths and in a press release, Fruity Systems advised this features "darkly comedic characters."
We previously went hands-on with Space Salvage during EGX 2022 and enjoyed this satire-laced take on space adventuring. Though we noted ship acceleration felt "somewhat fiddly," we enjoyed the otherwise over-the-top humor, exploration and combat, calling this demo a "promising start."
Space Salvage arrives on November 2 for the Meta Quest platform and PC VR. A free demo is available now on App Lab and Steam.
Schell Games released a new gameplay trailer for Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire, arriving next year on Quest.
Revealed this June during the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire marks Schell's debut VR horror game. Previously described as a "suspenseful single-player, jumpscare game," Silent Slayer tasks you with defeating a powerful clan of ancient vampires, stealthily opening coffins without waking the sleeping inhabitant within.
"Players must carefully dismantle their coffins’ defenses using various tools, creating the perfect opportunity to plunge a stake through the heart of undead foes," explained Schell Games in a press release. Despite offering slayers unique tools, only a stake through the heart can end the vampires and one wrong move will cause your immediate death.
“After our success with the I Expect You To Die franchise and Among Us VR, our team started exploring other ways to create suspenseful VR experiences," said Jesse Schell, Schell Games CEO in a prepared statement. "A small team created a prototype all about stealthily opening a vampire’s coffin, and after jumping out of our skin several times while playing it, we all could see right away it would be an amazing game.”
Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire reaches the Meta Quest platform next year.
Looking for mixed reality games and apps on Quest 3? Here are some of the best mixed reality experiences we recommend checking out right now on Quest 3.
Quest 3 launched earlier this month with a big marketing focus on mixed reality, thanks to the headset's improved passthrough image, depth sensor and slightly improved room/spatial awareness.
That said, it's not super clear which apps and games support mixed reality, nor which are worth your time. So, we've tried a bunch of mixed reality experiences and compiled this list of those that we think are worth checking out.
These recommendations aren't ranked in any particular order, but split into two categories – games and apps. We did this because sometimes the line isn't incredibly clear cut and there were apps like Vermillion or PianoVision that we wanted to highlight, but aren't necessarily traditional 'games'.
As with most of our lists, we'll keep this one updated and if you have a game you think might be a candidate for this list please email tips@uploadvr.com or use the contact us page.
Without further ado, here are recommendations on which mixed reality experiences you should check out.
Best Mixed Reality Apps On Quest 3
Vermillion
Vermillion launched in 2021 as a fantastic simulation of wet-on-wet oil painting in VR, allowing users to bring up a virtual canvas and create some stunning paintings that can be physically printed out or displayed virtually. Those who do oil painting in real life have even been able to use Vermillion to create stunning pieces of art that hold their own against the real thing.
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Since launch, solo developer Thomas van den Berge has added a bunch of new features, including canvas layers, passthrough support and multiplayer functionality.
Vermillion shines brighter than ever on Quest 3, featuring upgraded resolution and lighting for brush strokes. When we checked it out on Quest 3 earlier this week, we were able to paint a stunning and creative rendition of the UploadVR logo, as seen in the video embedded above.
Bring up a Bob Ross tutorial using the in-game browser and get painting in mixed reality – just remember, there are no mistakes: only happy accidents.
Figmin XR
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After Google ended development on Tilt Brush and made it open source, many developers began implementing Tilt Brush features in brand new tools with expanded functionality. Figmin XR is one of them.
Powered by Tilt Brush, Figmin XR lets you paint and create in 3D space in mixed reality using that familiar foundation, but with plenty of added features. There's support for creating and importing 3D models, a 3D text editor, an in-built voxelizer and much more. If you want to sketch, create, augment or view models in mixed reality, Figmin XR is worth checking out.
The app aims to teach piano by syncing up and aligning with a physical keyboard, allowing it to overlay falling onto the keys in a synthesia-like manner in mixed reality. Instead of learning via sheet music or other more traditional methods, PianoVision is (as the name suggests) a more visual approach.
It's possible to use PianoVision without a physical piano or keyboard (by tapping fingers against a flat surface), but we wouldn't recommend using it that way. It's designed for use with a real piano – whether a digital keyboard or true acoustic. The app has a brief alignment process for getting the virtual keys to line up, but it's easy to complete and although not always automatically perfect, there's a range of adjustment tools for fine tuning.
If you have a digital keyboard with MIDI output, you can download the PianoVision app onto your computer and connect it to your keyboard via USB. This allows the Quest app to sync with your actions on the real keyboard, which means it can recognize when you're playing the right – or wrong – notes.
There are still some limitations (the app doesn't distinguish between a flat or a sharp key, example, displaying all as the latter – music theory nerds will understand why that's important) and it can't still teach you good technique like a physical, experienced teacher can. That said, it's a fantastic tool to encourage an interest in music – and that's what matter most. It comes with over a thousand songs built-in, and accepts MIDI files for custom songs as well.
Mixed Reality Games On Quest 3
Synth Riders
Synth Riders has always been indie sibling of VR rhythm game progenitor Beat Saber. However, with Synth Riders' mixed reality update, it's beaten Beat Saber to the punch.
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Synth Riders' MR mode is playable across the entire game, punching out a portion of your wall and extending its cyberpunk, futuristic environments out into the passthrough view of your surroundings.
Not only does this look awesome, but it's also a great way to play without worry about hitting anything in your periphery. It's the best of both worlds – the cool immersive setting with the spatial awareness that comes from playing in passthrough.
It's crazy that Beat Saber doesn't have mixed reality support on Quest 3, but that gives you all the more reason to check it out in Synth Riders.
Demeo
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Demeo has long been one of our favorite virtual reality social experiences and mixed reality only makes it better. Placing the Demeo game board in your real space makes it feel even more like a tabletop board game. Demeo also supports local multiplayer, so if you have friends with Quest headsets, you can all play in mixed reality together in the same space – the virtual board will align between all headsets and accurately appear in the same position for all players.
Plus, if you have your room setup with a physical table, the Demeo game board can be snapped to the table and becomes part of the table itself, with the borders fading away (my table in the video above was a little too narrow for it to be a perfect fit, but you get the idea). If you want to move it elsewhere, simply grab the table and move it to the desired position. It's a fantastic system – just hit the AR button in settings to get it started.
Puzzling Places
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Puzzling Places has long been a favorite VR game of ours, but it feels especially fun to play in mixed reality.
The game uses photogrammetry data to present you with 3D puzzles based on real places. Split into pieces, you can group sections of the puzzle around your room and places the reference tiles wherever you like – it feels like the most natural and comfortable evolution of an already awesome game.
Technically the mixed reality mode is still an experimental feature in Puzzling Places, so you'll need to enable it in the game's settings on the main menu. However, it's well worth a try on Quest 3 and likely the only way we'll be playing from this point on.
Cubism
Cubism is one the best VR puzzles games available on the Quest system and though you've been able to play it in mixed reality on Quest Pro for a while now, it looks even better on Quest 3.
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The upgrade in passthrough quality on Quest 3 really makes a difference here, making the Cubism puzzle pieces feel completely integrated with your real space.
You can also turn on support for furniture and other items mapped to your space in the settings, which will allow the puzzle pieces to react to your environment and let you place game elements against flat surfaces.
You can see me place the game board down on the table in the video above, as well as bounce the pieces off the table and the books surrounding them. It's a super immersive way to play and well worth trying out.
Drop Dead: The Cabin – Home Invasion
Drop Dead: The Cabin launched as a co-operative multiplayer wave shooter earlier this year. However, the game's latest update, which adds the Home Invasion mixed reality game mode, is arguably a lot more interesting and fun than the base game itself.
Home Invasion, accessible from the main menu, turns your room into a battleground where you'll fight off waves of zombies and other creatures invading your space. It requires at least one table, door and window in your play area to work – you can map them out in advance using the Space Setup in the Quest settings, or the game will prompt you to do so before you begin.
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Once all set up, you'll have to keep a transmitter online and fight back against zombies as knock through the windows and doors of your room. You'll start with limited resources distributed between waves, but you'll get access to bigger and better weapons as the pressure increases.
What's really cool about Home Invasion is that it takes your real room and makes it appear as though it's placed in the dark forest from The Cabin. It's an awesome way to demonstrate mixed reality – just make sure you don't put any holes in walls or windows when reaching out to shoot.
Much like the base game, Home Invasion isn't the most smooth experience around – we still experienced quite a few bugs while playing. However, it's nonetheless one of the most interesting and unique mixed reality experiences available right now, which is why it's still featured on this list anyway.
Magic Leap, maker of one of the best AR headsets on the market, is making a major change to its leadership with a new CEO that will face the challenge of carving out territory for its transparent AR technology against a growing wave of passthrough AR headsets.
After a meteoric rise and then near catastrophic collapse under its original founder Rony Abovitz, Magic Leap brought on Peggy Johnson to stabilize the company, manage its pivot to enterprise, and launch the Magic Leap 2. Three years later, Johnson is out and a new CEO is taking over.
Magic Leap has announced that Ross Rosenberg will take up the position, an experienced tech executive who has worked in senior roles at a number of large-scale enterprise technology companies.
From the announcement, and its description of Rosenberg’s prior work, it seems clear that Magic Leap is hoping the new CEO will be able to guide it toward increased (or perhaps, initial) profitability.
But Rosenberg’s tenure will inevitably be about more than just streamlining operations and finding the right product-market fit; he’ll also need to both grow and defend the company’s turf as newer headsets focus on passthrough AR capabilities—the likes of Quest 3 and Vision Pro.
While neither headset is directly competing against Magic Leap’s enterprise-focused transparent AR headset, Rosenberg will surely be looking a few years down the road at which point passthrough AR headsets could begin to approach the size and real-life visual quality that is currently Magic Leap’s advantage.
The company hasn’t yet hinted at an upcoming Magic Leap 3 headset, though with the current Magic Leap 2 only being out for a little over a year at this point, that could well still be brewing.
At least from the outside, it looks like the company had an amicable split with the former CEO, Peggy Johnson, though it isn’t clear which side compelled the change.
“Having accomplished so much of what I set out to do at Magic Leap, I felt the time had come to transition leadership to a new CEO who can guide the company through its next period of growth,” Johnson said in the announcement. “I’m incredibly proud of the leadership team we’ve built at Magic Leap and want to sincerely thank all of the employees for their work in helping to successfully reorient the company to the enterprise market.”
Qualcomm is seemingly planning to reveal a new XR chipset early next year that could be for Apple Vision Pro competitors.
South Korean news outlet Electronic Times said it interviewed Qualcomm's GM & VP of XR Hugo Swart at Snapdragon Summit 2023 last week. The article is in Korean, but all popular machine translation tools show Electronic Times quoting Swart as saying Qualcomm plans to unveil a next-generation XR chip in the first quarter of 2024.
Qualcomm confirmed to UploadVR that Swart was accurately quoted, but declined to give more details about this new chipset.
What Might This Chip Be?
Qualcomm revealed the new generation Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 less than five weeks ago during Meta Connect, and it debuted in Quest 3 earlier this month. XR2 Gen 2 is the successor to the original XR2 from 2020, and it's based on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip used in high-end Android phones like Samsung's Galaxy S23 series.
Qualcomm revealed Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 last week, intended to be used in high-end Android phones in 2024, though some Chinese companies like Xiaomi will use it this year. It's possible that the next generation XR chip Hugo Swart referenced is based on it, and if so that would give it a 25% GPU improvement and 20-30% CPU improvement over XR2 Gen 2. But it would be peculiar for Qualcomm to move the XR2 line from a three year cadence to a six month cadence for these kinds of marginal gains.
Another possibility is that the new chip could be a new product line. Last week Qualcomm also revealed Snapdragon X, a new chipset line for high-end laptops intended to rival Apple's M-series Mac chips. While all other Qualcomm chipsets use semi-custom CPU cores based on ARM's designs, Snapdragon X is the first to use fully custom "Oryon" cores. Oryon is a result of Qualcomm's 2021 acquisition of Nuvia, a startup founded in 2019 by former Apple and Google custom CPU engineers.
While Qualcomm's GPUs have been competitive with Apple's for years now, its CPU cores have been years behind. Qualcomm claims Oryon changes the situation and closes the gap with Apple's M2, so if it plans to use it in XR chips, we could see competitors to Apple Vision Pro that offer similar CPU performance.
Vision Pro Competitors From Samsung & LG?
Electronic Times further suggests that this new Snapdragon XR chip, whatever form it takes, will be used in the headset Samsung announced it was working on with Google, as well as an LG headset.
Last month another Korean news outlet, MaeilBusiness Newspaper, reported that LG was partnering with Meta to build a Quest Pro 2 for release in 2025. That report suggested both Samsung and LG's headsets will be priced somewhere around $2000, significantly higher than Quest 3 but notably less than Vision Pro.
We could thus see three distinct options for high-end standalone XR emerge in the coming years, with fierce competition between them. As with the smartphone market, Qualcomm will seemingly be powering the hardware for all Apple's serious competitors. But will there really be room for three separate software platforms, or will Meta and Google be in a zero-sum fight to be the "Android of XR"?
Have you ever had trouble cancelling a physical gym membership? How much did it cost you and how many times did you use it before attempting to cut off that financial siphon?
Please, take a moment to think about the math.
Now, what if you could pay $350 up front for a year at the world’s most accessible gyms? You can walk away any time you want and keep or sell any of the equipment you’ve been sent. Would such an offer solve a problem for you, or solve a problem for someone you know? I bet you're curious if the exercises, top tier music or coaching programs are an added expense here, because they're not.
So what exactly is the catch here?
It’s here in my mock sales pitch I pull the sheet off a television that’s been sitting next to me on stage the whole time. As I continue my spiel, a video starts playing of a man repeatedly talking about smoking meats.
If that sounds like a deal that’s too good to be true, well, yes there is a catch...
If this investment in your future changes your life for the better, you’ll need to admit the man in this video, Mark Zuckerberg, was actually right all along about the ultimate potential of virtual reality.
Why Is A Dead Technology Saving Lives?
VR is a dead technology, according to regular reports from Business Insider and Forbes.
As recently as a few days ago, though, Leanne Pedante was told she and the other coaches she works with at Supernatural have saved people’s lives using VR. As the head of fitness at Meta's new fitness service, she says she’s got dozens of examples of people expressing the same overall sentiment.
VR saved them.
Supernatural members are telling the coaches that Meta's fitness program saved their lives because of how this virtual reality home gym works. What makes VR fitness special, explains Pedante, is that it comes without mirrors or gaze.
"There's a few workouts in particular that I get that are a couple years old now that I weekly get messages from people saying 'there were these few things that you said at the right moment that just kind of unleashed something'. And I, 100 percent, have had those moments in headset too," Pedante told UploadVR. "It's one of the reasons why I've accumulated even more faith that this is going to continue to just gain mass appeal because I can count the number of times during a real life workout that I've had that kind of emotional release on one hand. I'm well beyond that in Supernatural workouts, and I think part of the reason is that you feel so safe to be in the present moment. You're not in a room surrounded by people or surrounded by mirrors. You're super tuned in to what you're physically feeling, what you're emotionally feeling, and you feel secure because you have this voice of a coach who hopefully you feel like you have a relationship with, who's acknowledging your humanity, and I think that that's a really important safe place for people to have."
If the hardest step in any fitness journey is the first one out the front door, virtual reality headsets makes it even easier than that. A VR headset takes up less permanent room space for fitness compared with a stationary bike or treadmill, and at least in the case of the stationary bike, other services like VZFit are available if you want to train in VR in multiple ways without leaving the house.
Apple has yet to reveal the extent of its fitness offerings for the forthcoming Apple Vision Pro, but the Fitness+ service is a natural fit for the $3500 system and there's been suggestions face and eye tracking information could be used for a range of health-related purposes. With Apple Card and pay later, Apple will likely be ready to help you get into substantial debt making this investment in yourself. That journey starts in 2024 for Apple and its customers.
The brand new Meta Quest 3, though, with 512GB storage is quite the impressive home gym offering. It features the impressive pancake lens technology Meta has invested so much research in and the next generation XR2 Gen 2 processor with that much storage can take you to a lot of jaw-dropping places in virtual reality over the next few years. That's $700, or nearly $760 after interest paying almost $60 per month through Affirm, for the headset and year with Supernatural. You have to click "notify me when available" if you want to find out when this offer is back in stock on getsupernatural.com.
If you invest in a charging dock as well, Quest 3 will be ready to go to the gym as soon as you are.
We last spoke with Leanne Pedante in July 2021. That was just months before Meta announced its plan to acquire the service in October of that year. Pedante had not been spotted in the wild by Supernatural members and, at the time, I mentioned there were 13,000 people in the official Supernatural group on Facebook. There are now nearly 90,000 in that group. And being spotted in the wild? Pedante has been noted in public for her role as VR fitness coach exactly one time in the more than two years since we spoke last.
So while Pedante is not quite a fitness celebrity in the physical world just yet, she knows she is making an impact and is starting to see Supernatural merchandise on others. Pedante works for Meta now and that means that, yes, she has a vested interested in the success of VR fitness, and we spoke recently with that context in mind.
"It was a shock because I think in a lot of ways, in my mind, I, as an individual outside of the product, like I still feel like this kind of fumbling, like small town woman who's like trying to figure it out, and just the idea that this thing that I'm involved in was going to kind of jump scale felt very surreal," Pedante said.
Below is a chart from statista.com showing its estimate of 2021 revenue in millions of the 10 largest health clubs in the United States. Where might Supernatural stack up on this chart in the coming years?
Keep in mind that it seems likely people who tried spending dollars at these physical clubs at any time in the last decade may not be the first ones in the next decade to put their dollars into virtual reality fitness programs like Supernatural.
Leanne Pedante, Head of Fitness at Supernatural.
So here's Pedante reflecting on two more years of VR fitness coaching, its effects on her and the members she connects with through VR, and the potential ahead for a new generation of home VR fitness programs in general.
"I think it's going to have massive adoption. I'm really grateful that I was able to become part of Supernatural and part of VR content creation when I did, because what I've seen is very different than what I expected to see, and I think that's what proves to me that it's going to be as big as I think it's going to be. Meaning, the people who have flocked to Supernatural and to VR fitness, like solving a problem for them, aren't the kind of classic early tech adopters," Pedante said. "I am not an actor...being an actor, being on camera was never a part of my plan in life and the only way that I'm able to do this job and to have this role is because I'm showing up as myself. And the only way I can feel good about it is that the more I show up as my real self, the more it seems to resonate with people. And the coaches and I talk about that all the time...our very early workouts when we didn't know who our members would be, I think...we were kind of holding back a little bit of ourselves because we didn't have relationships with our community. You build trust over time. This many years in, we've built a tremendous amount of trust that like the human fallible, messy sides of us as coaches, are part of the reasons why people can find solace and companionship in us is because we're reflecting back the whole thing and not just a sliver of a person."
A Sony exec reaffirmed that PSVR 2 is "important to us," but explained it's not the 'core proposition' this season.
In a recent interview with Barron's (paywall), Eric Lempel, Senior Vice President, Head of Global Marketing, Sales & Business Operations at PlayStation, was questioned about the sales outlook for PS5 and PSVR 2 this holiday season. Calling the PS5 outlook "really strong," he calls VR a "category that can help with innovation" before calling PS5 the core focus.
Here's the full quote:
The VR category is important to us. It’s a category that can help us with innovation. It’s never going to be the only way people play games, but I’m happy that we’re in it. There are great experiences to be had and consumers really like it. But it’s a nascent business for us. It’s something that we want to be a part of but it’s not the core proposition we have this season. PlayStation 5 is the core.
Considering VR still fights for mainstream adoption, Lempel's comments aren't particularly surprising. In May, Sony confirmed PSVR 2 sold 600k units from its late February launch up until April, while PS5 surpassed 40 million units in July after launching in November 2020. The two aren't directly comparable despite PSVR 2 requiring PS5, but it's not hard to see why Sony is prioritizing the latter.
Despite a strong launch line-up with Horizon, Gran Turismo 7, Resident Evil Village and more, there's been vocal criticism about PSVR 2's library ever since. Firewall Ultra received mixed reviews in August, there are currently no revealed upcoming 1st party games and recent last-minute indefinite delays for Vertigo 2 and Phasmophobia will only deepen frustrations.
With the recent Quest 3 launch putting these issues into greater perspective, Lempel's comments will likely do little to encourage existing PSVR 2 owners.
In this week's episode of the Between Realities VR Podcast, Alex and Skeeva host Will Cloxton of Vankrupt Games, developers of Pavlov and Pavlov Shack.
Will gives the insider's perspective on Pavlov Shack's upcoming official Quest store release. Topics include reasons behind Pavlov's game design choices and the importance of mods and community created content.
Apple could reportedly use Vision Pro to detect health issues.
The Information's Wayne Ma cites "people with direct knowledge of the matter" as saying that Apple is discussing using the face and eye tracking sensors on Vision Pro to "measure a person’s facial expressions, using them to detect depression, anxiety, stress or post-traumatic stress disorder".
Ma's reporting suggests Apple is hiring health experts to research whether the company could connect face and eye tracking data to health-related features of the Vision Pro. To treat mental health, Vision Pro could "display images and sounds that might improve the wearer’s emotions", Ma writes. When announcing Vision Pro, Apple showed a "full space" mindfulness app that darkened most of the room to "create a moment of calm".
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Apple's Mindfulness visionOS app.
Another possible feature reportedly being considered is using the eye tracking cameras to detect blood vessel swelling, which can be an early symptom of heart failure, Ma writes.
Apple has put a strong focus on fitness and health in Apple Watch. It can detect unusual heart rate, irregular rhythm, low cardio fitness, blood oxygen level, falls, and car crashes. Newer models can even capture an electrocardiogram (ECG).
In 2019, Tim Cook told CNBC that Apple's "greatest contribution to mankind" would be to health.
Apple reportedly cut full body tracking from Vision Pro "years ago".
Vision Pro has downwards-facing cameras, announced as being for hand tracking. Last year The Information's Wayne Ma reported that the headset - still only a rumor at the time - would also use these cameras to track your body, including your legs, but Apple didn't announce this. The same report described the headset's OpticID iris authentication system, which did turn out to be true.
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Apple Vision Pro's sensor array includes downwards cameras.
In a new report this week, Ma claims Apple actually "cut full body tracking from the Vision Pro several years ago because engineers couldn’t make it reliable enough".
Apple was planning to use body tracking for health features and fitness, Ma writes. Movement data could have been analyzed over time to detect Parkinson’s disease, for example. Despite rumors of an Apple Fitness+ service for Vision Pro, Apple didn't discuss fitness at all during the product's lengthy announcement in June.
Meanwhile, Meta plans to add inside-out upper body tracking to Quest 3 in a software update in December, which will utilize Quest 3's downwards-facing side cameras. This feature won't track your legs, though, just everything above. Meta plans to release "Generative Legs" in the same update to estimate your legs with AI.
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Quest 3's upcoming inside-out upper body tracking feature.
Meta is considered a leader in computer vision and machine learning, which may have given it an advantage over Apple when it comes to shipping features like this. Alternatively, Apple executives may have a higher quality bar, one which they felt current technology doesn't surpass yet.
Ma's report doesn't say whether Apple is still working on body tracking or has abandoned work on it until future hardware, however Apple has a long history of adding significant new software features to its products over time.
CoasterMania's room-aware mixed reality update lets you build rollercoasters over your real furniture on Quest 3.
The game can now utilize the room mesh Quest 3 generates during mixed reality setup to let you place tracks on your actual floor, tables, sofas, and other furniture. The coaster cars can even crash into your furniture and explode when they go off an unfinished track.
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You can choose to watch the train ride along the track you've built at miniature scale in mixed reality, or go into a VR first-person view. Since Quest 3 only captures the geometry of your room though, not the texture, the first-person mode uses a default green-brown terrain texture overlayed onto your room mesh.
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The update also adds a new mixed reality Puzzle Mode to the game, where you solve physics-based puzzles that adapt based on the size and shape of your real room.
Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord releases today for PSVR 2 and Quest headsets. We've been playing the game this week – here's what we think so far.
Note: This is an unscored review-in-progress. While we've been able to play ahead of launch, much of the game is designed around multiplayer. As such, we're waiting to progress further along the campaign and try the online matchmaking experience before giving our final verdict. Keep an eye out for our full review with updated thoughts and a final scored verdict next week.
Heralding the start of a pre-holiday season game rush, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord has positioned itself as perhaps one of the biggest titles to release this year so far. It marks a potential sigh of relief for Quest 3 and PSVR 2 owners waiting for exciting new content, but also a rare partnership bringing together a huge multi-film intellectual property and one of VR's most veteran development studios.
It's a big bet from all angles, but does it pay-off?
Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord Review – The Facts
Platforms: PSVR 2, Quest headset (Review-in-progress conducted on Quest 3) Release Date: Out now Developer: nDreams Price: $34.99
Ghostbusters has always been about team efforts, so it makes sense that Rise of the Ghost Lord is designed around co-op multiplayer. While it is possible to play through the game solo, the experience will be worse off for it – this is 100% a game made to be played with others online or, even better, your friends.
The game supports play with up to four players and offers a few solutions to make teaming up as smooth as possible. Not only is the game launching same day on Quest and PSVR 2 headsets, but it also supports full cross-platform play from the get go, which is fantastic.
There are room codes if you want to party up with friends, as well as online matchmaking options if you'd prefer to let the system find players for you, with an built-in audio chat for communication between teammates.
The game's lobby is the San Francisco Ghostbusters HQ, acting as a hub area for you to upgrade gear, change skins and begin missions alongside friends. You'll also hear snippets of dialogue between missions and receive other updates that progress the narrative forward.
A Ghostbusting Gameplay Loop
Rise of the Ghost Lord begins with an intro sequence that runs through the basic controls and mechanics, while also setting up the game's loose narrative premise featuring the titular Ghost Lord villain.
After that intro sequence is done, you're placed into the hub lobby and left to your own devices. The order of missions is dynamic, with players able to choose from a selection of three at any given time. Missions last around 10 minutes (give or take) and are split across four types, each with different objectives – Harvester, Giga Trap Retrieval, On the Clock and Exorcism.
After completing a mission, you're returned to the hub, where you can spend hard-earned cash on equipment upgrades and more.
So far, I've had the most fun with Harvester missions, which involve locating a large ghost-catching machine on the map, finding parts to repair it and then trapping ghosts in it until your team has filled two canisters-worth of ghosts.
On the Clock is a straightforward timed objective mode, requiring you to catch as many ghosts as you can within 10 minutes, while Exorcism sees your team locating objects on the map that will help close a ghost-ridden portal. Giga Trap Retrieval involves the most teamwork, requiring you to locate a Giga Trap and carry it across the map for extraction while fighting against ghosts. If a team member drops the trap and nobody picks it up again quick enough, the mission will fail.
The maps are set across San Francisco, including iconic locations like Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. While not the most detailed environments ever, some nonetheless feature impressive scales, especially for a standalone headset like Quest. The maps do repeat themselves, but with variation in accessible areas and mission types. They're designed in a way that allows areas to be blocked off or restricted, routing players one way on a given mission and another on the next. As an example, the Golden Gate Bridge map has two sides and areas at different elevations. I played one mission where I moved between both sides of the map but stayed on the ground, then another where I was restricted to one side but also explored an elevated section looking down on the bridge from above.
It's an understandable solution that lets nDreams get more out of the maps it's created, but we'll need to play more to determine whether there's a good balance between total maps, how often they repeat and the variety on offer.
Ghost Hunters & Collectors
So Rise of the Ghost Lord features a dynamic mission structure across a set of varied maps, but what about actually catching ghosts? Is the ghost busting actually any fun?
For the most part, yes – though there's a few lingering questions over potential repetitiveness.
Players are equipped with some key tools for their ghost-hunting adventures – a PKE meter (used to track objectives and scan the environment), a launch-able trap (for catching ghosts, of course) and a proton wand (to shoot out streams that vaporize ghosts).
The first two are located on your hip, with the main proton wand located over your shoulder. The wand is best wielded with two hands, shooting out a bendy stream that can be aimed around the environment, tracking the movement of ghosts as they fly around you.
Smaller ghosts don't require traps – you and your teammates can just shoot them with your proton wands to vaporize them. However, larger ghosts require a bit more teamwork and coordination, with two deplete-able bars floating on each side of them – shields on the right and health on the left.
Tracking them with your stream will wear down their shield. Once depleted, your stream will tether the ghost in a lasso. You'll need to pull your proton wand in the opposite direction to the ghost's movement to wear down its health. Doing this will also heat up your proton wand, requiring you to press the A button right at the peak to vent it. If not, your wand will overheat and temporarily shut down.
Once a ghost's health has been depleted, you can pull it into a nearby trap or harvester. It's an overall clever system that takes good advantage of motion controls to create an experience that feels right at home in VR. Being efficient also often requires communication between teammates to ensure you're targeting the same ghost – multiple streams on the same target will make faster work of the ghosts.
The ghosts will also attack you through all of this, with each ghost variety featuring different attack patterns that you'll need to evade appropriately. Things can get pretty spicy as more ghost types are introduced – if a team member is downed, they can be revived with a high five. Evasion is one of they key's to success and though the game offers both smooth locomotion and teleport options for movement, it's much easier to simultaneously fight and dodge attacks with the former.
Questions of Variety
Even with an interesting set of ghost-hunting mechanics and decent variety in enemy types, maps and objectives, our biggest question at the moment is how long that will all remain engaging for.
So far, we've played a few missions in co-operative mode and some more in offline solo mode (for which you're joined by an AI-controlled ghost ally fighting alongside you). With our limited pre-release experience, we can't speak to how the overarching narrative/campaign plays out nor how many total missions it comprises of. That said, even with our limited experience, it feels as though Rise of the Ghost Lord's gameplay could devolve into feeling a bit same-y across the campaign.
We'll have to play more to confirm whether that's truly the case – perhaps there's some gameplay twists in store down the line. No doubt a lot of fun is also meant to also come from the social aspect of the game, which we will be testing a lot more of now that the game is properly live.
Mini-Puft Mayhem Mixed Reality Mode
On Quest, Rise of the Ghost Lord also includes a mixed reality mini game that breaks open your ceiling to reveal a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
You'll use a cannon-slingshot device (with fairly wonky controls) to suck up floating mini-pufts and bombs that can be shot at the giant Marshmallow Man above you. One round won't take you more than five minutes to complete.
I'd say you're likely to play through Mini-Puft Mayhem once and then never again, but that might encourage you to give it a try – I'm not sure it's even worth that. It amounts to a fairly uninspired mixed reality experience that will look great in a Quest 3 commercial but offers little of substance to players.
Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord – Review-In-Progress
Sony Pictures VR and nDreams have built a solid foundation for a decent co-op multiplayer experience with Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord. We've found good mechanics and an overall engaging presentation in what we've played so far, but we'll need to play more to report properly on the online multiplayer experience and performance across different headsets.
The biggest lingering question is whether there's enough variety to sustain players coming back for multiple sessions across the main campaign, let alone beyond that.
Keep an eye out for our updated review in the days to come with more info and our final verdict.
Henry Stockdale
