Ones To Watch 2016: Virtual Reality, Part Two

Earlier today, we gave you a look at some of VR’s most high profile upcoming releases, but there’s an awful lot more games on the way than that, and Sony have the clout to develop a number of exclusive partnerships and first party games to make the PlayStation VR stand out.

Here’s a quick rundown for a handful of games confirmed for the company’s newest piece of hardware.

At E3 Sony announced that Guerrilla Cambridge was working on a game called RIGS, and that it would feature first person mech combat. However RIGS is much more than that as it is a sport where the player controlled mechs must jump through hoops to score points, while trying to shoot and stop the opposition from doing the same. Maybe the best kind of way to describe it is giant robot basketball with guns, except the your robot is also the ball.

Early word about the game have been quite encouraging, especially with respect to the challenges of combining first person motion and control with VR, without the kinds of motion sickness that this can commonly induce.

Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn was one of the most memorable horror gaming experiences in recent memory, essentially putting players in a horror movie. In it you’d try to save a group of people against those that bring death, with every decision having some kind of knock on affect. So when Supermassive announced Until Dawn: Rush of Blood for VR people were in for a surprise.

Until Dawn: Rush of Blood will put players on a rollercoaster where decisions alter which track you follow. At different junctures you’ll shoot at threats in the style of an arcade shooter. It’s quite the departure from what Until Dawn was, but Supermassive wanted to properly experiment with PlayStation VR, and a horror themed rollercoaster ride is how that manifested.

At PlayStation Experience 2015 Bandai Namco revealed that Project Aces was working on Ace Combat 7 for PlayStation 4 and with additional support for PlayStation VR. While very little information has been revealed for the game it does look like players will be going back to the Strangereal universe, to an Earth that is similar yet very different to our own.

Different nations and cultures exist on Strangereal Earth, though there are also many events similar to those of Earth. There’s no information on the story, but as we’ve seen in a handful of other games, dogfighting and VR look like they’re a match made in heaven.

Hot on the heels of the Psychonauts 2 announcement and crowd-funding drive, Double Fine had another surprise to reveal at PlayStation Experience, taking to the stage to announce Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin as a PlayStation VR exclusive.

Rhombus Of Ruin continues from the end of the original game, and helps connect it to the events of Psychonauts 2. In Rhombus of Ruin, Raz and Lili must go rescue Truman Zanotto, who is Lili’s father and the Grand Head of the Psychonauts.

Robinson: The Journey was first revealed around six months ago by Crytek, with information that it was taking some inspiration from Robinson Crusoe. Things went quiet for a bit until Paris Games Week where Crytek showed a trailer for the game, giving us more of a clue to the plot. Robinson is a child and has crashed on a planet which is teeming with dinosaurs, but if the original poster is to go by then it looks like some kind of civilisation does or did reside here.

The location will be fully explorable and it looks like you’ll have to help Robinson survive the environment, and discover what happened on the planet, as well as try to leave or get rescued. There is a robot companion to guide Robinson too.

Volume released earlier this year on PC, Mac and PS4 earlier this year, with the plot following a modern retelling of the Robin Hood story. In October Mike Bithell announced that he and his team were working on a free VR expansion for the stealth title, called Volume: Coda. Coda will be set after the conclusion of the main game with 30 new missions to tackle, with players becoming The Troubleshooter. Volume’s main campaign and user generated missions will be playable using the PSVR too.