This post is not, however, a VR hate post. VR looks really interesting and offers a way to play and interact with our games, if I was a rich man with a large house I probably wouldn't be making this post at all. But I'm not a rich man and I don't have a big house so I'm going to be slightly grumpy for a bit. The first problem with VR is the price where it seems to range from about 40,000 yen to 100,000 yen. That's A LOT of fuckin' money right there, I could get a PS5 for around that price and at least then I'd be able to just hook that up and play it on my couch. Probably get some free games with PS+ as well. But even if I was willing to spend that kind of money I don't have the space in my house to use the damn thing. It has all these sensors and controllers and shit that need setting up and I just don't have an adequate play space for it.
But these are all "me" problems. I can save money, I can move house and when I do the above paragraph becomes invalid but that doesn't change the fact that there just aren't all that many games that stand out. Without looking at Steam, just off the top of my head there is Half Life: Alyx and and Beat Saber that I want to play. Everything I know about VR after that are just samey looking shooters or shitty attempts at horror games. After taking a quick look at Steam after writing that last sentence, my opinion hasn't changed.
But again, that's not my main problem with VR. VR might have a bit of a crap library but it's a new thing, it's still sort of finding its feet. My main problem is that a lot of the games on VR don't need to be EXCLUSIVELY VR. I looked some game play footage of Alyx and yes I'm sure it's all very immersive with that headset on but it's not doing anything that couldn't be done with a mouse and keyboard. Being locked out of an genuinely interesting looking experience because I'm not willing to drop $400 on a piece of hardware that I still see as sort of gimmicky to play games that aren't that different from standard PC games seems a bit stupid. The one exception to this rule seems to be Beat Saber. That's a unique take on the rhythm genre that basically needs to be in VR and wouldn't really work the same with standard button inputs or...mouse controls?
I'm not really mad at VR per se, I just wish that I just had access to the more interesting titles in the lineup. Just another version of the same game but it allows me to sit in a chair and push buttons instead of making me stand up and flail around. One day, probably after everyone's lost interesting and the hardware is cheap as fuck, I'll play these games, but for now, I'm gonna be sitting here with my peasant-ass controller looking grumpy
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