‘Robo Recall’ for Oculus Touch is fun, frantic and completely free

At Oculus Connect 2 last year, Epic Games’ Bullet Train demo stole the show — leaning heavily on the “bullet time” effect popularized by the Matrix films to create a smooth, action-packed shooter that let players take down multiple enemies in slow motion. It had a neat gimmick: it used virtual reality to bend reality in a way we’ve only seen in the movies. The team brought the concept back to Oculus developer conference again this year as the heavily refined Robo Recall: a frantic, physics-based shooter with a sense of humor. Hands-down, it’s one of the best Oculus Touch experiences I saw at the show. Even better? When it launches early next year, it will be absolutely free.

There’s no shortage of VR shooting gallery demos out there, but Robo Recall won me over by making firearms just part of the players arsenal. The rest of it? Well, that’s everything around you. The game tasks the player with “recalling” rogue robot servants — tracking down the rebellious automatons and deactivating them by force. Shooting them works, but it’s a lot more fun to pick up one attacking robot and simply throw it at another. Run out of bullets? Throw your gun at the offending machine, it’s just as effective. Half of the fun of the game is to find less obvious ways to defeat your enemies.

The remnants of Bullet Train are here too: if the player is moving slowly, the flow of time slows down to match — giving you plenty of time to snatch a bullet out of mid-air and fling it back an enemy. It’s a lighthearted, but action-packed experience, and a great showcase of the kind of physicality the Oculus Touch controllers can add to a game. It’s not due to launch until a few months after the motion controllers ship, but if you’re going to go all-in and buy Oculus Touch, you may as well check it out. After all, you can’t beat free.

Oculus’ prototype headset points to VR’s wireless future

Tucked away inside the dark hallways of the San Jose Convention Center is a meeting room with signs that read “No photos” and “No food or drink.” I shook the hands of the Oculus spokespeople who were there to greet me and proceeded to try to get in the door. But before I could do that, I was instructed to leave my backpack, my purse and my phone behind. When I was finally allowed in, I was surprised to see that the room was decorated to look like a giant living space, with a large sofa and chaise in one corner and pillows, books and paintings placed throughout. But I wasn’t there to judge the interior design. No, I was there to try a prototype of Oculus’ newly announced standalone VR headset, Santa Cruz.

The hardware, which was announced at the Oculus Connect 3 keynote, sits somewhere between the Rift and the Gear VR. It doesn’t require a PC like the Rift, yet it’s more powerful than Gear VR. And it’s wireless. What’s particularly interesting about the Santa Cruz is that Oculus is using it to show off something called “inside-out tracking,” a technology that uses cameras on the headset for positional movement — so that the game can know if you’re crouching or leaning to one side, for example. The Rift requires external sensors for this, and the Gear VR doesn’t have this feature at all. So to have this simply built-in to a standalone headset is a big deal.

Because the Santa Cruz is strictly a prototype, I wasn’t allowed to touch the headset. But I did get a good look at it before testing it. The entire thing looks almost exactly like a Rift, but instead of being attached to a PC, the wires are connected to what appears to be a miniature computer attached to the rear of the headset (aka the part that hits the back of your head). On the front, there are four tiny cameras, which provide that “inside-out tracking” magic. The prototype was pretty rough, the wires were held with what looked like tape and the internals were exposed. But there was indeed no PC or smartphone in sight. All that’s powering my VR experience was that tiny PC.

Before I could wear the headset, I was told to look around the room to get my bearings of where the different objects in the room were located. The idea here is to get a mental boundary, so that I don’t run into the couch, for example. Since I wasn’t allowed to touch the Santa Cruz, Oculus ‘helpers’ in the room had to put the headset on for me. It was a little awkward, but after some futzing and adjusting, they finally had it on my head.

The first scene I was in was that of an empty space station. I walked all around the stark interior, making my way from one end to the next. It was cool to be able to walk around this virtual space without having wires encumber my movement. But as I approached the edge of the physical room, I saw a blue grid show up, indicating that I was at the edge of the world and could go no further. I asked the spokesperson if they needed to map out the room ahead of time in order to mark out the perimeters for the headset, but was told that no, it wasn’t necessary. It’s unclear if the Santa Cruz is nimble enough to figure out boundaries on the fly, but at least in the case of this demo room, it seemed to be doing a good job.

Next, I was transported to “Paper Town,” which is a fairly common Oculus demo. In it, you’re in a city made out of paper — of course. People are yelling, there’s a house burning and oh, there’s a UFO too. I crouched around, leaned from side to side, and could even peer over balcony railings and look behind objects. It was a lot more interactive than most Gear VR experiences and was on par with how I’ve felt in Rift games.

And, well, that was it. The Santa Cruz demo lasted for only a few minutes. I asked if it would eventually support Oculus’ Touch controllers or if it would be compatible with the same titles as the Rift, but all Oculus could say was that it’s far too early to tell. Right now, the Santa Cruz prototype is simply a proof-of-concept that its inside-out tracking works. It could very well develop into a separate, standalone VR product. But the company could also use that same technology and integrate it into the Gear VR or a future Rift, perhaps transforming those into standalone headsets themselves.

The experience was short, but it was pretty great. There are no sensors and wires to worry about. You can just put on the headset and get started, no PC or phone required. There are other standalone headsets out there — Alcatel has one and Intel’s working on its own version too — but it could very well be Oculus that gets it done right.

The Oculus Rift earbuds are surprisingly comfy

Headtracking, motion controls and visual fidelity usually dominate the conversation about what makes for an “immersive” virtual reality experience, but great sounding audio is every bit as important — that’s why the Oculus Rift ships with built-in headphones. The on-ear speakers are more than adequate for a good VR experience but at Oculus Connect 3, the company announced an alternative that might be just a little bit better: the Oculus Rift Earphones. I got my hands on a pair before leaving the developer conference, and I can say that Oculus confidence in the earbuds is justified: these things sound pretty great.

It’s mostly a triumph of design. The Rift’s standard headphones sound fine, but as an on-ear solution, they’re subject to noise pollution. In-ear headphones are simply more isolating, blocking more outside noise and lending a more immersive experience to VR by default — which make the Oculus Earphones perfect for Rift users looking for a more intimate sound experience. I took a pair to the Superhot demo booth at Oculus Connect 3 (Oculus is giving a pair to every attendee), and convinced the developers to let me install them on the demo station’s Rift. Installation is easy — a single screw holds each headphone in place, which snap on with magnetic connectors.

The eabuds look a little silly dangling off of the bottom of a Rift headset, but they sound great — the soft silicone earbuds fit comfortably in my ears, and blocked out almost all outside noise. It was great for the VR experience, but a little detrimental to the demo experience: every time Superhot’s developer tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention, I jumped. I had no idea he was even there! The buds were quite loud, too; we had to reduce the game’s volume by about half before I was comfortable.

As great as the Oculus Rift Earphones sound, they do present one problem — they’re a very personal audio device. Yes, earbuds sound great, but they’re also one of the few peripherals we put inside a part of our body. Unless you’re comfortable sharing earwax with strangers, it makes the Rift unshareable. Still, if you’re the only person in your household who uses the Rift (or you don’t mind uninstalling them out for other users), they’re a great accessory.

The next batch of Oculus games highlights the Touch controller

2016 has been a banner year for Oculus for one main reason: After four long years, it finally shipped the consumer edition of its VR headset. Sure, it’s pricey at $600 and sure, it requires a pretty powerful computer, but for a first-generation product in an extremely young field, the Rift delivers the goods. One of the reasons for that is that Oculus has been busy cultivating a vast ecosystem of games and apps for years now, thanks to the company’s fervent developer community. On the eve of Oculus’ third annual developer’s conference, we got to get a sneak peek at the very latest that community has to offer. The big theme this year? Getting to use those soon-to-be-available Touch controllers.

Arktika.1

First-person shooters are de rigueur for VR games, and for good reason — it’s just so much fun. That’s certainly how I felt when playing Arktika.1, where I took on the role of a mercenary set in a post-apocalyptic ice age a 100 years into the future. My job? To protect the colony from getting robbed by bandits and all kinds of fearsome enemies — both human and non-human varieties. It’s an Oculus exclusive but, importantly, it’s also a Touch exclusive, as it was designed with the motion controllers in mind. — Nicole Lee, Senior Editor

Kingspray

Kingspray is really less of a game and more of a virtual gathering of friends. That is, friends who are into the creation of street art. In this VR experience, you essentially use those Touch controllers to manipulate spray cans to tag up walls to your heart’s content. You’re able to change up colors, adjust brush size and even capture a screencap of your masterpiece to share on social media.

The real idea behind Kingspray is to mark up a wall not just by yourself but with your friends too, through a social multi-player mode. You can do things like throw virtual bottles and cans at your buds if they mess up your art. There’s also a boombox that’ll play your favorite tunes as you indulge your graffiti fantasies. We’re not quite sure if VR graffiti will catch on with the masses, but at least this way, you won’t be risking arrest. — Nicole Lee, Senior Editor

Killing Floor: Incursion

If you’re a fan of the Killing Floor survival horror franchise, you’ll likely be a fan of the Rift version of it too. Instead of using a gamepad to kill the undead, you’ll be using the Touch controllers to not just shoot at them, but also to stab and punch them to death. To keep alive, you’ll have to wander around finding health and ammo packs and, of course, to just be vigilant. The best thing about this game though, is that it’s a multi-player co-op, so you can get your friends to join in on the zombie killing fun too. — Nicole Lee, Senior Editor

VR Sports Challenge

Sports and video games have always gone hand in hand — but it was the breakaway success of the Nintendo Wii that made motion controls their ever-present third wheel. With Oculus’ Touch controllers on the horizon, VR Sports Challenge was an inevitability. Sadly, it’s also a little mediocre. The idea is good (who wouldn’t want to play out the fantasy of being a star athlete?) but the experience can come off as a bit awkward and unintuitive. The game’s football experience is a good example: Despite using motion controllers with 1:1 tracking, the ball doesn’t go where you physically throw it, but where you are physically looking. The force of the throw doesn’t matter either — distance is determined by the angle of the player’s head, not the power of their throw. It feels, frankly, a little unnatural.

VR Sports Challenge’s basketball mode fares better, at least. Free throws, passes and blocking with the motion controller work exactly as you’d expect, although the game’s tendency to automatically teleport the player to wherever the most action on the court is can be a little disorientating. By and far, the best experience in the VR Sports package is hockey — not for the sport itself, but for the first-fights. Turns out having an angry brawl in VR is a ton of fun. — Sean Buckley, Associate Editor

Unspoken

Insomniac Games’ The Unspoken has often been described as a bizarre mash up of Fight Club and Harry Potter; At Oculus Connect 3, the game got an extra dose of magic. Fundamentally, the magical multiplayer combat experience hasn’t changed. Players still fling spells at each other while teleporting across a chaotic battlefield, but the game’s just a bit more complicated now — with new spells, new motion controls and the introduction of two character classes: the Anarchist and Kineticist.

The game’s new class system to serves to enhance the complexity of its battle mechanics. Each type of character offers players a completely different set of skills — Anarchists sling fireballs and deal in direct damage, while the Kineticist uses telekinetic powers to throw cars, plants and debris at their opponents. Players can also now cast spells with mere gestures, allowing them to cross their arms to put up a shield or spread their hands apart to unleash a powerful attack. Apparently, the new gesture spells were designed to allow players to focus on the action without looking away from the battle to use item-based attacks. It worked — we didn’t take our eyes off our opponent for our entire demo. — Sean Buckley, Associate Editor

Landfall

What would happen if you crammed Halo: Spartan Assault into VR, minus the Halo branding? You’d probably get Landfall. Okay, that may be stretching a little, but not too much: earlier this year, the developer behind Halo’s top-down shooting games reformed as VR-exclusive production house. The company’s first game? A twin-stick, top-down VR game, naturally. At first blush the experience seems a little odd, but in a space currently dominated by first-person experiences, Landfall’s overhead perspective is a little refreshing.

Our multiplayer Landfall demo pitted Engadget’s team of two against two unseen journalists from Japan, tasking us with defending a series of control points against a horde of soldiers, turrets and the occasional oversized war-mech. Each player controls a single warrior, viewed from an disembodied aerial view. It was almost a nostalgic perspective — like looking down on a collection of toy soldiers. — Sean Buckley, Associate Editor

Lone Echo

Without a doubt, Lone Echo was one of the best experiences on display at Oculus Connect. You take on the role of “Jack,” a possibly sentient robot working on a space station in the rings of Saturn. We don’t know a lot about the story yet, but it has something to do with a special anomaly and disaster that threatens both the station and its human astronauts. It’s a good story, but that’s not what makes this game great — that’s more about how the player moves through the space station: completely weightlessly.

Lone Echo uses the Oculus Touch controllers to let players push off bulkheads and grab walls to weightlessly navigate through their environment. Can’t find a good hold? Don’t worry — your robot avatar has tiny jets to propel him through the void of space. It’s a game where momentum matters, and offers players a realistic sense of what it might like to float in the freefall of deep space. That’s exactly what a lot of us want out of VR: the kind of experience we’re just not likely to get out of our mundane lives here on earth. Ready at Dawn studios was coy about how the rest of the game will play out, but the developer certainly has our attention. — Sean Buckley, Associate Editor

Fight off post-apocalyptic bandits in ‘Arktika.1’

It’s a hundred years in a post-apocalyptic future and a second ice age has arrived. You’re a mercenary, hired by a Russian colony to protect the facilities from bandits, criminals and other… creatures. That’s the basic premise behind Arktika.1, a brand new VR title developed by 4A Games with the help of Oculus Studios. This first-person shooter is an Oculus exclusive, and importantly, it’s also a Touch exclusive, which means it’s designed from the ground up to utilize the VR firm’s motion hand controllers.

After donning the Rift headset and going through a brief tutorial, I got the hang of using the Touch controllers fairly quickly. I picked two guns as my weapons of choice and wielded one in each hand. As you do so, the tutorial offers a brief hologram on how to reload your gun — which either means lowering your gun and lifting it again or flipping your wrist to cock a virtual barrel. You’ll know when to reload when the floating ammo digits above your gun is, well, zero.

In my demo, I was thrown into enemy combat fairly quickly, in what appears to be a storage facility. Thankfully, the bandits didn’t appear to be terribly bright, and I could crouch behind barricades and walls without being detected. To move throughout the space, you simply aim your gaze at a pre-determined area — they’re highlighted in blue or yellow — and press the A button. You’ll be teleported there instantly. Blue spots have high cover but terrible shooting angles while yellow areas have low cover but you get to blast bandits with greater accuracy. After you clear the room of bandits, you get to move to the next stage by teleporting to the elevator and going on to the next floor.

Arktika.1 is what I would describe as a full-body VR game, as I not only used my arms and hands to shoot, I also bent down and got on the floor to avoid getting shot. It was a lot of fun, so much so that my 20-minute demo time flew by. The use of the Touch controllers really makes this game pretty immersive as well. Arktika.1 should be out by Q2 of next year, which is good, because the Touch should be available by then too.