John sells his PS4, Franny is intrigued by the Project Triangle Strategy demo, Mav dives deep into The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II, and Melissa explores the released Dinosaur Planet build.

My pick for best video game train is the KiHa 58 series from Densha de Go! 3. Fight me about it.

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If you’ve been online at all in the last year, chances are you’re familiar with the Vtuber boom of 2020, where streaming video games finally became “cool”. Somehow faster than anyone else (probably because the series in general runs on a development cycle of maybe a year max) Compile Heart caught onto this wave and decided to make an entire game about Vtubers, filling said game to the brim with appearances from the real ones in increasingly bizarre ways. Neptunia Virtual Stars is the first Neptunia game in ages where I actually sat there absorbed in disbelief relatively consistently, and is genuinely one of the most ridiculous video games I’ve seen maybe ever. 

The story of Neptunia Virtual Stars revolves around an entire planet dedicated to the existence of online content being invaded and harvested by an army of “Antis”, who are led by an evil anime woman and her squad of CEOs. Each of these CEOs are tied to a specific type of web content: there’s a phoenix in charge of causing flame wars on fake Twitter, there’s a talking hamburger who’s in charge of fake Yelp, a big robot in charge of managing MyAnimeList… you get the picture. All of the Neptunia characters and a few new original Vtuber characters made just for this game get summoned to help put a stop to it and become the next big streamers to save the world. 

Some of that probably sounds silly, and yeah, it is, but by and large most of the game’s narrative is insufferably boring, even by Neptunia standards. There’s this need to over explain quite literally everything that just gets ridiculous, and honestly it doesn’t even make sense in the first place. I don’t know who exactly the writers thought the target market was for Neptunia, but for some reason even though it’s a game about Vtubers, arguably one of the more deep-level concepts in modern day society, they spend literal minutes explaining the concept of Twitter multiple times. Like, this is the same game that lets you put the Xanthous Crown from Dark Souls on one of your anime girls! For a series that is generally about deep pulls from the Japanese game industry, how would anyone who signed up for this need to be educated like a tech illiterate grandfather?  

It’s genuinely a shame so much of the story is wasted on these overwrought explanations, because the topics that are flirted with at times can be genuinely surprising. Each chapter’s final boss, the aforementioned CEOs, are driven by a genuine issue in modern media consumption currently being reckoned with. The fake Twitter world is struggling with poor moderation, specifically with regards to how the algorithms they designed push which narratives to the forefront and how hard it can be to get real information or push past the worst actors in a situation. Fake Game Industry World is struggling with both insane developer crunch and the untenable power structures of game design management, while the print-based media world quite literally has all of the main cast come together to destroy a man who’s filled the world with exclusively isekai harem light novels. It’s crazy that there’s actually a real game talking about these issues, and while it’s generally played for laughs, these are issues that you hardly ever see fictional works attempt to dissect and consistently be on the right side of. I just wish that more time could have been dedicated to more ironic swings at these topics instead of Neptune completely flabbergasted by the concept of a fast food review.

In terms of gameplay, Neptunia Virtual Stars is comparable to several of the existing Neptunia spin-offs, which deviate from the series’ traditional JRPG gameplay in favor of an incredibly simplistic hack and slash format. You alternate between playing as series’ protagonist Neptune and her three console-based friends who have guns and slide around all Phantasy Star Online style and the game’s completely original Vtuber characters who have more classical weaponry like swords and bows. I’m not entirely sure what the intention with this design is, since there are no enemies or mechanics that require switching between the two sets of girls, but that means that you can pretty much just play the entire game as whatever girl you happen to like the most (which I did). This is pretty common with the Neptunia series, as the main series boasts party member counts that can reach into the 30’s and there’s no way in hell you’re ever going to have a reason to use more than a few, but it felt extremely strange to have all of these girls just a button press away with absolutely no reason to even think about using them.

Where Virtual Stars becomes truly unhinged is with how it integrates the experience of “Vtubing” into the standard gameplay loop. As you slide across the various genericized environments, you’re gradually rescuing a slew of Real Life Vtubers who have been captured by the Antis and imprisoned in magical cubes. Once you save say, Hololive’s Inugami Korone, she will become available as a constant summon, appearing in a small tv box on the right side of the screen occasionally to say some nonsense and then cause a huge explosion. She will also appear on the various monitors scattered throughout the game world, cheering you on when you do a combo or telling you when there’s a treasure chest nearby. There are over 60 real Vtubers scattered across the game, and each time you rescue one they’re added to these mechanics, meaning you’re constantly barraged by a horde of anime women who are completely aesthetically different with wildly different audio quality, and it’s completely insane to me. They even appear on the game’s various loading screens to tell you to go to their channel on YouTube to like and subscribe, like, holy shit.

If I were to describe Neptunia Virtual Stars in a single word, it would perhaps be full sensory overload. Aside from the Vtubers popping in constantly, there are also little chat messages filling your screen basically nonstop. Each of these messages are incredibly true to an authentic Vtuber’s chat, with a million “LOL!”s, marriage proposals, and all the backseat gaming you could ask for. It’s completely unreal, and much like the subject matter the game’s narrative flirts with, this depiction of a real world thing that tons of people know about but no fiction seems to even reference in a realistic way is incredibly fascinating to see. 

Each of these individual aspects on their own would make for a generally boring game, but together they elevate what is still a pretty basic and simplistic experience into an overwhelming visual and auditory blast. I barrelled through the game relatively quickly (it’s not long, somewhere in the ballpark of 10-15 hours) just because I was so drawn in by seeing whatever the hell was going to happen next or what ridiculous new Vtuber I was going to learn about next. Did you know that there’s an official Fist of the North Star Vtuber named Heart who is just a generic Fist of the North Star man? Did you know there’s a Vtuber who’s just a tiny girl in a ghillie suit named Ghillie-chan? It’s incredible, the world is an amazing place.

That all said, there are more than a few bizarre problems with the game that stand out in egregious ways. First is the game’s performance, nothing out of place for the Neptunia series, but the character models and environments are pretty blurry, and a framerate that dips into the tens at times can be pretty nauseating. More egregious, is that this issue with framerate even affects the timing in the completely unnecessary rhythm game BeatTik, meaning that if you’re giving that a whirl there are plenty of times where you’ll miss a note just because the game got hung up on rendering the dancing anime woman which would be pretty annoying if there was actually any reason to play the mini-game at all. 

There are several aspects of the game where you just sort of sit there and go “why is there so much work put into this” or “why does this feature exist” because there’s really no reason to even bother putting the time in to interact with them. BeatTik is incredibly simplistic, you just mash one button in time to one of the various minute and a half songs on the game’s soundtrack while one of the Neptunia girls dance, and for some reason there are like 5000 items in the game all tied to increasing your score here. I didn’t use a single one of these items, and finished the entire reward tree in like, six total songs. The rewards weren’t even useful in the game proper, just more song options or minigame buffs so I was just sort of like. Okay?

“Okay?” might actually be a pretty common thing you say in Virtual Stars, because there’s a ton of things that just sort of arbitrarily happen. Take the third duo of original Vtubers to join your party around halfway through the game. While the first four girls are playable, these two are consistently present in the story, but completely unplayable, even in the rhythm game. It’s bizarre, and the story only acknowledges this at one point by having the Goddess of the world say “oh yeah I forgot to give them weapons, sorry!” These characters are around for most of the game’s story too, but again, since they aren’t playable, they can’t really meaningfully interact with the story in any real way. It just sort of feels like they were content that was meant to be cut but the developers were just sort of like “You know what, no, you’re putting my damn OCs into the game so help me!”

In the end, I still can’t really come out here and tell you that this is an amazing game in terms of the traditional quality one would usually judge a game by, but in terms of the audacity of its existence, this is easily one of the greatest games ever made. One of the fake Vtubers they made for this game is an edgy goth girl reviewbrah-style Vtuber, and that concept alone is worthy of a goddamn trophy. If you’re the type of person who is fascinated by these sorts of bizarre time capsules or open societal discussions, then you might find yourself just as confused and mesmerized as I was.

The post Neptunia Virtual Stars Review (PS4) appeared first on Gamesline.

Persona 3 and 5 Dancing (henceforth abbreviated as P3D and P5D) are very much cut from the same cloth of 2015’s Persona 4 rhythm spinoff Dancing All Night. While Dancing All Night had an isolated story mode with its own visual novelesque plot that felt at home with the series, P3D and P5D choose to instead adapt their stories through a series of “social link” style conversations with individual characters. These social links are usually one-on-one, but sometimes other characters will come in for a sort of skit scenario. This framing works very well with the silliness of the game’s story, which features each game’s respective Velvet Room guide challenging each other to a dance off with the player character as their representative.

The games themselves are standard rhythm game fare. Players have six different sections of the screen corresponding to various directional and input buttons, and as notes travel across the screen, players have to hit the corresponding button in time with the music. While the gameplay is largely unchanged from Dancing All Night, with stuff like hold notes and scratches making a comeback, the game has also implemented double-tap notes, which feel like a natural evolution for the songs.

Since there’s no story mode in either of the games, songs are unlocked by clearing them in order through the “Dancing!” menu, similar to the “Free Dance” mode in Dancing All Night. While the hardest difficulty is locked until you complete every song, once you unlock a song you can play it on easy, normal, or hard, so you aren’t forced to slog through a difficulty that might be too simple for you. By getting away from the previous iteration’s story mode, the main draw of playing more and more is wanting to see the social link interactions between Persona’s cast of characters.

Players can progress through social links by doing specific challenges for each character. Haru, for example, required me to get a “Brilliant” rating on a certain number of songs for each chapter of her story, while Ryuji required me to reach a certain total number of combos across all songs. Overall, I actually liked this system a lot more than Dancing All Night’s progression system, since social links are easily the strongest aspect of any Persona game’s storytelling. Getting to spend more time with the cast of Persona 3 and 5 felt like a warm blanket over my soul. It helped remind me exactly what I loved about each of them (except for that bastard Ken). This format also means that the game is able to avoid talking about the usual social commentary that Persona games typically cover, which is much appreciated after Dancing All Night’s criticism of idol culture. A tonal choice that felt extremely dissonant in a quirky dancing game.

Accomplishing most of these challenges is pretty easy, with almost all of them being completable on easy and normal mode if you’re a player just looking for a story. Whenever you finish reading a new social link, you’ll also unlock things like costumes or support powers. Being able to unlock costumes and accessories is a welcome change from Dancing All Night, where players had to earn money from dancing to buy each individual character’s goods. The costumes this time around are also applied to either all of the boys of the cast or all of the girls of the cast as well, meaning you won’t have to grind forever to dress your favorite character up exactly how you want to. One of the weirder things you have to unlock, however, are support modifiers.

Support Modifiers are a translation of Dancing All Night’s item feature. By ticking some boxes before the start of your song, you can enable some helpful accessibility features like making it easier to maintain combos, or being able to hit any button to land notes. Using these features will cost you a bit of your final song score, but in some cases when you’re really struggling it can be useful to turn them on just to finish one of those tougher songs. While it’s good that this feature is much more accessible than it was in the past, you have to unlock most of the support powers by clearing social links, some of which require significant time played. It feels weird that the developers would create such a useful and thoughtful accessibility feature for struggling players, only to require them to potentially play hours before they even get a chance to use them.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, there are also challenge modifiers. The challenge modifiers will increase your score at the cost of making the song harder- and pretty significantly at that. Some of these modifiers include making the notes disappear before they reach the hit indicator, or having notes fly in at ever changing and terrifying speeds. While some of these modifiers just seem like stupid masochistic levels of hard, I can definitely see a few of them as being fun for people really invested in rhythm games. A lot of the challenge modifiers are unlocked in the same way as the support ones, which at least makes sense for something that is ostensibly supposed to be an added difficulty.

When all of these systems come together, both new Persona games are incredibly fun to play as well as just look at. The dancing has a ton of silly choreography to it, especially with characters like Akihiko whose moves feel perfectly crafted with their doofiness in mind. Everytime Futaba came into a dance as a dancing partner, I lost my shit over just how ridiculous literally everything she did was. Who lets her do that? Why do they let her do that? It’s just a bad scene.

I spent a lot of time in the game just going through and making the perfect outfit for each individual character that I felt would suit them the best. There’s all sorts of costumes from unique themed sets like Velvet Room-themed garb, to the various outfits that each character wore during their original JRPG debut. With plenty of accessories like glasses and headphones as well, you’re able to make a lot of really sleek, or ridiculous costumes depending on whether you like or loathe a character. While I decked out Makoto to look really cool and intense because I think she’s rad, I put a clown nose and horrible gaudy glasses onto characters like Ken or Junpei because they do not deserve my time, effort, or respect and can frankly go away.

Unfortunately, There are a couple outfits that are just plain awful. In P5D specifically, there’s a pre-choreographed video for the song Last Surprise which features a lot of really tasteless and sexist imagery of the cast’s four women. While I talked about this before when some specifically bad costumes were revealed, I was still unprepared for just how bad and out of place it all ended up being. Seeing characters from a game that was largely about challenging the old and vile ideologies of the condoning and liberal adult populous all of a sudden get dressed up in sexy nazi (?) outfits and start dancing in cages and on poles just feels…really bad. These are characters from a game that looks at the degrading culture around sexism and sexual abuse, and now here they are displayed as fetish objects for a machine they were created to destroy.

There is that strange undercurrent of tonal mishmash throughout both of the game’s social links and presentations as well. Seeing games that were about big and serious social issues all of a sudden get distilled down to funny dancing and non-sequiturs can feel extremely weird at times. With again, reference to the serious opening of its source material, P5D also has the boss theme for the man responsible for a lot of those heinous acts, being danced to by a pumped up Ryuji. It’s not outwardly offensive or anything, and it’s certainly better than Dancing All Night’s tone deaf critique, but there’s just something uncomfortable about it all.

Persona has come so far from being a JRPG spinoff in so many ways. Not only has the series bred its own spinoffs, it’s also gotten to the point where they even go out of their way to generate as much money as possible, and it creates a strange sensation. It’s simultaneously satisfying to see a series that you really love doing well as it becomes more and more popular, but it’s equally disheartening to see that the games have reached the level where they almost feel on the verge of exploitative. This could have been one big rhythm game crossover between Persona 3 and Persona 5, but instead of a single best of both worlds title, the end result ends up feeling a lot more like two different almost complete ones.

Still though, if you’re a big Persona fan, and especially if you’re a fan of rhythm games, you’ll probably get enough of a kick out of P5D or P3D for them to be worth your time. I’d recommend just picking whichever entry you’re more partial to however. Since both games have the same general progression and features, it can be a bit mind numbing to play through them back to back. The games are also played best on the Vita in my opinion, because the smaller screen makes it easier to keep track of notes coming in on both sides, which can be a little hard to parse at times on a larger television or monitor. While I wish they could’ve just come together in one big unified P5xP3 crossover dancing game, I still had fun seeing all my favorite ageless student buddies goofing around all over again, and sometimes that’s all you need.

The post Persona 3 Dancing in Moonlight + Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight (PS4) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Starting tomorrow, March 29th, a PS VR headset will now cost $299. That’s down from $349 for the headset only. For the bundle, which includes a headset, camera, demo disc, and Doom VR, it’ll also only cost $299, down from $399. So unless you’re only craving pure headset action, that starter bundle is the way to go. You can also grab the Skyrim VR bundle for $349 which’ll include the game, headset, camera, and Move controllers for precise controls.

That’s a lot of VR opportunity for not so crazy a price. Having only recently tried PS VR myself, I’m still not entirely sold on it. Even with a slate of titles at the ready to play, VR is still floundering since it arrived in full force in 2016. Games seem to get less hype and the money train is now stopping in Bitcoin town and Blockchain-ville. There’s still ample opportunity for VR to thrive but the promises of yesterday still haven’t been fulfilled. Maybe one day soon we’ll all be living in our virtual reality hell-world in our living room, but for now it’s just a slightly less expensive novelty.

The post PSVR Gets Another Price Cut appeared first on Gamesline.

This release seems to be a full remaster of some sort, as Ikaruga never appeared on any previous Sony platform, which rules out the PS2/PS4 option. The game came out in Japanese arcades in 2001, followed by Dreamcast, Gamecube, Xbox 360, and finally a PC port.

For those unaware, Ikaruga is considered revolutionary for sometimes requiring the player to get hit. Instead of dodging every bullet, the player swaps your ship’s colors between white and black, matching the color of the bullets you can absorb instead of taking damage.

No word on when the game will release, pricing, or much of anything, but re-releases of games for historical posterity is always welcome.

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After mentioning the PS4 Pro, and new PS4 bundles, Sony did possibly the most surprising thing they could, they showed off new Playstation Vitas. The Vita is getting a handful of new colors in Japan and I’m hoping they make their way to American shelves too.

Kingdom Hearts 2.8, an HD version with some of the portable titles included, is coming to PS4. Kingdom Hearts 3 didn’t make a peep during the conference, disappointing any hopeful fans who thought they might learn more before 2017. Nier Automata got an intense new trailer and a release date of February 23rd for Japan. Then what is popularly known as “John’s game” was shown, Danganronpa 3. I know very little about these games, John forgive me, but they did look a lot better running on the PS4. New Hot Shots Golf has come to save me from lackluster golf games. Coming sometime in summer 2017, it looks like a prettier version of Hot Shots, which I won’t complain about one bit.

A new Gundam game is coming, simply called Gundam Versus, a new Earth Defense Force somehow exists, and Fortune Street is teaming up with Final Fantasy and coming to PS4, a change from last generation when the series was on the Wii. Koei Tecmo announced a worldwide release date for Nioh of February 9th, and revealed Musou Stars. No clue what Musou Stars is, but it’ll feature Koei’s catalog of characters altogether in a single game doing… something musou related, probably.

PS VR then had it’s time in the sun to show off Japanese bands, a Resident Evil documentary, some lifestyle applications, and a strange Japanese schoolgirl interaction game. The games and apps ranged wildly and the sizzle reels were all over the place, but at least Sony Japan is pushing PS VR, whereas last week’s conference in New York didn’t even mention it.

Then GranBlue Fantasy: Project Re:Link, Platinum’s mobile game, was announced as a PS4, PS VR, and PC game as well. The game was given a vague 2018 – no… really… we’re talking about 2018 now – release date, and was simply described as a “social” game.

Sony ended this game filled conference, something Playstation could take notes on, with the man himself, Hideo Kojima. As Kojima does, he discussed what the name of his game means, the design of the logo, and the philosophy of man inventing rope. Somehow Kojima’s indie studio is making an “AAA” open world action game, so much for something small. He promises some more info as TGS goes so stay tuned for more on the history of rope.

Playstation Japan wrapped up by talking about PS Plus and the PS Store. Overall this felt like a lot of games, even if a good chunk were already known. Sony Japan doesn’t feel as standalone and unique as they once did, but with Persona 5, Nier, and Hot Shots Golf they can still turn heads.

The post Sony’s TGS Conference Summary appeared first on Gamesline.

Echoing their original PS4 announcement years ago, things were kicked off right away with the PS4 Slim. Despite weeks of leaks and sales, the system was shown off as just a simple redesign, not another SKU on shelves. The slimmer version will be available September 15th, next week, for $299. So for the newcomers to PlayStation, all two of you, you’ll get a smaller, and cheaper, model that is now the new standard.

Next up, PS Neo finally got a name, PS4 Pro. This new console version will focus on 4K and HDR by upgrading the GPU and custom hardware. Several upcoming games were shown, like Spider-Man and For Honor, in 4K, and while they did look better it’s hard to tell any real differences since I, like many others, don’t have a 4K display. It does seem current and upcoming games will be getting some sort of upgrade while running on the PS4 Pro but those improvements will differ from game to game. The Pro’s other focus,  HDR, is something else you can’t see unless you have a 4K TV. It made their presentation, via a live stream, very underwhelming. Blacks are blacker, colors more colorful, and you couldn’t tell the difference without being there in person. I believe Sony is telling the truth, I bet those games look awesome, but it all looks the same to me. Luckily Pro will detect our normal HD TVs, and automatically adjust the display. It’s nothing crazy new, and the changes weren’t powerfully noticeable, but I’ll take cooler-looking, pretty, graphics.

Plenty of games were shown “using the power” of the PS4 Pro. Everything was in trailer form so it’s hard to believe if it was in-game footage, or just a PC render. Call of Duty: Infinity War, Black Ops 3, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Mass Effect: Andromeda were all shown off. 

The PS4 Pro is coming on November 10th and will cost $399.

The post Sony’s End of Summer Meeting Summary appeared first on Gamesline.

The NEO upgrades are focused mostly around graphics. It will run games at 4K and gives developers an additional 512 MB of memory to use. NEO will be exactly the same as a current PS4, same store, same games, and will not leave original PS4 owners out in the cold. No games will be NEO exclusive. No games running on NEO will have any exclusive content. The NEO seems only to exist to improve on the lagging console cycle. All games, as of this October, will be required to support the NEO, but there is no word on when it will come out. The NEO won’t sacrifice on framerate either, Sony is adamant that a game should at least retain, if not improve upon, the framerate is has on the original PS4 hardware.

The NEO is a needed upgrade, and it seems like Sony is making the right moves. But how do you sell this to the millions and millions of PS4 owners out there? Are they willing to re-buy their console? The NEO name has been floating around for a bit now and is a play off the PS VR’s original codename, Morpheus. So clearly the two are meant to go together, despite being distinctly separate. I encourage you go read all of Walker’s report over at Giant Bomb and get all the juicy details.

The post Playstation 4 Upgrade is Called ‘NEO’, Details appeared first on Gamesline.

Klepek’s source wasn’t the only one as other members of Kotaku, and the gaming press, have been hearing word from developers about this upgrade. Sony won’t comment on the rumors, so we’re left in the dark on any new information. Will the PS4.5 replace the current machine altogether? Will current PS4 owners get a discount to upgrade?

Incredible to see the console industry so willing to change, but I still need to see Sony and Microsoft put these plans together. Without a solid marketing push and proper channels for early adopters to upgrade then why buy a console at all? If every three to four years I’ll need to shell out another $400 then why not migrate to PC?

E3 2016 will be one hell of a ride.

The post Report: Sony Working on a PS4.5 appeared first on Gamesline.

What to look for:

Resolution and refresh rate is pretty important. Not just because it makes games look better but it will also save your stomach. Those reports of nausea and sickness partially come from the lower resolution of early development models. The finished products boast better everything and hopefully that means less laying down after fifteen minutes of game time.

Second, be wary of price. While the prices listed of each helmet is accurate it isn’t the whole story. The Vive and Oculus require pretty beefy gaming PCs to run properly while PS VR only requires a PS4. However PS VR doesn’t come with everything you need in box. Toss in the price of games, accessories, controllers, wires, USB ports, and the overwhelming embarrassment you’ll feel while your roommates watch you flail around and VR can cost a lot more than we expect.

Finally there is the unknowable. Since none of the helmets have launched we have no way of knowing what life with VR will be like. What will the marketplaces and stores look like a year from now? Which helmet will have the game to play? Which will drop in price first, or offer the best bundle? Will VR even last? It’s enticing to see new technology emerge so impressively but being cautious never hurt anyone.

HTC Vive, $799, April 2016:

Even if you have the scratch to throw at the Vive, preorders have been underway for weeks now and wouldn’t ship out until at least May of this year. The price does give the Vive some advantages since it includes two base stations that plug into your PC. This gives full room immersion within virtual reality, meaning the Vive knows your positioning within the room. These stations allow you to actually move around without fear of furniture.

The Vive also comes with three games, most notably Job Simulator, and two controllers but still requires a decent PC to attach to. The screen screen resolution and refresh rate match the Oculus’ which makes the $100 difference hard to swallow. The Vive is for rich folk and VR display booths but I can’t imagine a world, virtual or not, where this is the helmet everyone clamors over.

Playstation VR, $399, October 2016:

The cheapest price but the longest wait. If you don’t have a PC that can properly support the Vive or Oculus then Playstation’s option is by far the cheapest. A PS4 and VR helmet would cost the same as an Vive alone. PS VR might leave you with a fatter wallet but you’ll really have to wait. Sony might be aiming for October but preorders and the holiday season may leave a lot of us waiting to get our hands on the helmet.

PS VR also doesn’t pack the biggest technical punch and you are getting what you pay for. The helmet will require a Playstation camera, available in a separate bundle or by itself, and its own seperate box to plug into. However Sony has been upfront about their dedication to 60 FPS and 120Hz or 90Hz refresh rate for all its VR games. Their resolution might be lacking and their $400 price point isn’t everything you need but it’s the cheapest and easiest entry into virtual reality.

Oculus Rift, $599, March 2016:

The VR Kickstarter that launched a thousand helmets. The price may hurt, especially if you don’t have the proper PC to handle it, but it does come with an Xbox One controller, a sensor, and it’s own remote. It does match the Vive in resolution, refresh rate, and field of view, leaving PS VR behind. However all that technology doesn’t come for free. The USB requirement alone for the Oculus is enough to make PC gamers roll their eyes.

Oculus does come with Lucky’s Tale and EVE: Valkyrie but doesn’t come with custom controllers like the Vive does, yet. Oculus does have their Touch controllers ready to roll out later this year but that only adds to the already growing price tag. Oculus is out very soon and boasts a lengthy lineup but with the amount of preorders you may be waiting a month or so to pick one up.

With all the money in the world I’d choose all three but as an owner of a weak gaming PC and a PS4, PS VR seems like my only choice. For now. The Vive packs a pretty mean punch to the wallet but exploring a world with my own two feet rather than sitting in a chair is mighty tempting. And the Oculus seems like the defacto leader for virtual reality.

Now that you know the prices, the release dates, and the basics of virtual reality which will you be buying? How long are you willing to wait before virtual reality becomes more reality?

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