LogFAQs > #932319217

#89





Years of release: 2018 (PC/PS4 early access), 2019 (PC/PS4)
Beaten?: I did some expert songs

"Oh, I get it now." That's one of the first things I remember thinking when playing Beat Saber.

See, VR and I have had sort of a checkered past. I have a couple of friends who have VR stuff, and they've gotten me to check it out, and like, VR is a very cool technology and it's really interesting to experience, but I have a hard time really grasping it, both its function, and how it could be used to make good games. I'm not sure what it is. I always have a hard time looking through the VR goggles and focusing on objects properly - everything always kind of feels slightly out of focus and hard to look at in a way that I don't really know how to communicate, and I tend to find myself a little bit disoriented playing it. I've played some pretty neat little things on VR but most of them kind of amount to like, I dunno, glorified tech demos. I'm sure there's some really good shit on VR that I haven't gotten around to, it's just not what I played.

Then I played Beat Saber. "Oh, I get it now."

I totally forgot to put rhythm games under 'stuff that's on this list.' There's a few of 'em. You have two lightsabers and you swing them at blocks coming at you in time with the music. That's Beat Saber. It plays great. This is a game that really utilizes that three-dimensional space that VR offers really well - suddenly, the fact that you have to move your body around, swinging your sabers through blocks, juking this way and that to avoid incoming walls, it just suddenly made sense to me how VR could provide a really engaging gaming experience. It didn't even give me that much of a headache to look at - I was able to follow the action really easily, and I feel like I was able to take on some decently hard songs after a couple hours of practice, though I couldn't play for too long because damn, this game gives you a workout. I need it. I'm fat and out of shape as hell.

The soundtrack is kind of... not my thing, and as of my playing it I wasn't too clear on how to get more songs or make my own which was a little disappointing though I know custom songs are possible. Still, if I had a VR headset, I'd probably be really into playing a little bit of this every day. It just feels good to play. The visuals of swinging your sabers through blocks and the sound effect it makes when you do it just has such a great kinetic feel to it, and it's a great example of what VR can do, even though it's a really simple one. I'm on board with the whole idea now.