Since getting PSVR at launch I have continued to be impressed at what developers are doing with this tech. Wildly swinging from short experiences to in depth stories, their short and punchy games have been going from strength to strength, so I couldn’t wait to see what Marvel’s Iron Man VR could unlock in this format.
Fortunately we don’t have to wait any longer thanks to a generous demo available now.
Moves like Iron Man
The demo of Marvel’s Iron Man VR kicks off with a tutorial where you are outside of Tony’s home doing some drills. It quickly covers moving around where you pull the trigger on the move controllers and depending on your hand position, uses the hand thrusters to fly. This makes moving in every direction super easy and comfortable, except when you want to turn around where you need to use a button to do a fade out fade in turn that VR knows so well.
Facing the wrong way is the most annoying thing because the movement feels so seamless until something is behind you. Fortunately if you start to turn like I do in VR a lot, it shows arrows on the screen so you keep facing in the direction of the sensor. This needs to be implemented in PSVR ports of every game.
Never gonna leave this suit
The tutorial then shows you how to fire using that big button in the middle of the move controllers, and using a smaller button do slam punches followed by a quick time trial. Then it drops you into the first chapter of the game where you are on a plane with Pepper when a mysterious figure takes over controlling the plane. You jump out, fight some flying enemies, and save the day of course, then the chapter comes to a close.
All of this took an hour or so, which is a decent chunk of VR game time. On top of that are some challenges where you can take out waves of enemies making this meaty for a VR demo, given some VR games don’t take two hours to complete.
VR will be loved
There are a few things that were not perfect, like the process of turning which is only bad in relation to the thruster movement which is so seamless, and load times can be a bit long. This is much worse in VR than it is in normal gaming as using your phone to kill the time isn’t quite the seamless option to make load times disappear.
Aside from that this demo gives the impression this is going to be an excellent VR title that could well justify the purchasing of a PSVR unit for those holding out. Try not to fall over when you lean in the direction you are boosting though, like I nearly did.