Some VR games are super intense, this is a well-known fact, but apparently, the new title Onward is so intense that one Polygon writer apparently damaged his rig while playing it. Charlie Hall reports that the game had him so shook that he couldn’t help but reacting in a visceral fashion but now he wishes he hadn’t. So what is this game that had a Polygon editor lashing out in fear at it?
Well, apparently he was so immersed in the game that he reacted physically and might have damaged his computer so much so that the SSD hard drive fell out during play, cutting screens to black and sending the computer on a whirring frenzy that is the electronic death tornado. Any game that has people doing that, has our attention. Essentially a first-person shooter, the immersion factor in Onward is really, really high and that makes it different from the other FPSes out there on the market.
Apparently, it all boils down to how hardcore Onward is and this is underscored by the author’s experience with various intense military-grade simulations, none of which he says compared to this game. The simulation even extends to sighting your gun physically. As anyone who has played VR with those weird floaty hands, this is easier written than done.
It gets even grittier than that when it comes to simulation as Hall writes, “For American-made assault rifles, you tap a switch and the magazine comes flying out. Then you reach down to your belt to retrieve a fresh one. After inserting the magazine into the receiver, you have to reach around the gun to pull the charging handle and chamber a round. For AK-style and other more exotic weapons, there are additional steps. I spent a half-hour last night looking at YouTube videos to figure out how to reload Steyr’s AUG, a unique full-length rifle that’s nonetheless much shorter than an AR-style platform. Bolt-action sniper rifles and belt-fed light machine guns require a whole other skill set.”
Does that sound like your kind of thing? We have to admit, it sounds a bit intense, but for those of us that love simulation, it sounds just about right. There are a ton of FPS games out on VR anyway, each with varying degrees of realism, so it isn’t like gamers don’t have options.
Still, we have to warn that this sounds like it isn’t a general audience type of game. Heck, Hall even talks about how some of the more hardcore players set up customized gun rigs to make playing the game in VR that much easier. On top of all of this, the devs are promising a ton of updates and a perpetual drip-feed of improvements for the near future.
From that perspective, we think it is probably worth a go if you’re really into VR shooters.
What do you think? Should VR simulations be all about accuracy and realism or does that bog down gameplay in needless minutiae? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
