The best and worst of VR gaming in 2019

Who doesn’t love that badass blockbuster moment when our hero leaps off an exploding building, grabs the lip of a dangling freight container on the way down, and pulls himself to safety?

But… wait. Why is his hand seemingly holding on to thin air a few feet to the left of the freight container, and also twitching wildly? That’s a real thing I wondered while I was playing Blood & Truth for PlayStation VR.

This is the blessing and the curse of virtual reality gaming in 2019. Strapping on a headset and whisking yourself directly into a virtual space is immensely thrilling. But this is still a very young technology, and the most popular hardware out there — like PSVR — isn’t always up to the task of maintaining an effective VR illusion.

Blood & Truth suffers from that problem, though it’s usually entertaining enough to overcome any frustrations. That has a lot to do with the fact that it’s built as what is essentially a Hollywood blockbuster-themed VR funhouse. It leans in on gimmicky mechanics, but not to the point of over-indulgence. Even in the midst of sizable technical struggles, there’s a relatively consistent sense of presence.

The story casts you as Richard Marks, a former Special Forces soldier and member of a powerful London family. The game opens in the aftermath of the family patriarch’s unexpected and sudden death. Sharks immediately start to circle and one — Tony Sharp, a local crime boss — takes the step of putting the squeeze on our grieving Marks family.

Image: sony london studio

If you’re feeling shades of early Guy Ritchie shine through here, you’re not far off. On the plot side of things — yes, there’s a not-insignificant number of action-free sequences — the creative use of profanity and pithy patter wouldn’t be out of place in a movie like Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Make no mistake, though: Blood & Truth is built to plunge you into a variety of made-for-Hollywood action moments. There’s the inevitable flashback to a desert shootout from Richard’s time in the service. A high speed car chase. And of course, a construction site shootout that starts with you parachuting in from high above the city.

During these moments, developer Sony London Studio does a great job of translating cover-based run-and-gun action for VR. Moving from cover to cover is as easy as looking at where you want to go and pressing a button. If enemy fire is too heavy, you have to read the virtual space and physically duck down even further behind whatever your using to keep your virtual self safe.

Reloading weapons is an immensely satisfying process of grabbing a fresh clip off the bandolier strapped across your chest and shoving it into the gun in your other hand. The same goes for quickly grabbing one out of your two hand holsters or two back holsters. 

Blood & Truth is usually entertaining enough to overcome any frustrations.

Occasionally, puzzles surface in the form of locked doors or electronics that need to be hacked or in some other way disrupted. That’s where Richard’s handy toolkit comes in. The kit appears contextually whenever you need it, so none of the puzzles are particularly challenging. But that’s not why they’re here; their existence in the game serves a much more important purpose of reinforcing the illusion that you are Richard Marks.

For all the action and movement, Blood & Truth is a surprisingly comfortable VR experience. There are adjustable comfort settings aimed at ensuring that sickness-prone users can still have an enjoyable time. But certain set pieces have Richard running along on a set path while gunning down anyone who springs up to get in his way, and not even those feel overwhelming.

Unfortunately, PSVR continues to be a less-than-ideal platform for delivering powerful and deeply immersive VR experiences. It starts with the PlayStation Camera, the USB-connected peripheral that scans your room and picks up the movements of your headset and controller(s).

The functional play area afforded by the PS Camera is way too small. You can only reach out a short distance in any direction to pick things up or interact; go further and your virtual hand will just sort of hang there.

This is distracting at best when you’re in the middle of a gunfight. Extend your arm too far when you’re lining up shots and whichever weapon you’re holding will drift around in your VR view. You can also abandon any hope of retrieving some item — say, an untriggered grenade — if it falls at your feet. The camera only picks up movements down to roughly the waist of a seated player.

Image: sony london studio

This tracking issue becomes most frustrating later in the story as the action ramps up and you start dealing with two-handed weapons like rifles and shotguns. You can grab them and take aim with both hands, which ostensibly reduces recoil and boosts your accuracy. You’re even meant to use scopes, when that’s an option.

In practice, however, the PSVR rarely cooperates. Trying to line up shots through a scope is an exercise in frustration most every time. One of your virtual hands will inevitably jerk around, throwing off your aim wildly, as the sensor tries to keep up. 

That’s a real shame because of how great it all feels when Blood & Truth is doing what it’s supposed to. The combat isn’t all that different from more traditional, non-VR first-person shooters. But here, you’re not using a thumbstick to take aim and fire. You’re actually holding the (virtual) gun, and you need to use sights or a scope to stay accurate. 

Not every time, mind you. Many of Blood & Truth‘s action moments forego cover-based shooting in favor of the run-and-gun, complete with slow-mo flourish moments where you jump through a window or across an empty space (shooting the whole time, naturally). Those chaotic sections are made for SMGs and sawed-off shotguns; you just spray fire in the direction of enemies and embrace the John Woo of it all.

But again, the hardware issues are inescapable, even if you’re running your PSVR on a more powerful PlayStation 4 Pro. Some of it is as I already mentioned, the small play area being a poor match for a game that asks you to make big movements. But that’s not the only problem.

Image: sony london studio

Blood & Truth requires near-constant recalibration to keep your virtual focal point centered. It’s a one-button process where you simply press and hold the Start button for a few seconds. But it happens so frequently and obviously — suddenly, your holsters and ammo appear a foot or two to the left or right of where your virtual body should be — that it becomes a distraction.

Then there are your hands. They never go away, and because the sensor area is so small, they also never go lower than your stomach or hips. That means you always have two disembodied hands visible in your peripheral vision, and they’re probably fidgeting unless you remain perfectly still during cutscenes.

I should also add: Using a standard DualShock 4 controller makes a lot of these issues worse. The ideal way to play Blood & Truth is with Sony’s Move controllers — but at almost $100 for a pair brand new, that’s not going to be an option for every player. The gamepad experience isn’t nearly as satisfying, relying as it does on so many buttons for actions, like reloading, that are supposed to feel immediately intuitive.

Sony’s VR headset has done much to help deliver this new kind of video gaming to a mainstream audience. But I’m sorry to report that Blood & Truth is a terrible fit for this platform. On the one hand, it’s a brilliantly crafted VR excursion into Hollywood-style action that takes good advantage of the tech’s capabilities. But PSVR hardware is the worst possible showcase for this kind of experience.