One of the Sony big bets for this year is the PlayStation VR2 release o PSVR2for friends, which will take place on February 22, 2023 still price of 599.99 euros. Yes, you read that right, it will cost more than the PS5 itself. Around that price has generated enough controversy. Is it justified? Is the experience so groundbreaking?
Sony invited us to its new offices to test the machine in a half-hour session with its star game: Horizon Call of the Mountain, a new experience inspired by the worlds of aloybut with a male lead and a more linear development based on escalation and action.
In the video that heads this content we summarize it for you, but the first thing that attracts the attention of PSVR2 is that it is a much lighter helmet than the original PSVR, which is appreciated when adjusting it to our head. The adjustment buttons, by the way, are somewhat larger, which helps us to touch them “blindly” to balance everything.
Before that, we noticed another crucial advantage: far fewer wires! We no longer have to ride the awkward mess of the first generation of PSVR. Now we only have a simple USB that can be connected to the front of the console and that’s it. Wireless VR still ain’t here, but we’re almost there…
Also, we don’t need to connect a camera, since all detection takes place thanks to the helmet itself and to the new controls, called PlayStation VR2 Sense (goodbye to the most “outdated” PS Move), which have a design more similar to what we saw with the HTC Vive or, above all, the Oculus.
with them at first it is possible to miss a moment when it comes to understanding the location of the square, circle, triangle and X buttons, because once in action, we cannot look at them, but it is a matter of practice. Once placed in the hand, the experience is more natural than with the Move. There’s a “panic button” to activate the exterior camera and reorient ourselves, if necessary.
Also, before launching into the arena of the game, we can calibrate our position in detailso that PSVR2 “knows” how much space there is around us, what we define as a playing area and, above all, where we are looking.
And it is that one of the great innovations of this new generation is the “eye tracking“: the device detects where we are looking. Thus, even if we do not move anything else, if we move our pupils to the left or right, the game will move accordinglywhich makes the experience much more intuitive.
It is true that, if you are used to previous helmets, you will almost instinctively move your whole body in an exaggerated way so that this is reproduced in the game, but here it is not necessary: with that “eye tracking”, we will already help the movement.
Of course, in games like this Horizon, it is possible to choose between a more traditional control (make all the movements with the sticks and buttons) or one more based on our movements.
For example, here we will have to take arrows from the quiver and shoot a hunter. In that case, we will have to place one hand over our shoulder, press a trigger and simulate that we are really placing an arrow in the bow, draw it and release to shoot.
The feeling is mind blowing and you really feel like a hunter, although of course, it requires some physical effort on our part to be shooting and climbing continuously. For short sessions, it can come in handy.
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From what we have been able to test, not only does the detection work very well (there have been some small problems when placing our hands when we climbed, but they have been very specific cases and most of the time we almost moved naturally and instinctively), but also the graphic level is a couple of steps above what we saw on PS4.
If you remember, PS4 had to make a double effort to duplicate the image with PSVR1 and that was noticeable in graphics with a good sense of three-dimensionality, but less detailed than usual. In this case, none of that is noticeable.
We all know that in Guerrilla they are specialists in taking advantage of the graphic guts of PlayStation and that is evident here: we start sailing through a river while petals move around us, waterfalls sound at our sides, all the leaves on the trees move and much more “alive” characters address us.
When a longneck passes over us and we see it about to trample us, we can not help but hallucinate. It will be necessary to see if the rest of the companies can match this level, but of course this demo shows that the graphic potential of the experience is beastly.
The resolution is 4 times that of the original helmet and we have HDR, which makes, for a moment, the hallucination is total. Of course, this is one of the aspects in which the “level up” is most noticeable.
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The sound experience, thanks to the audio 3Dit is very convincing, but it is true that we tested it with the wonderful Pulse 3D headsets and that the size and weight of these they made it a bit difficult to fix the PSVR2 helmet. There is a 3.5 mm jack and, therefore, we can place lighter headphones, but it is still a pity that the helmet does not have “own” audio.
Stereo headphones are included with the headsetwhich do not look like anything from the other Thursday (we only tested the experience with Pulse 3D), but they will surely make the experience more comfortable.
Taken together, this first game session with PlayStation VR2 has left us amazed in various aspects, such as comfort when preparing everything (finally we will stop being too lazy to play with virtual reality!), the versatility of the helmet itself and the controls and the level of three-dimensionality and graphic realism that can be achieved.
However,worth spending 600 euros (in helmet and controls, which are included) in a device like this, plus what the games can cost later? Well, we’re sure the technology is at that price point right now (we’re talking about cutting-edge virtual reality), but it might seem a bit outrageous to pay that outlay right now.
Above all, when we have already seen in previous years that virtual reality has moments of “boom” but then tends to cool down a bit. Indeed, It is not possible to use this new headset on PS4 or to run PSVR1 games on PS5, we can only use their own.
therefore we we would recommend waiting for a short time to see if there is indeed a regularity in the pitches and, who knows? If perhaps the prices adjust a bit.
There are going to be over 30 games at launch, which is great, but a lot of them are reviews of existing games. Of course, our mouths are watering with the idea of being scared in a PSVR2 Resident Evil Village.
If you can afford the outlay, PSVR2 does not disappoint. Until we receive a kit and tinker with the invention further, our first impressions are that it provides an immersive and impressive experience that will make you hallucinate with new worlds in your living room. Much better than swipe on that tinder.
