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PlayStation VR Thread 2: Reloaded

After getting a little side tracked with some responsibility type things yesterday and getting about an hour to play after I initially picked the game up, I finally got to really sit down with Blood & Truth last night.

I meant to play for maybe just another hour but my play session was so immersive I didn't realize it was 4am and the sun was coming up. Ironically the last mission I played was that one in the video above with the crane taking out walls in a high rise as you make your escape as it all collapses and you jump off the building to a sea can also attached to a crane in midair... did you get all that? haha. Honestly if you think it was impressive on a monitor, to play that in the headset was easily the most epic thing I've done in VR to date.

I've been waiting for Blood & Truth for a long time now, since probably even before I got my PSVR, as we all have. I've watched and re-watched trailers hoping for a release date. My heart did kind of sink when I heard this polished looking Goldeneye, meets John Wick type game was only going to be on rails, no full movement, no locomotion and after playing I wanted to set that record straight.

After putting in a good 3 hours and replaying a couple of the early missions even, Blood & Truth is done so well on rails it doesn't need full locomotion. The movements between points a.) and b.) clicking a button to progress from one path to another are so seamless and timed just perfectly that full locomotion would probably make you miss a bunch of subtleties of the set pieces. I also suspect this is done so that anyone can jump in and play this without getting motion sickness and why wouldn't you want this game as main highlight for anyone who puts on the PSVR headset for the first time, its brilliant.

My initial reaction to Blood & Truth as I fluttered around with some of the core mechanics like reloading quickly, holstering your weapon (this was tough at first) and picking locks left me a bit skeptical. There are some in-game images/ videos that show you how to holster your guns for example. What they don't explain is when you hold your guns over your holsters you'll feel a slight vibration in your move controllers which signals to click the T button on the back of the move controller. Same for when you reach back and put a rifle over your shoulder to store it, you'll feel a vibration and then click the T button on the move controller to holster your weapon on your shoulder, until I figured that out there were a lot random gun fire accidentally discharged. All of this is easily forgiven once you figure out what you're doing and once you get good at it, the layout of it all is kind of genius. Some of these things work so well on instinct, climbing ladders, crawling through commercial air vents, those came so natural with the control scheme it was like I'd played before.

Visually the game reminded me alot of Firewall Zero Hour, theres alot more to it though but somewhere above Firewall and between Resident Evil 7. The clarity in the characters are beautiful, everything is proportioned as you'd hope it would be and there is so much detail to every room.

Reloading quickly also takes practice but becomes much easier the more you do it, with your ammo accessible by pulling a clip out of a belt across your chest. For two handed weapons you can actually put your second hand on the weapon for less recoil and greater accuracy and don't forget to hold triangle button to spin your guns around.

Lock picking at first was tough as you slowly line up the bolt by twisting your lockpick with one hand and raising the other lockpick with your other hand, once you get the basic mechanics down you'll have it.

Blood & Truth plays like a huge action movie, set piece by set piece with story segments in between. In a way it reminded me of how the story modes were in earlier versions of Call of Duty Modern Warfare leading up to big shootouts, big explosions, chases or escaping buildings, except thats pretty much what Blood & Truth does constantly when not working through a story segment. The story itself has been surprisingly good so far, voice acting is great just like it was in the London Heist, I won't give anything away but checking out the Art Gallery with your brother was funny, trippy and just an unexpected surprise.

For those of you wondering, I can definitely see some replay value here, with some weapon customization, random star targets to find/ shoot hidden within every level and and Playstation VR Worlds trophies to find, you'll definitely replay Blood & Truth. If for nothing else just cause the game is completely bad ass and you'll be able to put your non-VR friendly, friends into this game too. For anyone on the fence, I feel this game should be in every PSVR owners collection as its this years Astrobot and will do great things for not only PSVR but the whole VR medium, this was one of those games that was completely worth all the delays.
 
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norrington

Neo Member
Summer-Lessons.jpg


Maybe Farpoint or The Persistence
That's a system seller for sure.
 

Romulus

Member
Well I loved that and I like that’s it’s like a more fleshed out on rails shooter.. miss that game category and VR is perfect for that😊

Yep, its definitely a love letter to those older rail shooters I think, but everything feels so polished and modern with added navigation options, and obviously much more immersion.

I'm nearing the end of the game I can feel it, that's the worst part so far.
 

gifgaf

Member
Looks like another winner for PSVR

9/10


Also setting at a 9/10 on Steam reviews







Also, Pixel Ripped 1989 sequel confirmed



VR IS DEAD
Dude, no one wants to strap one of those newfangled virtual realism headphones on their faces. absolutely no one!
 

Wonko_C

Member
Dude, no one wants to strap one of those newfangled virtual realism headphones on their faces. absolutely no one!

You know what's funnier? One of my friends who already tried VR at my house -and had a big stupid grin in his face all the time while playing-, still had the gall to say "I don't like VR" and "no one wants to strap that monstrosity on their heads" sometime after the fact. I'd bet he's just jealous. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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McCheese

Member
Finished blood and truth, not too sure what to make of it, to be honest.

It feels really unpolished and could have benefited a lot from a few more months in development.

Just in my 4-hour initial playthrough, I ran into so many dumb issues;

When you die it fades to red, then fades back into you lying on your back. Makes sense if you are dead right? But it does this in every single situation no matter where you died, and there are not that many open spaces in the game. So most of the time you just clip through the scenery, or the back of a vehicle, and end up staring at the back of geometry or outside of the boundaries of the world.

Cut scenes glitch a lot, I've had a whole range of things but the most common are models appearing for a split second in the wrong place, then it catching up and animating them back to that spot. So some random guy will just appear T-posing in front of me, then it'll vanish, then the same character will enter the scene normally and do his little animation to that spot.

Audio glitches. For a whole level, none of my weapons made any sounds, then in a cut-scene, all dialogue just cut out until I restarted the game.

Sometimes when in the slow-motion mode targets will appear on enemies to show you which parts to shoot at, if you kill the enemy by shooting not at those parts, the cross-hair just stays there after they die, floating in space.

There is simply no way they didn't pick these up in testing or QA, so baffled as to why a first party game would ship in this state.

Then you have to add on top of these the issues caused by the PSVR tracking, the same button both shoots, and grabs ammo from your chest. In the driving segments I failed about 10 times because whilst trying to grab ammo with my left hand, I would instead shoot the driver causing an instant failure state.

The load times are also a ball ache, a load of logos when you boot the thing up you can't skip, and every time you die or fail (probably due to it glitching) you have a 30-40 second death animation and re-load to get back into the action again.

Graphically it's also rough, and feels like a step down from PSVR worlds - that's probably just rose-tinted glasses or the fact that hair looks awful in it and the PSVR worlds guy who got in your face was bald by design.

Gameplay wise it has its moments where it really shines, it's this strange hybrid mix of Time Crisis and GoldenEye. But man, the rough edges make it hard to recommend.

Voice acting is top-notch.
 
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RavageX

Member
Finished blood and truth, not too sure what to make of it, to be honest.

It feels really unpolished and could have benefited a lot from a few more months in development.

Just in my 4-hour initial playthrough, I ran into so many dumb issues;

When you die it fades to red, then fades back into you lying on your back. Makes sense if you are dead right? But it does this in every single situation no matter where you died, and there are not that many open spaces in the game. So most of the time you just clip through the scenery, or the back of a vehicle, and end up staring at the back of geometry or outside of the boundaries of the world.

Cut scenes glitch a lot, I've had a whole range of things but the most common are models appearing for a split second in the wrong place, then it catching up and animating them back to that spot. So some random guy will just appear T-posing in front of me, then it'll vanish, then the same character will enter the scene normally and do his little animation to that spot.

Audio glitches. For a whole level, none of my weapons made any sounds, then in a cut-scene, all dialogue just cut out until I restarted the game.

Sometimes when in the slow-motion mode targets will appear on enemies to show you which parts to shoot at, if you kill the enemy by shooting not at those parts, the cross-hair just stays there after they die, floating in space.

There is simply no way they didn't pick these up in testing or QA, so baffled as to why a first party game would ship in this state.

Then you have to add on top of these the issues caused by the PSVR tracking, the same button both shoots, and grabs ammo from your chest. In the driving segments I failed about 10 times because whilst trying to grab ammo with my left hand, I would instead shoot the driver causing an instant failure state.

The load times are also a ball ache, a load of logos when you boot the thing up you can't skip, and every time you die or fail (probably due to it glitching) you have a 30-40 second death animation and re-load to get back into the action again.

Graphically it's also rough, and feels like a step down from PSVR worlds - that's probably just rose-tinted glasses or the fact that hair looks awful in it and the PSVR worlds guy who got in your face was bald by design.

Gameplay wise it has its moments where it really shines, it's this strange hybrid mix of Time Crisis and GoldenEye. But man, the rough edges make it hard to recommend.

Voice acting is top-notch.
Curious, are you playing on a ps4 pro?
 

McCheese

Member
Curious, are you playing on a ps4 pro?

Yup, on a pro.

There is one part where someone is overlooking the city of London and comments "beautiful isn't she" and it's just a low quality 180 degrees image with compression artifacts and a few very low polygon buildings thrown in. *Cringe*
 

Romulus

Member

Blood and Truth ended up an 80 on Metacritic. I think that's about accurate, maybe 8-8.5

Zero negative user reviews so far too out of 126 ratings too, that's what really impressed me.

I hope they do a coop sequel for PS5
 
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Wonko_C

Member
Blood and Truth is the real deal. A true AAA game built from the ground up for VR. I read comments from people who were disappointed and I was getting worried but thankfully my experience has been stellar.
 

Romulus

Member
Blood and Truth is the real deal. A true AAA game built from the ground up for VR. I read comments from people who were disappointed and I was getting worried but thankfully my experience has been stellar.


I usually go to PSVR specific YT channels for impressions/reviews first, they don't shy to bash the game when it deserves but there's less of the fake impressions from people who want VR to fail. I mean 95% of the reviews were positive or very positive this time around though so that seems to be a good sign. Reddit PSVR seems to really love it too overwhelmingly.
 

Grinchy

Banned
Well I just beat Statik and that was awesome. Very well worth the $6 sale price. I only really got stuck on a few things. The puzzles were fair and not too arbitrary. I liked it all the way to the end.

The ending was hilarious. When you solve the last puzzle and the big mechanical arm reaches out to you, I didn't expect it to murder me. It scared the hell out of me, actually. It was such a sudden and unexpected moment for the ending of a puzzle game. Just very cool and creative.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
This is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!! Sony really seems to have things well thought out for the whole PS4 generation.

Y'know, outside of the whole censorship fuck ups, cross play idiocy, ever rising prices for PSN, and making life far more difficult for japanese developers.

OT:

I get Trover Saves the Universe on Thursday. Excited to try it out. Heard nothing but good things. Couldn't pass it up when it was on sale for 50% off.
 

Romulus

Member
For those of you that liked Super Hot, get ready, another great PC VR game is coming in July. I really liked this one on PC.

 
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mckmas8808

Banned
Y'know, outside of the whole censorship fuck ups, cross play idiocy, ever rising prices for PSN, and making life far more difficult for japanese developers.

OT:

I get Trover Saves the Universe on Thursday. Excited to try it out. Heard nothing but good things. Couldn't pass it up when it was on sale for 50% off.

I don't care ZERO percent about the censorship stuff. I think it's blown WAY OUT of proportion. Sony has been doing cross play for years with PC. And it was MS that didn't want to do cross play with Sony during the X360 days. Having cross play with PC and every console all at the same time is a new thing that started a few years ago and Sony is coming around on that to be fair. But lets not act like they are 100% against cross play.

PSN rising prices is something that basically every single subscription company does at some point. The Netflix package used to be $8.99 a month.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
Blood & Truth Is The First VR Game To Hit #1 In UK Retail


We gave Blood & Truth an 8.5/10 in our review, concluding:

Despite the sometimes frustrating movement system and occasional pacing issues, Blood & Truth is a tour de force for PSVR. Sony’s London Studio should be proud of what they’ve accomplished here by turning the brief London Heist demo from PlayStation VR Worlds into a fully-fledged narrative that features some of the best performances we’ve seen in VR yet. The action is pulse-pounding and so bombastic it rivals even the biggest summer blockbusters. This one is easily recommended to any PSVR owner that likes to shoot bad guys and watch stuff blow up.
In March, Sony announced that it had now sold 4.2 million PlayStation VR headsetsworldwide. This makes it the most popular 6DoF VR platform by far. Sales milestones like Blood & Truth show that Sony is slowly bringing VR into the mainstream gaming scene.

If Sony can manage to make all these games backward compatible with PSVR2 (whenever they release it), it'll be a godsend.
 

Blancka

Member
I don't care ZERO percent about the censorship stuff. I think it's blown WAY OUT of proportion. Sony has been doing cross play for years with PC. And it was MS that didn't want to do cross play with Sony during the X360 days. Having cross play with PC and every console all at the same time is a new thing that started a few years ago and Sony is coming around on that to be fair. But lets not act like they are 100% against cross play.

PSN rising prices is something that basically every single subscription company does at some point. The Netflix package used to be $8.99 a month.

That doesn't make Sony less wrong now, it just makes MS also wrong in the past.

As for subscriptions, the issue here is they just reduced what you get for your PS+ sub a month or two ago. Less content for more money (and lets be real here, it's not great games they're giving out on PS+ the vast majority of the time). I've got PS+ this month due to timing; finally gotten around to playing Monster hunter: World and want online for that, plus the BL handsome collection is the first PS+ game to appeal to me in over a year at this point.

That being said, I'm unsubbed almost the entire time, because I only play online games sporadically (might play one for 2-3 days every month or two) and can't justify paying for what amounts to literally nothing most months (if I don't like the games and don't have anything online focused I want to play). The only reason PSN isn't the worst online game sub model currently is that while it might be running a race with a broken leg, Nintendo drowned in the sink trying to brush its teeth and never made it to that race.

TL;DR I'm salty because I only play online occasionally and it's rare for a good game I'm into to appear on PS+, so usually I'm left paying €8 for a few hours of online fun or have to avoid it completely.


More on topic, what are people's thoughts on blood and truth for those of you more experienced with VR? Not to sound condescending, but it's going through the same cycle of pretty much every VR game right now. Tons of people are getting into VR, and rate every game amazingly because they're impressed by the VR and 3d effects, and not by the game itself. Would B&T stand on its own without VR, and does it do anything better than other VR shooters? I'm noticing it's not as expensive as some other games so quite inclined to pick it up if it's actually as good as being touted.
 

gifgaf

Member
TL;DR I'm salty because I only play online occasionally and it's rare for a good game I'm into to appear on PS+, so usually I'm left paying €8 for a few hours of online fun or have to avoid it completely.
I am totally behind you on this, paying for online sucks.

I would gladly give up all my PS+ free games for being allowed to play online when I want without paying, that being said I stocked up on PS+ a few years ago before they increased the prices the first time, I think mine finally runs out at the end of this year, then I will be in the same boat as you. I will look for a deal on a 12 months sub even though I do not play online very often, I just cant justify £8 to play online a couple of times a month so buying in bulk is my only option just in case I decide to play online this month . I guess that is Sony's master plan.
 
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mckmas8808

Banned
I am totally behind you on this, paying for online sucks would gladly give up all my PS+ free games for being allowed to play online when I want without paying, that being said I stocked up on PS+ a few years ago before they increased the prices the first time, I think mine finally runs out at the end of this year, then I will be in the same boat as you. I will look for a deal on a 12 months sub even though I do not play online very often, I just cant justify £8 to play online a couple of times a month so buying in bulk is my only option. I guess that is Sony's master plan.

That's what I'm going to do. The Playstation Days of Play thing that starts this week or next week will have PS+ for one year for $40. To me that's justifiable. That's basically $3.25 a month.
 

Wonko_C

Member
More on topic, what are people's thoughts on blood and truth for those of you more experienced with VR? Not to sound condescending, but it's going through the same cycle of pretty much every VR game right now. Tons of people are getting into VR, and rate every game amazingly because they're impressed by the VR and 3d effects, and not by the game itself. Would B&T stand on its own without VR, and does it do anything better than other VR shooters? I'm noticing it's not as expensive as some other games so quite inclined to pick it up if it's actually as good as being touted.

As a PSVR owner for 1 and a half year who isn't really impressed by the "3D-ness" of VR anymore (If ever), I enjoyed it immensely. The way I'd describe it is, you feel like you're an action movie star performing all those stunts, and during the cutscenes I liked staying in character instead of doing silly stuff like every youtuber I've watched playing the game does. (I'm saving that for my next playthrough)

I was smiling like an idiot with every gesture based action. I loved doing natural, realistic motions with my hands for everything from planting bombs, climbing, sneaking through vents, opening drawers, smoking, picklocking doors, and of course reloading, aiming down the sights, removing grenade clips with my teeth and running around dual-wielding guns in slow motion like Neo from The Matrix. None of that would work if you just did it in front of a TV like the Wii.

BUT, there are tracking issues, YMMV with that, some are reporting very bad tracking bugs, others have had a smooth experience. Personally I just had the usual moves going out of camera range and some controller drifting here and there, but despite that it didn't detract from my experience (I'm not easily turned off by immersion breaking stuff either).

To conclude, all I could think about when going to sleep yesterday was this game, and today after waking up too. The last game that did that to me was Gravity Rush 2.

Only time will tell if it gets old fast or not, but I already feel I got my money's worth.
 
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Neverwas

Member
I got about 30 minutes into Blood N Truth. The gunplay is alright, but the visuals are weak as hell. The drive from the airport actually killed my desire to continue. *shrug*
 

Wonko_C

Member
Really? I think it looks amazing considering the hardware. And I'm on a PS4 Amateur where it's doesn't even reach 900p. I don't know what they did but I find Astrobot sometimes looks even blurrier when the dynamic resolution kicks in. But maybe I'm skewed because most PSVR games I play look simpler, LOL.
 

RavageX

Member
On a slightly different note, any of you try BoxVR? I picked it up and it's pretty much like Beat Saber with gloves to give you an idea. I had a few detection issues with hooks and uppercuts, but it might have just been my bad form.

I'm not out of shape(much), but I did 30 minutes and was sweaty and a bit winded.
 

Rodolink

Member
Im so late to the party, just got the mega bundle for €220, my wife will love Astrobot. Btw can I use a controller plus a move controller for aiming in shoter games? sounds weird but idk maybe its possible XD
 

mckmas8808

Banned
Im so late to the party, just got the mega bundle for €220, my wife will love Astrobot. Btw can I use a controller plus a move controller for aiming in shoter games? sounds weird but idk maybe its possible XD

I've never heard anyone doing that before.
 

Wonko_C

Member
Im so late to the party, just got the mega bundle for €220, my wife will love Astrobot. Btw can I use a controller plus a move controller for aiming in shoter games? sounds weird but idk maybe its possible XD

I personally haven't tried it but most likely it depends on if the game supports it. I think I've heard over reddit you can actually do that in Skyrim VR.
 

Wonko_C

Member
Just bought Driveclub VR for like $7 on the PS Store. I guessed since it's going to be delisted in august this will probably be the last chance to get it on sale.

All I can say is why didn't I buy it sooner! It looks good for a first-Gen PSVR game (just a little bit blurry) with pretty environments like mountains, lakes, etc., has tons of content, great music, and the objectives during races add some spice to the game.

The online portion is shutting down but the SP is meaty.
 

RavageX

Member
Just bought Driveclub VR for like $7 on the PS Store. I guessed since it's going to be delisted in august this will probably be the last chance to get it on sale.

All I can say is why didn't I buy it sooner! It looks good for a first-Gen PSVR game (just a little bit blurry) with pretty environments like mountains, lakes, etc., has tons of content, great music, and the objectives during races add some spice to the game.

The online portion is shutting down but the SP is meaty.

It is great, played some last night. People really were harsh on the graphics but I don't find them bad at all. I think we should have a small VR league while the online is up.
 
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