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‘Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR’ Review – AAA Without the Polish

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Easily the most recognized IP to launch in a VR game this year, Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is quite anticipated and has a lot riding on it. But as we know, translating existing flatscreen games into VR is never an easy process. Did Ubisoft nail it? Read on to find out.

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR Details:

Available On:  Quest 2, Quest 3, Quest Pro

Reviewed On: Quest 3

Release Date:  November 16th, 2023

Price: $40

Developer: Ubisoft

Gameplay

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR manages to stay true to the core tenants of an Assassin’s Creed game. If you’ve played the franchise before you’ll feel at home with the game’s mix of parkour, stealth, and combat.

The systems feel largely similar too; enemies will keep an eye out for you and their alertness levels will change if hear something or previously saw you; and the flow of parkour feels just like you’d expect in terms of what the game considers a valid jump or handhold. Combat is the outlier though (more on that later).

The game’s underlying story structure is also similar—you’re a dude in the future who is using a VR system called the Animus to jump into a simulated version of the past. The game lens into the concept of VR in a neat way by showing that the main characters are meeting in VR itself, alongside a very cool touch of using the headset’s passthrough cameras to sometimes use a backdrop of your own home before you’re fully connected to the system (though I wish they would have reinforced this more narratively).

However, the game has you jumping between three different characters, story lines, and locations (four if you count the Animus meta-story), which predicably leads to a scattered story and no attachment to any of the characters. This only reinforces the game’s habit of basically just saying ‘go here and do this’, leaving you with little internal motivation or sometimes even an idea of what you’re doing and why.

As is par for the course with Assassin’s Creed games over the years, you will be constantly—and I mean constantly—guided around by objective markers. “Go here, do that” is what the game is constantly telling you, often with 2D pop-ups floating in front of your face telling you about your next objective or which one was just completed (sometimes even overlapping each other).

It’s makes for a very ‘flatscreen’ feel that can start to be distracting and annoying, especially early on when the game is also constantly popping up tutorial tips attached to your controllers, accompanied by a heavy haptic buzz to get your attention.

And also well known about the franchise, the only thing to do other than the main objectives is to find randomly scattered collectibles. Most are collectibles just to be found, but there’s also some points which are parkour challenges, shooting challenges, or historical markers. None of which I found fun enough to bother with after a handful of times.

Even an hour and a half into the game I still felt like I was in heavy tutorial mode. The game has a lot of systems to teach you (even after the explicit tutorial stages); I guess it’s gotta do that somehow, but it wasn’t until about two hours in that I felt like was really starting to have some fun. Things also got better as the game started to open up to larger spaces that acted as a better playground for your capabilities.

Parkour

Parkour generally works. And given that it seems largely adapted from the franchise’s existing third-person parkour system, I’m surprised it works as well as it does. While running, holding the A button initiates parkour, causing you to relatively fluidly jump from one obstacle to the next.

The variety of places where the game will you to jump to feels really good and it’s pretty great at inferring where you want to jump (it considers where you’re looking to do so). You get a reliable sense for what constitutes valid terrain which gives you that feeling that the rooftops are your playground.

The only place where this system stumbles is mantling. If your next jump is high enough that you can’t land on your feet, then you’ll need to grab the next hold with your hands and pull yourself up. When this works it’s a great way to get the player physically involved in the parkour without making them do too much.

But the game’s hand-holds (while plentifully and mostly predictable) feel finnicky and only work maybe 80% of the time that you expect them to when mantling.

That means that when you’re running from guards in a high speed chase, 20% of the time your next hand-mantle will fail leaving you to slide down with your face through a wall. As you can imagine, that really kills the momentum and immersion.

Stealth

It took a little while to click, but once I got a feel for the enemy behavior, stealth did start to feel pretty fun. Sneaking and trying to avert their gaze makes for a fun cat and mouse game, especially when you identify opportunities to sneak up behind a guard that no one else can see and use your hidden blade to quickly dispatch them—that’s one less pair of eyes you need to worry about.

You can drag dispatched bodies to hide them, which is fun in theory, but doing so makes you move so frustratingly slow that it often feels like a greater risk than the potential reward. You can also only grab bodies at specified points which felt cumbersome.

The game does a good job of giving you multiple ways to approach your target, whether that’s sneaking around on the ground, or sticking to the rooftops.

At any time you can use the Animus Scout view to look at the whole area from a birds-eye view, allowing you to tag guards, watch their patrol paths, and spot good routes for infiltration. I really liked the little detail that when you exit the Animus Scout view you remain looking in the same direction. That makes it seamless to decide on a route you want pursue from above, then translate that to what you’re doing on the ground.

Difficulty

The game not only includes different levels of difficulty, but thoughtfully lets you tune stealth and combat difficulty individually. The default stealth difficulty felt like a good combination of fair and fun. Unfortunately even at the highest combat difficulty, combat is a weak point of the game.

Combat

Of the three core gameplay systems—parkour, stealth, and combat—the latter feels the worst to me. It’s missing the kind of game-feel that you’d want from a AAA production (let alone much smaller studios that have delivered better VR combat). It’s not challenging and extremely easy to exploit (even on the hardest difficulty). You can basically just keep swinging and enemies will steadily die in front of you.

Functionally the game tries to approximate something like Until You Fall, which is a great choice as a model; Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR allows for blocking and parrying (largely gestural) which is fun, but it just doesn’t deliver the polish that makes Until You Fall work so well, nor does it achieve the visceral physics-based action that we see from something like Blade and Sorcery.

Ultimately combat has very little flow, especially when fighting multiple enemies.

And because combat isn’t particularly fun, being spotted and swarmed with guards often amounts to a feeling of annoyance (that you’ll now have to dispatch them all by brute force) instead of looking forward to the fight.

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR uses a recharging health system which really undercuts what otherwise could have been great tension between stealth and combat. Because your health regenerates, you can simply limp away from a fight, wait until you’ve become hidden again, then just continue on your way and fight again when the time arises.

Had the game instead employed discrete hit points (ie: you can only get hit three times without healing before you die), then getting spotted and forced into combat could mean losing a crucial hit point or two. Then, if you get away and become hidden. The desire to truly remain stealthy is very high because with only one hit point there is a genuine desire not to fight—not because the combat isn’t that fun—but because there’s a real risk of death.

As far as I can see, this small tweak to the game’s health system would make it significantly more tense and fun as a stealth game. I know it’s unlikely, but I’d love to see it introduced in an update, perhaps as an alternate difficulty setting.

In the same way that Ubisoft wasn’t able to escape the flatscreen feeling of objective markers and pop-ups, the game’s menus are sluggish and use a weird combination of laser pointer and button presses, making them rather strange to navigate. Many common actions require you to hold down the A button for what feels like a good three seconds, even in cases where the outcome isn’t something that needs a ‘super confirmation’, like simply swapping from one objective to another.

And then there’s the game’s boot sequence. It takes a good one minute and thirty seconds to go from game launch to loading into your last level on Quest 3, and probably 75% of that time is because of painfully slow disclaimer pop-ups, logo pop-up, and of course the dreaded ‘Connect your Ubisoft account’ pop-up that comes up every single time the game freshly opens. This isn’t an issue if you set the headset down and put it to sleep without leaving the game, but if you do anything with your headset between sessions of the game, you’ll be greeted with that same sequence every time.

Yes, one minute and thirty seconds doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you’re stuck in your headset just watching slow logo animations, re-reading the same disclaimer, and re-dismissing the Ubisoft account thing you already told the game you don’t want, it’s really quite annoying—especially because this is all artificial waiting time that doesn’t need to be there.

Front a content standpoint, the game takes roughly 15 hours to finish the main story, or longer for those that want to find all the collectibles in each level. At any time you can jump back to previous levels to play them again and find more collectibles.

Immersion

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR certainly feels like it’s based on systems that were built for the the third-person Assassin’s Creed games, which don’t feel like they were made for first-person scrutiny. Specifically NPCs are consistently janky with a look that’s deep in the uncanny valley, consistently terrible lip-sync, and often creepy or glitchy expressions.

You’ll also see two of the exact same NPC talking to each other, as a third copy of the same NPC walks down the street nearby.

For the size of the game and the number of NPCs and objects that are present at any given time, I’d say the game looks pretty impressive visually, even if it’s not the ‘best graphics’ we’ve seen from a standalone VR game.

Captured by Road to VR

In VR it’s rare to see such a large space that you can actually traverse in front of you, and that gives the game a unique feeling. This scale is emphasized by the Animus Scout view which lets you see the entire space at once from a birds-eye view, including NPCs strolling around even several streets away from you.

The game generally has the interaction systems that you want, but it’s just lacking VR-specific polish.

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR does the old ‘magically invisible inventory’ thing where to ‘pick something up’ (like arrows or a smoke bomb) you grab the item then release, which just magically teleports it to your inventory.

The same thing happens with objective items, keys, etc. And when you need those objective items, they just appear on demand when you grip your hand. For instance, if you need to hand an objective item to another character who is holding out their hand, you reach your hand near their hand, then grab the air—and the object appears in your hand for you to give it to them.

I just don’t love this ‘point and click’-like interaction in VR; even asking the player to just stash items over their shoulder feels way more immersive and hands-on.

Speaking of immersive interactions: the hidden blade feels generally good. You pull it out by holding your trigger and flicking your wrist, which is very reliable and definitely gives you a sense of being a badass with this unique weapon. But the gratification of air assassinations (jumping down to stab from above) is really undercut by the fact that your arm janks out almost every time and looks like a broken twisted mess. This is indicative of the missing polish in many of the game’s interactions that are essential to fulfil the fantasy of being a master assassin.

The game also applies extreme auto-aim on projectiles (arrows and throwing knives). You almost don’t need to aim. It really undermines the satisfaction of sneaking around and getting stealthy kills. Meanwhile, throwing things with your hand is really difficult to aim correctly (like when you want to throw an object out a window to distract the guards, but you end up hitting the wall so they come inside to find you instead). At a minimum, I liked that the game allows you to retrieve arrows and throwing knives from fallen bodies.

There’s also some weird interaction polish issues, like reaching over my shoulder to pull out the bow in my main hand… but instead pulling out an arrow first… which means now I need to pass the arrow to my other hand, then reach back over my shoulder to get the bow. Moments like this ruin that master assassin fantasy when you’re about to make a quick and deft shot at an enemy before they can ring the alarm… but you’re caught fiddling with this jank that kills the moment.

The key things that define a AAA game is typically scope and polish. Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR has the scope and it has the kind of features and systems you want in a VR game—but it’s missing the polish. It just doesn’t have that game-feel that’s even more crucial in VR than flatscreen games. It’s difficult to explain why, but there’s just a diminished sense of satisfaction from many of the game’s mechanics. And it’s not that it does things poorly, but in almost every instance you can think of a VR game that’s done it better.

One immersive detail that’s a great touch however is the ability to whistle with a gesture. Pulling the trigger and holding the A button forms your fingers into a whistling pose, then holding your hand up to your mouth makes the whistle. As a tool, it’s useful to always have a way to attract guards toward you. As an immersive interaction, it feels natural.

And another place where the game deserves some props is lock-picking. It’s a simple but well executed and immersive mechanic. Pushing one hand forward and back selects the segment of the lock, while twisting the other hand finds the correct location. It’s clearly an adaptation of similar mechanics in flatscreen games—but hey, it works!

I would have liked to see this become a little more challenging at times, perhaps introducing ‘kill zones’ which would lead to a broken pick if you turned your cursor the wrong way. I liked that the game also sometimes gave you the option to pick-pocket a key from a guard (pretty challenging), allowing you to unlock most things in that area without lock-picking.

Comfort

I was surprised how comfortable the game’s parkour felt to me. I was able to play for an hour or more without discomfort and with minimal comfort settings.

For those who are more sensitive to this kind of movement, thankfully the game offers lots of options, including some that are unique or specific to the game. For instance, you can enable a ‘virtual nose’ option (which is thought to help with motion discomfort by giving your eyes a frame of reference they’re used to seeing), or a ‘fear of heights’ option which puts a grid around you when you’re up high to help with that kind of motion sensitivity.

Image courtesy Ubisoft

There’s also some parkour-specific accessibility options to try to make things a easier or more predictable. I wish these were a little more immersive though (like the option that shows an indicator for an upcoming hand-hold, which is a very glaring UI icon, whereas perhaps a glowing edge would have been a better option).

Image courtesy Ubisoft

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR also supports teleport, but it’s rather iffy and very slow. I mean… I’m glad they at least tried to add it for people who couldn’t play a game with this much artificial locomotion, but I found that it slowed the game down to an unacceptable pace. I can’t imagine playing the whole game with teleport; if you do, it seems like it would take one and a half to two times as long to complete than without it.

‘Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR’ Review – AAA Without the Polish Read More »

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Vision Pro Will Use External Display for More Than Just Showing Your Eyes

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The recently released VisionOS Beta 6 contains a video showing how users will scan their face to create their avatar using the Vision Pro cameras. Perhaps more interestingly, the video shows that Apple plans to use the external display for more than just showing the user’s eyes through the headset.

Probably the most unexpected thing about the Apple Vision Pro reveal is the headset’s external display. This is something that no commercial XR headset has shipped with to date. Apple calls this the EyeSight display, because its primary function is to show the wearers eyes ‘through’ the headset, so people nearby can tell if the wearer is looking at them or if they’re fully immersed and unable to see.

Image courtesy Apple

Technically, the EyeSight display isn’t actually showing the user’s real face. It’s actually projecting a view of their Vision Pro avatar (or ‘Persona’ as Apple calls them). Apple masks this fact with a stereoscopic display and some clever blurring and coloring effects to hide the limited resolution and quality of the avatar.

To generate the avatar, users will use the headset’s own cameras to capture multiple views of their face. The exact procedure was found in the files of the VisionOS Beta 6 which developers can get access to.

New video tutorial showing Persona Enrollment for Apple Vision Pro added in visionOS beta 6!

The enrollment uses the EyeSight display to guide the user. pic.twitter.com/cGfsdTuIaY

— M1 (@M1Astra) November 14, 2023

In the video we see a pretty quick and easy process which employs the headset’s external display as a sort of step-by-step guide through the process.

The scanning process is interesting in itself, but perhaps more interesting is the way Apple is thoughtfully using the external display to help guide user.

It seems likely that Apple will leverage the display for more than just showing the user’s eyes and guiding them through the scanning process, which opens a bunch of interesting doors.

For one, the display could be used to let the headset communicate in other ways to the user when it isn’t being worn. For instance, it could light up green to indicate an incoming FaceTime call; Or blue to tell the user that a large download has finished; or red to indicate that it’s low on battery and should be plugged in.

While there’s nothing stopping Apple from literally just putting text on the display and going full Daft Punk, the company seems to be thinking of the external display as something a bit more organic and magical than a readout of how many emails are waiting for you or how many calls you missed.

Can you think of any other interesting use-cases for the headset’s external display? I’d love to hear more ideas in the comments below!

Vision Pro Will Use External Display for More Than Just Showing Your Eyes Read More »

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Varjo Teaser Strongly Suggests New XR-4 Headset Reveal

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High-end enterprise headset maker Varjo is teasing an online “special event” where it says viewers will “discover the future of VR/XR.” The tease heavily points in the direction of the company’s next headset, likely the XR-4.

Varjo has been steadily making its high-end enterprise focused XR headsets better and cheaper over the course of years. The company’s key differentiator has been its ‘bionic display’ system which adds an extra display to each lens which offers retina resolution quality in a small area at the center of the headset’s view.

Photo by Road to VR

The company has also focused heavily on making high-quality passthrough and interesting features to take advantage of it. It’s latest flagship headset, the XR-3, was announced back in late 2020.

Today the company announced a forthcoming “special event” with some photography that heavily implies we’ll see the announcement of a new XR-4 headset.

Image courtesy Varjo

The online-only event will take place on November 27th at 10AM PT (your timezone here).

While it looks like we can probably expect to hear about the Varjo XR-4, it’s unclear if the company will have any updates on its high-end consumer headset, Varjo Aero, which got a big price cut recently. While we don’t know exactly what the company’s plans are for the future of the Aero, Varjo told us last year its plan was to make it a whole series of headsets, not just a one-off device.

Varjo Teaser Strongly Suggests New XR-4 Headset Reveal Read More »

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Vision Pro Isn’t Here Yet, But You Can Already Start Capturing Spatial Video on Your iPhone

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Apple Vision Pro isn’t slated to launch until early next year, but if you’ve got an iPhone 15 Pro you can already start capturing memories as spatial videos.

With the recent release of iOS 17.2 beta, Apple quietly added its first pass at spatial video capture for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

“Capture spatial video with remarkable depth on iPhone 15 Pro to view in 3D in the Photos app on Apple Vision Pro,” Apple writes in the update’s release notes. “Turn on spatial video capture in Settings > Camera > Formats, then capture spatial videos in Video mode in the Camera app.”

Enabling the mode adds a new Vision Pro icon to the Camera app. Tapping it instructs you to rotate the phone sideways into a landscape view and locks the capture settings to 1,920 × 1,080 at 30 FPS. This allows the phone to capture two video streams from different lenses, then the footage is compared and processed to add depth information to the final video.

An exaggerated example of spatial video playback on Vision Pro

When played back on Vision Pro, the headset’s stereoscopic displays allow users to see the depth as part of the video, but on an iPhone spatial videos play back in monoscopic mode and look no different that a regular video.

Although you don’t have the option to actually watch spatial video yet, it’s kind of nice that Apple is rolling out this feature ahead of the holidays, allowing people to start capturing memories of loved ones today that they might not see for another year.

If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max and want to try capturing spatial video yourself, you can join the Apple Beta Software Program to install the iOS 17.2 beta.

Vision Pro Isn’t Here Yet, But You Can Already Start Capturing Spatial Video on Your iPhone Read More »

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Meta Reportedly to Return to China, Spearheading with Cheaper VR Headset

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After 14 years of being sanctioned from operating in mainland China, Meta is set to return to the country with the help of a new, lower-priced version of its VR headset, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Meta’s planned return is thanks to a deal—allegedly still in preliminary stages—with China’s Tencent, the world’s largest videogame company and soon-to-be exclusive seller of Meta headsets in China, WSJ reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

The report maintains Tencent will start selling the headset beginning in late 2024, with the two companies reaching a deal after about a year of negotiations.

Quest 3 | Photo by Road to VR

While the report didn’t mention a potential price of the “lower-priced” VR headset, it’s said the China version could use cheaper lenses than the more costly pancake optics in Quest 3. It’s also said the China-approved version could be sold in other markets besides mainland China.

The proposed deal is set to grant Meta a larger share of device sales, while Tencent will have a larger share of content and service revenue, as the headset will feature games and apps published by the Shenzhen, China-based entertainment conglomerate.

As it is today, Meta’s VR hardware is subsidized by content sales, which would make the deal less attractive for Meta on paper. Still, using its VR headset tech to re-enter China, where it might further leverage growth opportunities for other products, may be worth the price.

Meanwhile, it seems Meta is striking in China just as the homegrown competition falters. While ByteDance’s VR division Pico Interactive has gained territory in Europe over the past year with the launch of its Pico 4 standalone, earlier this week it was reported that Pico is set to lay off “hundreds” of employees as it refocuses on hardware development, something that has all but dashed hopes of taking on Meta in its home turf.

Meta Reportedly to Return to China, Spearheading with Cheaper VR Headset Read More »

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‘STRIDE: Fates’ Review – The Parkour Campaign We’ve Been Waiting For

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STRIDE (2021) offers up the sort of parkour action you’d expect from a VR-native version of Mirror’s Edge (2008), replete with jumping across dangerous urban chasms, wall-running, and shooting your way past a bunch of roof-walking goons. While previously slated to arrive as DLC to the original game, developer Joy Way has now released the campaign as a standalone title, bringing the same high-flying flair as the original along with a pretty serviceable story to go along with it. Read more to find out whether it was worth the wait.

STRIDE: Fates Details:

Available On:  Quest, SteamVR (coming in 2024)

Release Date:  November 9th, 2023

Price: $30

Developer: Joy Way

Reviewed on: Quest 3

Gameplay

You’re a Chaser—a sort of futuristic spec-ops soldier who was plucked out of the slums of Airon City to serve in the SkyChasers police force. Using your augmented superhuman abilities to fight a number of gangs, you traverse the world killing literally everyone in your way for whatever reason the game can put in front of you next.

You’ll use a pistol, SMG, shotgun, knife, and even a futuristic katana at times to put the baddies down in the most stylish way you can think of. Here I am blasting into the air from an air-vault, activating slow-mo, hooking a drone suspended in the air, and swinging around like Spider-Man—fairly par for the course for Stride.

View post on imgur.com

Because it offers up physics-based interactions in the vein of Blade & Sorcery (2018), both games put the onus on the player to consciously elect to make cool kills, replete with slow-mo bullet time so you can gank multiple dudes John Wick-style.

Here’s where Fates differs, as you’ll be thrust into fights in one-off environments that can be as straight-forward or as cinematic as you can handle. When it all comes together, it’s basically one of the most satisfying combat experiences you can have in VR.

View post on imgur.com

If you liked the high-flying, free-running action of the original, Fates handily serves up more than six hours of well-thought-out, objective-based levels that offer plenty of opportunity to flex your shooting, jumping, and running skills—the latter of which is done by physically pumping your arms to move you faster than the snail’s pace that a full throttle left joystick provides. You can also turn on the same mode from Stride Arcade, which allows you to jump by thrusting your arms instead of hitting ‘A’.

To be frank, the game’s AI is very basic, with bad guys acting more like the sort of ragdoll beat-em-up dummies—another reason why I mentioned Blade & Sorcery. Enemies are more like slightly dangerous moving targets than adversaries as such, and they’re all basically the same. Even on the highest difficulty, it’s more about how you finesse your way from point A to point B than fighting against truly challenging enemies. There are a few boss-level enemies with special abilities, but I would have liked a little more variety throughout.

While you’ll definitely need to shoot your way out of situations, there is some light puzzling too. Puzzles feel like they were partially informed by Half-Life: Alyx (2020), offering up a few basic styles which unlock doors, including a sort of carnival-style game that tasks you with leading a ball across an obstacle-laden pipe. They’re all fairly simple, but it’s nice to see they’re not only in use to service your path forwards in the game, but also to unlock secret areas that may have the game’s only real collectibles: multi-colored packs that you can later spend at the end of the mission to unlock weapon upgrades.

View post on imgur.com

Gathering these packs is really what drives you to loot a whole level, presenting you with three types of packs ranging from common to rare. Weapon upgrades are fairly sparse, although mostly functional and straight forward, such as an extended mag, a red dot sight, or higher caliber. I was hoping for more here since it’s such a big part of the game, although it’s basically serviceable.

Image captured by Road to VR

While many puzzles are almost like AR mini-games splayed out in front of the locked door or loot box, one of my favorite puzzles is when you’re prompted to connect to Cyber Space, which is a sort of obstacle course that feels like it would be at home in old films like Hackers (1995), TRON (1982) or Lawnmower Man (1992). It’s a great “safe” place to polish your skills, almost as if it’s reminding you that you shouldn’t always go the safest route when you’re back in the overworld.

View post on imgur.com

It took me a few hours to really gel with Stride: Fates, as the first hour is where you’ll not only learn all of the new skills you’ll need, but also buck up against the sort of jank that seems baked in.

Climbing feels like a mental exercise every single time, leaving me to wish it were more like The Climb 2 (2021) in solidity. Grabbiing onto a ledge is hit or miss, as you need to hit it just right. Overshoot a storm drain and you’ll grasp fruitlessly at the air as you fall to your death, annoyingly putting you back to your last checkpoint.

Another medium-sized gripe is gunplay, which always feels a little fussier than it ought to. Reloading is abstracted to force grabbing ammo you find on the ground and then putting your gun by your hip to automatically reload. The developers say they’re currently working on manual reloading, which will come as a post-launch update. The guns also feel like they’re tilted a bit higher than they should be, which makes aiming and getting a good sight picture a little more annoying than it ought to be.

Immersion

As a campaign-focused game, it would seem like Fates needs to have a really solid story to complement its fun and engaging action. That said, the game’s story isn’t going to win any awards for originality or execution, but it does provide solid scaffolding to support a mostly enjoyable parkouring experience. At times, it’s painfully blind to its own kitschiness, which might have otherwise been dispelled with a fourthwall-breaking nod to the player. Voice acting also doesn’t feel well-directed, which is a shame because it further cheapens the already trope-laden narrative. It all basically fits in the “so bad it’s good” category.

Level design is overall very good, offering plenty of different platforming challenges. What few stealth levels there are feel less impressive, as they’re basically useless since there’s no real penalty to alerting a guard to your presence. Some levels even disable your guns, but whatever the case, you can always punch a guy to death, knife someone straight through the skull, or even slice dudes in half with a sword, which is fun but basically so overpowered that you can abandon all illusion that you’re going to ninja your way around a level when you can just chop everyone to pieces.

Image captured by Road to VR

There’s also a great variety of set pieces of both indoor and outdoor environments to tackle which keeps things interesting across the game’s 12 levels.

Sound design is also fairly good, giving you a heads up when enemies are engaging you, when they individually die, and when all enemies are dead in a given area. This keeps the UI less cluttered, as you engage enemies mostly in a natural way instead of looking for floating HP bars, etc.

Comfort

Like its older sibling, Stride: Fates is surprisingly comfortable for a game that has you basically bouncing off the walls and blasting through large, multi-plane environments. Still, if you’re at all sensitive to artificial movement, you may need to take breaks periodically. I found only a few instances when comfort was an issue, and it was either due to having to repel up a rope (blarg) or encountering a bug where you wall-slide inadvertently.

‘STRIDE: Fates’ Comfort Settings – November 9th, 2023
Turning
Artificial turning ✔
Snap-turn ✔
Quick-turn ✖
Smooth-turn ✔
Movement
Artificial movement ✔
Teleport-move ✖
Dash-move ✖
Smooth-move ✔
Blinders ✔
Head-based ✔
Controller-based ✖
Swappable movement hand ✖
Posture
Standing mode ✔
Seated mode ✔
Artificial crouch ✔
Real crouch ✔
Accessibility
Subtitles ✔
Languages English
Dialogue audio ✔
Languages English
Adjustable difficulty ✔
Two hands required ✔
Real crouch required ✖
Hearing required ✖
Adjustable player height ✖

‘STRIDE: Fates’ Review – The Parkour Campaign We’ve Been Waiting For Read More »

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Magic Leap 2 Update Claims Vastly Improved Hand-tracking, Biometric ID, & More

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A major update to Magic Leap 2 claims to improve many of the device’s core capabilities.

With all that’s happened in the XR space recently, it’s hard to believe that Magic Leap 2 has hardly been out for more than a year. The company continues to support and improve the device, including a major update released today (v1.4.0) which claims to improve a wide range of core capabilities.

Hand-tracking & Positional-tracking Improvements

The most notable, perhaps is the claimed “six times” improvement in hand-tracking accuracy, alongside a 10% reduction in latency. Although the device ships with a single controller, hand-tracking is the most accessible way to interact with the device, making this a very meaningful improvement.

Additionally, the company says the headset’s positional tracking has been improved, allowing virtual content to more convincingly stay locked to the real world. Specifically the company claims a “63% improvement on average (e.g. if the error was 2 cm when walking 2 meters, it is now 0.74 cm).”

This enhancement is thanks to “improvements in [real-time] calibration,” and the company says this could have knock-on improvements for other systems that rely on the headset’s camera tracking.

Biometric Unlocking and Authentication

The Magic Leap 2 v1.4.0 update also rolls out improvements for what the company calls “Iris ID”—an authentication method based on eye-recognition. The update allows users to unlock their headset with their uniquely recognized eye-scan, and developers can use the same system to authenticate and log-in to third-party applications.

Biometric ID is just one of many potential features that make eye-tracking a game-changer for XR devices.

Improved Casting and Capturing

Today’s update improves the headset’s ability to cast and capture what’s happening in the headset for sharing with others. Details on the exact changes are slim at the moment, with the company only noting:

  • Improves video stream sharing from the Magic Leap Hub
  • Improves the user experience for Capture
  • Removes artifacts in the third eye, improves opacity, and applies settings, across all third eye streams
  • Adds additional aspect ratio to support standard miracast resolutions

But it’s clear the company recognizes the importance of sharing the view of what’s happening in the headset. “Effective, high-quality capture capabilities are essential for educating and winning over new audiences, creating compelling content, and maximizing enterprise value,” the company says.

Developer Improvements

The update also adds a range of improvements to make it easier for developers to work with the headset. Specifically Magic Leap says it’s focused on improving debugging capabilities.

We’re introducing debugging and profiling tools that provide developers with more actionable information to test and optimize their applications and setups.

These tools support faster development of more reliable, valuable, and sophisticated AR solutions for enterprise. They will enable developers and partners to self-service their app debugging on user-build secure devices. Developers will be able to run profiling tools, decipher logs, and determine if a problem exists within the application or the OS.

Additionally, the update opens up developer access to the headset’s magnetometer—a digital compass which tells the direction the headset is facing—allowing developers and users to calibrate the heading for their specific situation. This is important for world-relative applications like AR navigation.

– – — – –

You can find the full update details in the Magic Leap 2 v1.4.0 release notes here.

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These Clever Tools Make VR Way More Immersive – Inside XR Design

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In Inside XR Design we examine specific examples of great VR design. Today we’re looking at the clever design of Red Matter 2’s ‘grabber tools’ and the many ways that they contribute to immersion.

You can find the complete video below, or continue reading for an adapted text version.

Intro

Today we’re going to talk about Red Matter 2 (2022), an adventure puzzle game set in a retro-future sci-fi world. The game is full of great VR design, but those paying close attention will know that some of its innovations were actually pioneered all the way back in 2018 with the release of the original Red Matter. But hey, that’s why we’re making this video series—there’s incredible VR design out there that everyone can learn from.

We’re going to look at Red Matter 2’s ingenious grabber tools, and the surprising number of ways they contribute to immersion.

What You See is What You Get

At first glance, the grabber tools in Red Matter 2 might just look like sci-fi set-dressing, but they are so much more than that.

At a basic level, the grabber tools take on the shape of the user’s controller. If you’re playing on Quest, Index, or PSVR 2, you’ll see a custom grabber tool that matches the shape of your specific controller.

First and foremost, this means that players’ in-game hand pose matches their actual hand pose and the feeling of holding something in their hands. The shape you see in-game even matches the center of gravity as you feel it in your real hand.

Compare that to most VR games which show an open hand pose and nothing in your hand by default… that creates a disconnect between what you see in VR and what you actually feel in your hand.

And of course because you’re holding a tool that looks just like your controller, you can look down to see all the buttons and what they do.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been using VR for years now, and I still couldn’t reliably tell you off the top of my head which button is the Y button on a VR controller. Is it on the left or right controller? Top or bottom button? Take your own guess in the comments and then let us know if you got it right!

Being able to look down and reference the buttons—and which ones your finger is touching at any given moment—means players can always get an instant reminder of the controls without breaking immersion by opening a game menu or peeking out of their headset to see which button is where.

This is what’s called a diegetic interface—that’s an interface that’s contextualized within the game world, instead of some kind of floating text box that isn’t actually supposed to exist as part of the game’s narrative.

In fact, you’ll notice that there’s absolutely no on-screen interface in the footage you see from Red Matter 2. And that’s not because I had access to some special debug mode for filming. It’s by design.

When I spoke with Red Matter 2 Game Director Norman Schaar, he told me, “I personally detest UI—quite passionately, in fact! In my mind, the best UI is no UI at all.”

Schaar also told me that a goal of Red Matter 2’s design is to keep the player immersed at all times.

So it’s not surprising that we also see that the grabber tools used as a literal interface within the game, allowing you to physically connect to terminals to gather information. To the player this feels like a believable way that someone would interact with the game’s world—under the surface we’re actually just looking at a clever and immersive way of replacing the ‘press X to interact’ mechanics that are common in flat games.

The game’s grabber tools do even more for immersion than just replicating the feel of a controller in your hand or acting as a diegetic interface in the game. Crucially, they also replicate the limited interaction fidelity that players actually have in VR.

Coarse Hand Input

So let me break this down. In most VR games when you look at your hands you see… a human hand. That hand of course is supposed to represent your hand. But, there’s a big disconnect between what your real hands are capable of and what the virtual hands can do. Your real hands each have five fingers and can dexterously manipulate objects in ways that even today’s most advanced robots have trouble replicating.

So while your real hand has five fingers to grab and manipulate objects, your virtual hand essentially only has one point of input—a single point with which to grab objects.

If you think about it, the grabber tool in Red Matter 2 exactly represents this single point of input to the player. Diegetically, it’s obvious upon looking at the tool that you can’t manipulate the fingers, so your only option is to ‘grab’ at a one point.

That’s a long way of saying that the grabber tools in Red Matter 2 reflect the coarse hand input that’s actually available to us in VR, instead of showing us a virtual hand with lots of fingers that we can’t actually use.

So, In Red Matter 2, the grabber tools contextualize the inability to use our fingers. The result is that instead of feeling silly that we have to rotate and manipulate objects in somewhat strange ways, you actually feel like you’re learning how to deftly operate these futuristic tools.

Immersion Insulation Gap

And believe it or not, there’s still more to talk about why Red Matter 2’s grabber tools are so freaking smart.

Physics interactions are a huge part of the game, and the grabber tools again work to maintain immersion when handling objects. Like many VR games, Red Matter 2 uses an inertia-like system to imply the weight of an object in your hand. Small objects move quickly and easily, while large objects are sluggish and their inertia fights against your movement.

Rather than imagining the force our hands would feel when moving these virtual objects, the grabber tools create a sort of immersion insulation gap by providing a mechanical pivot point between the tool and the object.

This visually ‘explains’ why we can’t feel the forces of the object against our fingers, especially when the object is very heavy. The disconnect between the object and our hand—with the grabber tool as the insulator in the middle—alleviates some of the expectation of the forces that we’d normally feel in real life, thereby preserving immersion just a little bit more.

Unassuming Inventory

And if it wasn’t clear already, the grabber tools are actually… your inventory. Not only do they store all of your tools—like the flashlight, hacking tool, and your gun—you can even use them to temporarily stow objects. Handling inventory this way means that players can never accidentally drop or lose their tools, which is an issue we see in lots of other VR games, even those which use ‘holsters’ to hold things.

Inhuman Hands

And last but not least…the grabber tools can actually do some interesting things that our hands can’t. For example, the rotating grabber actually makes the motion of turning wheels like this one easier than doing it with two normal hands.

It’s no coincidence that the design of the grabber tools in Red Matter 2 is so smartly thought through… after all, the game is all about interacting with the virtual world around you… so it makes sense that the main way in which players interact with the world would be carefully considered.

To take full advantage of the grabbers, the developers built a wide variety of detailed objects for the game which are consistently interactive. You can pick up pretty much anything that looks like you should be able to.

And here’s a great little detail that I love to see: in cases where things aren’t interactive, all you have to do is not imply that they are! Here in Red Matter 2 the developers simply removed handles from this cabinet… a clear but non-intrusive way to tell players it can’t be opened.

Somewhat uniquely to VR, just seeing cool stuff up close like it’s right in front of you can be a rewarding experience all on its own. To that end, Red Matter 2 makes a conscious effort to sprinkle in handful of visually interesting objects, whether it’s this resin eyeball, papers with reactive physics, or this incredible scene where you watch your weapon form from hundreds of little balls right in your hand.

– – — – –

Red Matter 2’s grabber tool design is so beneficial to the game’s overall immersion that, frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t seen this sort of thing become more common in VR games.

If you want to check all of this out for yourself, you can find Red Matter 2 on Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR. Enjoyed this breakdown? Check out the rest of our Inside XR Design series and our Insights & Artwork series.

And if you’re still reading, how about dropping a comment to let us know which game or app we should cover next?

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Hands-on: ‘UNDERDOGS’ is a Smashing Good Time and an Innovative Approach to VR Mech Combat

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UNDERDOGS is an upcoming VR mech brawler that takes the veteran indie VR studio behind Racket: Nx in an ambitious new direction.

It was clear all the way back in 2018 with the release of Racket: Nx that developer One Hamsa has a certain sense of game-feel and attention-to-detail that’s rare to find in most VR games. The studio managed to take a broad idea like ‘racquetball in VR’ and turn it into something really unique and totally fitting for the medium.

Now, five years later, the studio’s next project is a total pivot away from the slick VR sport it had created, but you can still feel the developer’s talent for taking a broad idea and turning it into something uniquely fit for VR.

Underdogs isn’t due out until early next year, but I got my hands on an early build of the game and found a very firm foundation with unique mechanics and gameplay that I can only describe as a ‘mech brawler’.

Underdogs has a strong identity—it is not the ‘sit in the cockpit and press a bunch of buttons’ kind of mech game—’let’s smash shit’ is the vibe, and the studio does a great job of leaning into it with the game’s aesthetic.

In Underdogs you pilot a short and agile mech that’s driven with intuitive arm-based locomotion. You essentially pull yourself around the arena with your mech’s arms and use the arms to swing and punch enemies in front of you. You can also use your arms to fling yourself into enemies like a sumo wrestler bouncing an opponent out of the ring. It’s a ton of fun to slam into enemies thanks to physics rag-dolling and some good visual and sound effects to accompany it.

Image courtesy One Hamsa

With a range of different arm attachments—some that are smashy, some that are stabby, and some with utility (like a grappling hook)—it looks like Underdogs could create a fun playground for different ‘builds’ as players experiment with which attachments work best against different enemies.

Oh and did I mention you can not only swing at enemies but you can also pick them up and smash them together or simply throw them to the other side of the arena? This isn’t precision work… it’s demolition—and it feels really fun.

Image courtesy One Hamsa

Speaking of demolition; the arena I was fighting in had a huge piston in the middle that would slam down every few seconds. And you can bet it was a joy every time I threw an enemy under it just in time to get crushed. The developers really know how to make things like this feel satisfying with a combination of effects and sound.

Even in the short slice of the game I played, it was apparent that the studio understands the need for enemy variety. I saw at least three enemy types, one of which had variants that meaningfully changed how I approached them (like a temporary shield that needs to be dodged until it becomes vulnerable). There was also a mini-boss fight with a charging robot rhino that was fun to dodge to and then swing back in to hack and smash its vulnerable points. I’m hoping this is only a taste of the enemy and boss variety in the full game.

Image courtesy One Hamsa

The action is a little chaotic at times, but it feels like with practice there will be an opportunity for players to perfect their movement and attacks. And with any luck, swapping out parts on your mech will lead to different playstyles entirely.

Behind the action, Underdogs is doing some solid world-building by casting the player as an… underdog… that’s battling in underground arenas as an avenue to move up in the world. As a cyber-steam punk world, the setting is something of a known quantity, but so far the game’s presentation has given it a unique feel.

It was an impressive spectacle to look up from the action in the arena to see a horde of people cheering you on, silhouetted against a massive cityscape that makes apparent just how far you’ll have to climb (literally and figuratively) if you want to make it anywhere in this world.

– – — – –

What I played of Underdogs thus far left me really intrigued and excited for the full game. It isn’t clear to me, however, exactly what form the full game will take. Will it simply be a mindless wave-brawler that takes place in the same handful of arenas? Or will the world and story be a vehicle for a more interesting linear narrative and gameplay progression? We’ll have to wait until early next year when Underdogs launches on Quest and PC VR to find out if it sticks the landing.

Hands-on: ‘UNDERDOGS’ is a Smashing Good Time and an Innovative Approach to VR Mech Combat Read More »

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‘Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice’ Review – Iconic Kills in Unexpectedly Shallow Waters

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The latest VR entry into to the World of Darkness universe lets you loose on the streets of Venice as a bloodsucking ghoul in search of your master’s killer and a stolen relic. Although it takes cues from stealth games like Hitman and Assassin’s Creed, Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice—let’s just call it Justice for short—takes a decidedly more linear approach to missions than I thought it might from our initial preview. This isn’t a terrible thing, although it manages to also feel pared down in a few other ways that’s just unfortunate. Read on to hear my full impressions.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice Details:

Available On:  Quest, PSVR 2

Release Date:  November 2nd, 2023

Price: $30

Developer: Fast Travel Games

Reviewed on: Quest 3

Gameplay

It’s your job to uncover the mystery behind your sire’s murder and reclaim a stolen relic, all of which is set in the claustrophobic alleys and sprawling sewers of Venice—yes, the world-famous sewer system of Venice. You know, the Italian island-city built on wooden stilts. With canals. And no basements. Because of the water. Ok, you’ll need to suspend disbelief only a tad more than you might normally for a fantasy world filled with vampiric factions, but not by much. After all, you can suck blood from people (and rats!), teleport around, and shoot mini-bolts formed from your own life force out of a Fisher-Price crossbow. What’s a sewer level or three? It’s all gravy.

Like pretty much all World of Darkness stuff, Justice is pretty pulpy when it comes to the narrative. If you’re not already an acolyte of the universe, the game does a pretty good job of introducing you to a few of the main vampire factions that come to a head. Still, you won’t need to absorb much of it, as it leads you by the hand through some pretty well-trodden territory which will probably feel like home for anyone who’s a fan of the gothic-punk vibe in general. That said, the suitably schlocky narrative spends a little too much time in the foreground for my tastes, especially considering it’s such a cookie-cutter tale with some pretty interchangeable villains and objectives.

For a game that mostly nails the ethereal feel of apparating onto the ledge of a building and blasting through an unsuspecting bad guy, I was really hoping it would provide me with a sort of Hitman-esque challenge of solving missions with my own creativity. Instead, it all feels a little hemmed in. Levels are typically large, although missions are entirely linear, meaning you’ll have to complete specific objectives that are force-fed to you by Pietro, your vampire pal and chief quest-giver. Don’t let that dialogue box fool you. You’re doing whatever Pietro says, even if you decide to be a little snotty about it. Anyway, that’s how it is with everyone you talk to in the game though, so it’s fine I guess?

Image captured by Road to VR

The game is pretty intent on taking you by the hand to do most everything. By default, objectives are highlighted automatically, providing you with a far-off direction to point towards as you navigate through whoever and whatever is your way. You can see the little yellow geometric icon through the walls, which is more convenient than having to constantly refer to a map, but significantly less satisfying since it comes at the cost of exploration. I know that’s a thing in traditional gaming, but it feels just a little too abstracted in VR without giving me some sort of reason. Some cool AR glasses maybe? Nope. Vampires can just see objective markers.

Additionally, you can also activate a vampiric sense that gives you a whispy trail towards intermediary objectives, which most often times are keys to open doors. You can abuse it as much as you want, which is a clear temptation when you’re just looking to get to the ‘Mission Complete’ screen.

Image captured by Road to VR

That said, the game’s combat is a high point, offering you several ways to dispatch baddies. Kills feel iconic and fun, although the skill difficulty is almost comically low since bad guys just never look up—not even if you call attention to yourself by dropping a brick or beer bottle. You can saunter around ledges and scurry up drainpipes to your heart’s content, never being in any danger, save the two or three times in the game when there’s a sniper.

And yes, the game’s singular way of getting from ledge to ledge is teleporting, which may disappoint anyone who was looking for a parkour experience. Still, it feels right here since it’s actually a vampire superpower, although I can see why some people may miss hitting ‘A’ for jump.

Image courtesy Fast Travel Games

It’s not all rooftop-trawling at midnight though. When you need to move among them at street level, you really have one of two real options: go ham and kill before you catch two or three bullets, putting you back to your last automatic save point, or use some of your life force by turning invisible and walking right on by. Enemies seem to have radios, but it doesn’t appear they know how to use them very well, as you’ll kill a dude, his friend will come over and be like “oh no!” and then he’ll wander away eventually because you’re sitting on a ledge just above his head.

You can also always see where baddies are in level, since your vampire abilities not only provide a yellow highlighted heart icon, but also a cone that indicates which way they’re looking at any given time. Basically, the only way to be caught off guard is to close your eyes.

These aren’t the only ways to skin a cat, although you’ll probably land on your favorite method pretty quickly, as all enemies are basically the same, save three bosses you have to contend with. Different powers can be purchased in-game via XP, which includes things like that invisibility cloak ability, but also powerful and noisy attacks that boil the blood of victims until they explode. You can also set a something called a Shadow Trap that opens a pit to hell, but I found my own method pretty much the only real tactic for quick and easy kills. Using the crossbow, you can fire sleep-inducing bolts into everyone but bosses, and either knock them out to sneak by, or keep them still so you can suck their blood. It’s a pretty handy little device that feels well designed in terms of VR interactions, as it requires you to craft bolts, load individually, and cock back manually. You really don’t need anything else to beat the game, which took me about eight hours.

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In the end, Justice has some really solid footing in terms of combat and level design, but it doesn’t really know how to leverage both of these things to make enemy encounters continuously feel fresh and engaging since baddies are fairly dumb and easy to kill. Besides some environmental puzzles, there aren’t a lot of objectives out there that I really used my brain to complete, as most of it’s a breadcrumb trail to the next thing and some dudes in the way.

Immersion

Justice feels like it wants to be an open-world game, but as we all know, that’s an order of magnitude more costly to build, which just isn’t in the cards for this decidedly more cheap and cheerful $30 adventure. While there is an ‘over world’ that you can freely prowl around, simply called ‘The Streets’, it really only serves as an intermediate area between you and the actual mission at hand. You can kill a dude to get some health before heading in, but there’s really not much going on.

Image courtesy Fast Travel Games

That honestly doesn’t bother me, since the game never promised that. What does bother me though is unreliable object interaction. Like we noted in our preview earlier this year, object interaction feels flighty and not nearly as solid as it should be. Manipulating levers and other puzzle elements is a crapshoot, and picking up a rat-sized snack is basically like doing surgery with mittens. This does a great deal to hamper immersion, as it feels like the game really isn’t at home with up close interactions, preferring instead to relegate most of its interactions to superpower moves, crossbow shooting, and force-grabbing.

While a little rough around the edges, its set pieces and level design are both very good, providing a constantly changing environment that feels like it’s modeled after the real-world Venice (save the sewers). Justice is mostly awesome-looking, and I only wish there were more of it to explore and interact with, as it does an excellent job of creating a believable underworld in a fantasy version of Venice.

Comfort

You’ll be zipping around a lot in Justice, although since it entirely relies on teleportation to move from plane to plane, it does a lot to mitigate confort issues. Playing for hours on end wasn’t an issue for me, and that’s coming from someone who never uses smooth turning as an option for the fear of the dreaded flop sweats. Both lateral and forward motion can be mitigated by variable vignettes, which is a neat little extra that will make sure most anyone can play Justice from start to finish without issue.

‘Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice’ Comfort Settings – October 31st, 2023
Turning
Artificial turning ✔
Snap-turn ✔
Quick-turn ✖
Smooth-turn ✔
Movement
Artificial movement ✔
Teleport-move ✔
Dash-move ✖
Smooth-move ✔
Blinders ✔
Head-based ✔
Controller-based ✖
Swappable movement hand ✖
Posture
Standing mode ✔
Seated mode ✔
Artificial crouch ✔
Real crouch ✔
Accessibility
Subtitles ✔
Languages English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese
Dialogue audio ✔
Languages English
Adjustable difficulty ✖
Two hands required ✔
Real crouch required ✖
Hearing required ✖
Adjustable player height ✖

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Magic Leap Shakes up Leadership with New CEO

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Magic Leap, maker of one of the best AR headsets on the market, is making a major change to its leadership with a new CEO that will face the challenge of carving out territory for its transparent AR technology against a growing wave of passthrough AR headsets.

After a meteoric rise and then near catastrophic collapse under its original founder Rony Abovitz, Magic Leap brought on Peggy Johnson to stabilize the company, manage its pivot to enterprise, and launch the Magic Leap 2. Three years later, Johnson is out and a new CEO is taking over.

Magic Leap has announced that Ross Rosenberg will take up the position, an experienced tech executive who has worked in senior roles at a number of large-scale enterprise technology companies.

From the announcement, and its description of Rosenberg’s prior work, it seems clear that Magic Leap is hoping the new CEO will be able to guide it toward increased (or perhaps, initial) profitability.

But Rosenberg’s tenure will inevitably be about more than just streamlining operations and finding the right product-market fit; he’ll also need to both grow and defend the company’s turf as newer headsets focus on passthrough AR capabilities—the likes of Quest 3 and Vision Pro.

While neither headset is directly competing against Magic Leap’s enterprise-focused transparent AR headset, Rosenberg will surely be looking a few years down the road at which point passthrough AR headsets could begin to approach the size and real-life visual quality that is currently Magic Leap’s advantage.

The company hasn’t yet hinted at an upcoming Magic Leap 3 headset, though with the current Magic Leap 2 only being out for a little over a year at this point, that could well still be brewing.

At least from the outside, it looks like the company had an amicable split with the former CEO, Peggy Johnson, though it isn’t clear which side compelled the change.

“Having accomplished so much of what I set out to do at Magic Leap, I felt the time had come to transition leadership to a new CEO who can guide the company through its next period of growth,” Johnson said in the announcement. “I’m incredibly proud of the leadership team we’ve built at Magic Leap and want to sincerely thank all of the employees for their work in helping to successfully reorient the company to the enterprise market.”

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‘Beat Saber’ Surprise-drops new Rolling Stones Music Pack

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Beat Saber continues to reel in top tracks for its now classic VR rhythm gameplay. The latest drop is the Rolling Stones Music Pack, bringing 11 of the game’s most classic rock tracks to date.

EDM not your style? Well Beat Saber has come a long way with its DLC music packs, which by now offer quite a bit of variety across 18 different albums. And today that selection gets a little bit wider with the release of the 19th music pack featuring the iconic classic rock group, The Rolling Stones.

Priced at $14 for the complete pack, or $2 per track, the Beat Saber Rolling Stones Music Pack includes the following tracks, including new songs from the group’s latest album:

  • Angry — New Single
  • Bite My Head Off (feat. Paul McCartney)
  • Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
  • Gimme Shelter
  • (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
  • Live By the Sword (feat. Elton John)
  • Mess It Up — New Single
  • Paint It Black
  • Start Me Up
  • Sympathy For The Devil
  • Whole Wide World

The Rolling Stones Music Pack is now available on all platforms where Beat Saber is sold: Meta Quest, PSVR 2, and PC VR. And if you’re looking for more rock, check out the Queen and Rock Mixtape Music Packs.

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