True crime has become a national pastime. From documentaries and dramatized biopics to endless podcasts and YouTube channels, folks can’t get enough of diving into real-life murders and missing person cases – some solved, some apparently never to be solved. And now, you can explore a new file of cases in augmented reality with CrimeTrip.
Taking a CrimeTrip
CrimeTrip is a true crime AR game for iOS and Android from developer studio Prologue. The experience, viewed and navigated entirely through a mobile phone, puts you in the middle of painstakingly reproduced crime scenes from six unsolved crimes from the seventies and eighties including heists, mob hits, and more. Three are available now, with three coming soon.
The app download is free, but, after playing through a free “prologue” and tutorial, you have the option to buy an individual story for $3.99, or bundles of stories going up to the complete game for $12.99. According to the app, this allows the platform to be supported entirely ad-free.
Hands-On the Game
If you have enough open space, you can navigate within the game by walking to some degree. However, the game worlds are big enough that no matter how big and clean your living room is you’ll have to use the on-screen controls eventually. (My biggest issue with the game was accidentally holding my phone in a way that covered the camera and lost my tracking.)
CrimeTrip is split between crime scenes and a pretty expansive police department office. The office includes resources that you will need to dive into the case, including the cork board where you put it all together.
“[CrimeTrip] revisits the podcast genre, following non-linear routes, constantly shifting between the present and the past,” Prologue founder and creative director Jonathan Rouxel said in a Medium post. “Designers elevate the status of the audience who is no longer perceived as a community of passive listeners but as active participants.”
On-screen controls don’t do all the work. Sometimes the best way to view a scene or the only way to find an item is by physically getting on your hands and knees. A good portion of the game might be “played” on the various online communities as you compare notes with other true crime enthusiasts.
While scenes and clues are accurately created with great detail, the characters and events in the stories appear as luminous point clouds – so there’s no unsettling blood and gore to deal with. The cheeky, fourth-wall-breaking game narration should be amusing to true crime enthusiasts and not too stressful for people new to the genre.
A Careful Handling of a Touchy Subject
True crime is a sensitive subject – and people can be very sensitive to it. Stories can be emotionally challenging to hear and research, and living people are sometimes affected by true crime commentators jumping on a story still in development. CrimeTrip avoids both of these problems in two important ways.
First, the graphical style and the narration style of the game keep things from being too heavy. We saw a similar approach with USA Today’s Accused experience last year. Second, the cases in this experience are old enough that all of the suspects have passed away so players can enjoy the puzzling stories without stressing the impact on survivors too much.
The fact that the cases are so old and so cold helps add allure to the game as well. There are no bad guys left to catch so it’s okay that even AR-enabled sleuths aren’t able to conclusively agree on whodunit. In ongoing cases, it would be great if the culprit could be caught and taken off the streets. But these forty and fifty-year-old tales can remain unfinished puzzles forever.
Check it Out if You Dare
So, is CrimeTrip worth your money? Check it out. The free app includes free previews to all available episodes – and that’s not just gameplay videos, you get to play the game. Still not sure? You can buy the cases one at a time. So, if you’re even remotely interested in true crime, it can’t hurt to check out.
So, in the past few weeks we have seen big tech, including Meta and Microsoft, announce massive layoffs, mostly to their XR division and at the same time, pivoting towards artificial intelligence and generative content.
Despite the news, this year’s DEAL expo was as busy as ever. Teeming with an array of VR devices, games, contraptions, and a myriad of other VR-related gizmos that filled the halls, it, quite frankly, surpassed expectations.
It’s clear that there’s an appetite for virtual reality and that the VR industry as a whole has no intention of slowing down. Here’s a short rundown of the most interesting things that caught my eye.
Meta4 Interactive
Meta4 Interactive were on the floor showcasing their arena player vs. player battler based on the well-known Transformers IP. I had the chance to battle it out with the CBDO of Meta4, Sylvain Croteau, as well as other members of the team.
They were all great at the game, which might seem obvious since it’s their product after all, but you would be surprised how often management is actually disconnected from their games or brands. It was nice to see that in this case the team is not only up to speed with their products, but also plays Transformers: VR Battle Arena for fun.
The hardware consisted of blue HTC Vive Pros connected to the gaming PCs above. This kept the headsets tethered without me actually feeling the tether as the cables were suspended from above. Also, the game is stationary, as you teleport from platform to platform (not unlike Tower Tag). I dodged bullets and turned in all directions without any issues.
Meta4 Interactive booth
Transformers VR: Battle Arena was originally developed in 2019 but I only had a chance to try it out recently. On their website, Meta4 claims their games run at a 90hz refresh rate, but it felt like less. Perhaps more like 60fps or 45fps with reprojection to 90hz?
The HTC Vive Pros were tethered, so there was no latency but the game did have a peculiar dense, dreamlike aspect to it, which often stems from lower refresh rates. I would gladly play a slightly stripped-down version of the game if it meant running it at 120hz native.
PvP arenas are very engaging thanks to their competitive aspect but it also means they work best for groups of friends, gamers, and people who want to compete and see who’s the best. All in all, I had fun and can’t wait to see what Meta4 has in store next.
VEX Solutions
VEX Solutions showcased two turnkey solutions side by side. The first one, “VEX Adventure,” offered a more comprehensive LBE-type experience with a motorized floor, wind and heat, onboarding, and full cooperative plot-driven gameplay. The other one, “VEX Arena,” is a lighter, less premium version, aimed at higher throughput.
VEX Arena (front) and VEX Adventure (back)
Both setups used haptic vests but otherwise, the hardware differed significantly. VR Arena used a Vive Focus 3, while the more premium VR Adventure opted for some kind of hybrid setup. It looked like Pico Neo 3, combined with SteamVR tracking, hand tracking, and Pico 3 controllers that were mounted into the guns. A true patchwork of all the different technologies.
Pico Neo 3 together with Vive trackers, hand tracking, and Pico 3 controllers
The VEX representative declined to discuss hardware aspects, which I can understand. When it works, it works. However, having a multitude of varying components increases the number of potential failure points, which is not desirable. To that end, their other less premium offering, VR Arena, seemed a bit more manageable, but again I didn’t have the chance to ask about any specifics.
WARPOINT
For those looking to get into VR arenas on the cheap, WARPOINT had their own super basic solution. All it requires is 10 Meta Quest 2 headsets and a tablet. This must be the most affordable turnkey solution I saw at DEAL 2023. You could even forgo buying brand-new headsets and instead opt for second-hand ones to lower the costs even further.
WARPOINT: Meta Quest 2s equipped with power banks are waiting their turn
All the Meta Quests operate in standalone mode using software developed by WARPOINT themselves. All the modes and maps are designed for PvP combat and marketed as a form of e-sport.
WARPOINT booth in action
Moviemex3D
Moving on, I encountered Moviemex3D. It’s a company that specializes in VR movies and VR simulators, but they also offer an arena experience called VR Labyrinth. It’s a popup box that features redirected walking, gaming elements, and even some motorized rumble effects.
Yours truly, stepping onto a VR elevator (with rumble effects)
If you ever tried TraVRsal or Tea For God, you will know what the deal is. Even if the pop-up box looks small, the VR game area is much larger thanks to redirected walking, elevators, and so on. Expect traps, action, and shooting. Overall it’s a fun single-player experience.
From a hardware perspective, Moviemex3D used a Pico Neo 3 headset streaming from a PCVR computer. It’s not a bad solution but again, just like with the Transformers VR, I felt like the game wasn’t running at high enough refresh rates, making the entire experience feel heavy and dreamlike.
FuninVR
FuninVR had this pretty, eye-catching centerpiece.
UFO-shaped VR simulator (FuninVR)
It’s a massive UFO-shaped VR simulator. Not exactly a VR arena, but I had to try it out. The team was running a variety of experiences. People before me tried some kind of moon landing. In my case, it was a fantasy-themed rollercoaster.
Unfortunately, the VR simulator was out of sync with the roller coaster animation. Sometimes the track would turn left but the UFO didn’t – forcing me to either turn my head 90 degrees or face the walls. This left many participants nauseous.
There were also other questionable elements, like sudden impacts that made the roller coaster stop in place — basically, it’s like the developers deliberately broke every established rule on what not to do. I have strong VR legs, but still felt queasy.
Each participant had buttons on each side of the seat, which we used to shoot enemies, dragons, and other baddies. Aiming was done with head-tracking and it was a fun interactive element that I enjoyed, even if the shooting was only done for theatrical purposes — we were all running separate instances of the roller-coaster animation and there was no way to stop the simulator from progressing further.
Perhaps it would be better if I had tried the moon landing demo because, unfortunately, the roller-coaster had too many sync and motion issues to be enjoyable.
Hero Zone VR
One last turnkey VR solution worth mentioning is Hero Zone VR. It’s another fully standalone arena experience, this time running on a Vive Focus 3. This allowed the developers to take advantage of the headset’s larger resolution and higher-clocked XR2+ chipset.
Participants getting ready to try out Hero Zone VR
There was a queue of people waiting to try out Hero Zone VR, so I didn’t get the chance to try it myself, but it looked like there was a selection of both cooperative and PvP games. I spoke briefly to one of the team members and he seemed to be quite proud of what they managed to achieve by going full standalone.
No Beat Saber?
There were also a lot of usual suspects: VR cabinets, VR kiosks, and VR arcades. Notably, Beat Saber was nowhere to be found. I wonder if it became too expensive to license or perhaps it has lost a bit of its novelty value. Instead, Synth Riders came in to fill the void, along with other fast-paced games like Zombieland VR.
Synth Riders. By all accounts a great rhythm game.
One arcade cabinet I really enjoyed was VR Shotgun by VR 360 Action. You step into a minigun cart and it’s basically laser shooting reinvented. Spooks and baddies come from left and right and you just have to blast away.
VR Shotgun by VR 360 Action
The minigun prop felt heavy and it had some nice haptic feedback to it. I was also happy with the decision to use the HP Reverb G2 headset, which still presents a very high bar when it comes to clarity and resolution. The game was running buttery smooth. Of course, the gameplay was pretty unsophisticated and there was no locomotion (it would be nice to have some kind of on-rails movement to break the mold), but VR Shotgun did make me wish all the arena and LBE software would have this level of visual comfort and fluidity.
Summary and Takeaways
So, what are my main takeaways from this year’s DEAL?
» Even if the early days are behind us, we’re still in the days of rapid innovation and prototyping. This makes it hard for VR arcades and arenas to keep up. I saw almost every kind of headset this year, from the oldest Oculus Rift CV1s, through Vive Pro, Windows Mixed Reality, Quest 2, Pico 4, and Vive Focus 3, running standalone, streaming, and wired.
» Meta presence in the amusement and entertainment sector could be stronger. Despite spending egregious amounts, most of the money went towards metaverse and mixed reality — both of which do not gel very well with the arcade environment. The Quest Pro was nowhere to be seen but maybe because it’s such a fresh headset.
» Virtual reality is becoming more and more normalized. At least 30-40% of the booths were virtual reality oriented. With everyone around wearing and trying headsets, people have stopped feeling insecure about how they look with a headset on and instead enjoy their experiences, treating VR like any other tech.
Have fun and keep on rocking in the virtual world!
About the Guest Author(s)
Mat Pawluczuk
Mat Pawluczuk is an XR / VR writer and content creator.
When a polar bear sees the northern lights for the first time, he wants to reach out and touch them. How will he get there and who will he meet along the way? That’s up to you with this charming interactive AR story puzzle.
The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights
“The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights” is a sort of choose-your-own-adventure AR story for children where the “chapters” are physical puzzle pieces. The artwork and story are by Julie Puech and Karl Kim.
The ways in which these pieces fit together (or don’t) helps the AR story keep a logical narrative. However, pieces can be added and removed or swapped out resulting in multiple different possible tellings of the tale.
Of course, the adorable puzzle doesn’t tell the whole story. The puzzle pieces come to life with the help of a free AR mobile app for Apple and Android devices. The mobile app recognizes the pieces and animates their artwork, as well as queueing an audio narration by Kasey Miracle.
As a weary old XR veteran with a cold little heart, I sometimes find it helpful to recruit fresh eyes for product reviews – like when my younger brother provided his insights for my Nreal Air review. This time I recruited the help of my fiancée’s eight-year-old daughter.
What’s in the Box?
The puzzle comes with 15 AR story cards and an instructional booklet. The instructional booklet has information about the product, links to the app, and some advice for doing the puzzle for the first time – but don’t panic if you lose it. The puzzle information and a QR code to the app are both on the outside of the box and the first puzzle piece triggers an AR guide to using the app.
The free app, powered by Unity, opens with a quick warning about being aware of your surroundings while using AR and encourages you to supervise children when using the app. From there, the app only has a play button and a settings button. Settings include background dimming to make the animations stand out better, or an option to turn the animations off.
Do be aware that the app is 394 MB and does require a fairly modern device to run. Like any AR app, it requires the use of your camera while the app is running.
Following Directions
Some pieces have special icons on them. Cards with a blue “+” are optional chapters that don’t have to be included in the AR story. Cards with green and orange arrows can be swapped out for one another, changing how the story unfolds.
The play guide recommends that you remove the optional chapters and two of the interchangeable chapters the first time that the puzzle is constructed. This is presumably an introductory version of the puzzle to avoid throwing too much at first-time players.
As with any puzzle, it’s important to find a flat surface large enough for the puzzle when completed. The play guide recommends a space of two feet by three-and-a-half feet. The AR story puzzle is long and narrow in nature, particularly with all of the possible pieces in play, but has some curves in the overall shape so it isn’t just a straight line.
The AR instructions at the beginning of the puzzle remind you that you also need to have space to sit comfortably with the puzzle in front of you for about 20 minutes (give or take). After all, the play guide also recommends additional activities like asking the child to try to construct the story from the puzzle before watching the narration.
Putting the Pieces Together
The first time putting the puzzle together, we followed the play guide’s advice to remove extra pieces and one set of interchangeable chapters. The shapes of the pieces are similar enough to make it a little challenging for young hands to assemble without it being frustrating. They’re also different enough that the story can’t be constructed in an order that wouldn’t make sense.
It only took a few minutes to assemble the puzzle for the first time, and then we fired up the app. The AR instructions are short, cute, and very informative, telling us everything we needed to know without being boring. It takes the app a second or so to recognize the cards, so moving from one chapter to the next is neither seamlessly fast nor frustratingly slow.
The animations are cute and colorful, and the effects are simply but beautifully done. The default background dimming on the app is 35%, and it certainly worked. Turning it up can make the background disappear completely, which makes for optimum viewing quality, but also makes it harder to find the pieces in the camera. Pick what setting you like best.
At one point in the story, the bear starts receiving items for his journey. The Child got to choose which items he used when, but only one item was ever needed in the story, and selecting the wrong item isn’t penalized – you just pick again. We were split on this. It’s nice that we couldn’t pick wrong, but picking at all felt kind of unnecessary. (This made more sense later on.)
We reached the end of the AR story. Sort of. Immediately upon finishing the puzzle and the story the first time, The Child asked to do the puzzle again with the extra chapters.
Putting the Pieces Together Again
We added in the two optional AR story pieces and swapped out both of the interchangeable pieces and put the puzzle together again. Suddenly, the choices made a much bigger difference and a lot more sense.
The interchangeable pieces provide the bear with a different item and see him use it in a different way. The additional chapters introduce new characters, which the bear befriends by using the different items. This gave The Child a new appreciation for the AR story, but it gave me a new appreciation for the AR app.
Doing the puzzle the first time, one would be forgiven for assuming that the chapters are stand-alone pieces that don’t affect one another. Doing the puzzle again makes it clear that the app is telling a new story each time based on the pieces, their placement, and your choices throughout the story.
We’ve only done the puzzle those two times so far. I haven’t done the math to figure out how many different versions of the story are possible with different choices, pieces, and arrangements, but I know that there are a lot of versions of the story that we have yet to hear.
And that’s a good thing. As soon as we finished doing the puzzle the second time, The Child immediately asked if there were any more AR story puzzles like this one.
Where to Find the AR Story Puzzle
So far, The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights is the only product by Red+Blue Stories (but we’re hopeful for more). The company is based in Canada but also ships to the US. Prices start at around US$34, but you can pay more for different shipping options. As of this writing, the AR story puzzle is not available on other online retailers like Amazon.
The AR instructions say that a child can use the product by themselves after the first go-around. That may be true, but if you’re letting your child construct this AR story puzzle without you, you’re missing out.
Pickleball is the new court sensation that’s sweeping the nation, and it didn’t take long for someone to bring it into VR. How does someone who’s a VR veteran, but green on the pickleball court take to the game? We’ll find out in this review of Playin Pickleball.
“Pickleball,” You Say?
If you know what pickleball is, just skip ahead a little bit. If you need a little explainer, here’s a very little explainer:
Pickleball is kind of like tennis, but played with a ping-pong paddle and a whiffle ball. It can be played in singles or doubles format. That’s it from a thousand-foot view, but there are a lot of more specific rules going over how the ball can be played, from where, and how it has to be served, as well as the points system.
As becomes apparent over the course of this review, I have never played pickleball in real life. And, after having played a few (and won even fewer) games in VR, I still don’t really understand a lot of the rules. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s not fun.
Getting Started With Playin Pickleball
The basic mechanics of how pickleball works in a VR game are explained in an automated tutorial as soon as you start up Playin Pickleball for the first time. Let me just say here, that you owe it to yourself to make it through the tutorial.
You can’t skip this opening tutorial, and you can’t fail out of it either. One of the challenges is landing three serves within a designated area of the court and if you want to leave the tutorial you’ll do it if it takes you a thousand tries. And it might have taken me a thousand tries.
This initial tutorial tells you how to do things like spawn a ball and move around the court, but it doesn’t do anything to tell you how the game of pickleball actually works. This is a blessing for people who already know the rules of the game from playing in real life, because they don’t have to sit through an avatar explaining the rules to them.
If you aren’t familiar with the rules, you can choose to move straight from the initial tutorial into a short explainer on the court, the points system, and some of the other more intricate rules. However, this second tutorial is optional so you can skip it if you already know the rules.
Whether you’re about to play your first match or your one-millionth match, you can also access training exercises from the main menu that help you practice skills like serving and just hitting the ball. The training exercises pit you against the merciless pitching machine from the first tutorial, but you can also practice by playing against AIs on three difficulty settings.
Gameplay
So, how is Playin Pickleball’s gameplay?
Physics
I know that I said that the tutorial was torturous. But, I’ve been around VR long enough to know that that’s because I haven’t been around paddle sports at all. The physics of Playin Pickleball are out of this world.
I imagined that the paddle would essentially be a pong paddle that the ball either hit or it didn’t. This is far from the case. The ball behaves differently based on where it strikes the paddle. This includes wild ricochets if the ball hits the edges of the paddle.
While this can make the game more challenging at first, it also makes it a very realistic experience. I later learned that the flat sides of the paddle are actually textured so that advanced players (more advanced than me) can deliberately put a spin on the ball by glancing it just right off of the paddle’s surface.
Display and Avatars
Playing the Playin Pickleball on Quest 2 (review) via App Lab, the game automatically uses your Quest avatar. If you want to change your outfit into something a little more sporty, a menu option in the game takes you to the Quest avatar editor without closing the game.
The environment, including the three different courts, provides a good visual home for the Quest avatars. The graphics are cartoony enough for a cohesive aesthetic, but realistic enough to make gameplay easy and enjoyable.
Movement and Mechanics
Playin Pickleball allows for three movement modes.
Manually running lets you move via the joysticks. It provides the most precise and smooth movement around the court, but also means another control to keep track of that may be too challenging for new players.
Automatic running moves your avatar smoothly into the path of the ball. This setting feels natural but some people who experience motion sickness in VR may find it too disorienting. (For the record, I often feel motion sickness after extended VR sessions, but this is still my favorite setting and I didn’t have any problems using it over multiple consecutive matches in a session.)
Automatic teleport places your avatar in the best place to hit the ball based on its trajectory. This option feels less natural than the running options but may be more comfortable for players subject to motion sickness in VR.
In any movement mode, players can press the left joystick to immediately move to “the kitchen” – a smaller field-of-play on either side of the net where short-range volleys take place.
A final note on gameplay: Even with teleport modes, you have to move your arms – including serving from below the waist and returning above your head. In my review of The Thrill of the Fight, I mentioned that you can get away with a pretty small play area. That is not the case with Playin Pickleball. You don’t need a full-sized court to play in, but you’ve got to give yourself room.
Finding Games Anytime
In addition to the training modes, Playin Pickleball has singles and doubles matches available at any time. These include free play modes so you and a pal can knock a ball back and forth without worrying about the score or even whose serve it is.
Friends can invite you to join their games, or you can team up with a friend to form a party. If you have enough friends online at the same time, you can play in closed games with each other.
If you don’t have enough friends online at once, you can look for open matches with random online players. In the event that there aren’t enough players online at a given time (which does happen in the game, as Playin Pickleball is still fairly new), live players are paired with AI bots.
An Amazing Gaming Community
The best way that I know of to find games, and to get into Playin Pickleball in general, is through their Discord server. As soon as I joined the Discord server, other players sent welcoming messages. One even scheduled a time for some free play during which he helped me understand the rules and mechanics better than any of the tutorials did.
A special page in the Discord server allows players to fill in information about themselves, including their levels of pickleball experience and what regions they live in. This automatically assigns players to different channels where players can learn about upcoming Playin Pickleball tournaments and see or schedule pick-up games.
The first online doubles game that I played included my new friend from Discord as well as two other players that I had never played with but that seem to be regulars at that particular time of day. Despite having only put an hour or so into Playin Pickleball since surviving the tutorials, I was able to play competitively with others. And the other players are great sports!
It helps that many of the basics of the game are automated. For example, despite my time in the app, I still don’t really understand how the serve rotation works. But, a message appears above my off hand, letting me know that it’s my turn to spawn a ball and start a round. That means that my new (and patient) pickleball friends don’t have to tell me it’s my turn when I can’t keep track.
Get to Playin!
You can learn more about Playin Pickleball through the website, which includes video explainers, links to their Discord channel and other social media, and more. If you want to get straight into it, you can purchase the game from the Meta Quest App Lab for $19.99.
The Thrill of the Fight is a VR boxing simulator that is exhausting in all the right ways. Warm up in the gym, enter the ring, or box ghosts and zombies to get your heart rate up – and let the lead out on the canvas.
The game material says that you need a 6.5 ft by 5 ft play area. This is optimum, certainly – particularly if you really want to work on your footwork and experience a sense of immersion unhindered by the grid of your play area. However, the app still runs if your play area is smaller than this. I typically play in a play area more to the tune of five or six square feet without issue.
The Thrill of the Fight requires two controllers, which is kind of a shame. No buttons are required either for gameplay or to navigate menus, as we’ll see – it just doesn’t support hand tracking. The controllers don’t get in the way or break immersion or anything like that, it would just be nice to not need to worry about them – or wear the controller batteries down.
Speaking of immersion, The Thrill of the Fight supports haptic accessories. I wish that I could tell you that I had access to some to try with this review, but alas.
Now that the housekeeping (and my only real piece of criticism) is out of the way, let’s get into the ring to experience the thrill of the fight.
Welcome to Hazegood’s Gym
When entering The Thrill of the Fight, the first thing that you do is stand on a scale and look into a camera. This is a clever way of setting your height. If you want to use this game to demo VR to your friends (or even let the kids have a go at the virtual heavy bag) this is a super handy set-up. Even if you’re the only one that ever uses your headset, it only takes a few seconds.
From there, you find the main menu. Navigate the main menu by holding either one of your gloved hands over the button for the activity that you want to enter. From this menu, you can reset height without leaving and re-entering the app, which is handy. This is just under the general settings menu.
The giant “Fight” button is tempting, but let’s explore some of the other game modes first. There are a lot of options for warm-ups and practices before you step into the ring. I always like to warm up with a circuit of these to mentally and physically prepare me for the thrill of the fight.
Four Practice Modes
“Speed Bag” is your classic gym “peanut bag.” Practice your rhythm while an on-screen tracker shows your current rate and best rate in five-second and thirty-second hits-per-minute streaks.
“Dummy” is a human-shaped target with lit-up strike zones. The on-screen tracker shows the force of your hits, the damage it would deal in a match, the kind of strike that landed, and whether it hit a high-damage area. You can also see your best-ever hit to develop your signature move.
“Heavy Bag” is, well, a heavy bag. It works pretty much the same as the dummy. It’s easier to see targets on the heavy bag, but harder to visualize them as they would be on an opponent in the ring.
“Focus Ball” is… I don’t know what a focus ball is. It’s been a few twenty-four hours since I stepped my bare foot in a physical dojo, but I’ve never seen one of these before and I don’t know how they work. When you hit the ball it comes back at you. The on-screen tracker logs hits and “dodges” but I don’t know how to register a “dodge.”
“Extras” are seasonal opponents that develop specific skills in the ring. A pumpkin-headed opponent only takes damage from body shots. A ghost opponent tests your reflexes with superhuman speed. A zombie that doesn’t get tired takes your endurance to the task. I’m not in the shape I once was, but I have yet to complete one of these challenges.
Except for the extras, all of these take place in a virtual gym. If I could change one thing about this game (other than hand tracking) the gym would be its own location with each practice mode being spatially navigable instead of needing to exit each to access the next through the main menu.
Fight Modes
Now, for the thrill of the fight. Practice up on a sort of generic AI opponent as much as you want. From there, move on to a series of more colorful, storied, and challenging opponents. Start on Easy or Medium difficulty with each opponent. Beating an opponent unlocks that same opponent on more advanced difficulty levels, but it also unlocks the next opponent.
The Easy difficulty outright tells you that you have a clear advantage. The Medium difficulty is supposed to be the most realistic fight experience. After that, you might start finding yourself on the back foot more and more as your opponents become increasingly overpowered.
Gloves on in the Ring
The basic format is your classic three-round refereed match. When you hear the bell, go toe-to-toe with your opponent. Your opponent can realistically block your punches – and you can block theirs. Hits from either boxer are accompanied by a nice “thunk” sound. Your opponent also recoils from a hit. A body hit often sees them double up so you can go in for the headshot.
As you hit your opponent, they visibly bruise. I swear I’ve even seen some blood fly off of my right cross, but I don’t have the screenshots to prove it. You can tell by the look on your opponent’s face when they’re getting tired. Ease back for a breather or go in hot and try for the early KO.
When you sustain a body hit, that side of your view lights up to let you know. When you sustain a solid headshot, you see a flash and your view goes gray for a moment, accompanied by audio distortion (that’s when the thrill of the fight kicks in). Make some space and block some hits, and this goes away after a moment. Otherwise, you could find yourself on the mat yourself.
When someone hits the mat, the referee starts counting. Usually, they get back up and the bell rings again. But, the ref might get to ten, and then the match is over. If no one is laid out cold by the time the third round ends, it goes to technicality and unseen judges start counting points.
You can also quit a match between rounds by grabbing the towel instead of the mouthguard as the ring clock ticks down. I’ve never felt the need to quit a proper ring match between rounds, but I’ve literally sat down on the floor to catch my breath as that minute runs down.
Hungry for More?
The Thrill of the Fight came out a few years ago now. Sealost Interactive has been promising a sequel for a while. They promise that a follow-up is in development but we don’t have any release dates.
I’ve already pointed out some of the things that I would like to see from “The Thrill of the Fight 2”. While we’re making a wishlist, a multi-player version or even social leaderboards would be nice. That said, I’ve been playing this game for over a month now and I don’t see myself growing tired of it any time soon.
Hit the Showers
The Thrill of the Fight is intense and insanely good fun. It’s also definitely the most cardio that I’ve gotten since that week I tried to get into running in the summer of ‘20. When I look really hard for things about the game that I don’t like, I really just find things that I would like slightly more. All said, this game is definitely worth the $10.
Among Us has been a hit game for a while now. Among Us VR is a more recent phenomenon. Get your tasklist ready, memorize the map, warm up your button-smacking hand, and trust no one as we pilot the Skeld II through a trial run.
A Brief History of Among US VR
Game studio Innersloth released the original Among Us in 2018 as a free app game with some optional paid customization features. The immensely social game sees a team of travelers piloting a ship (the Skeld II) through space only to find that some among them are “Impostors” who sabotage the ship and kill crewmates.
Playing as an Impostor, players try to blend in with the crewmates while destroying the ship’s functions and/or murdering enough of the real team to take over. Playing as a crewmate, players need to keep the ship flying and stay alive long enough to determine which of them are Impostors.
Among Us VR is no simple port (though unofficial attempts in the form of amateur mods on social VR platforms have existed for some time). To make the game immersive, Innersloth partnered with XR game studio Schell Games, known for titles like Until You Fall, and the I Expect You to Die series.
Announced at Meta Connect and launching the following month, Among Us VR is currently available for $10 on SteamVR and the Quest Store. Doing this review, I played on my Quest 2 (review).
Among Us VR is meant for players 13 and up. Violence is cartoony but graphic and inescapable. The title is also necessarily social so the effort at protecting young players is nice, even though it doesn’t work at all ever. The gameplay is complex when executed correctly by mature players – and equally complex when operated in ways a mature player doesn’t expect.
Navigating Menus, the Tutorial, and Online Gameplay
When first booting up Among Us VR, players are prompted to enter a birth date. You can lock this in on your headset, or you can choose to require a birth-date entry on each boot. That means that to play the game you have to be at least old enough to know how to lie about your birthday. The title is intended for players 13 and up. It is played by children 6 and up.
The main menu is simple. Your standard settings options are there, as are your customization options. Change the color of your crewmate and trick it out with little hats. Some hats are free, and some hat packs are available for purchase. (Yes, I do have the tiny crewmate hat only available to people who pre-ordered the game.)
The two largest buttons that dominate the main menu are to play online and learn how to play. The learn-how-to-play option is an offline tutorial that takes you through several aspects of gameplay without other users running around murdering you.
Learning the Ropes
Because the tutorial is representative of so many aspects of gameplay and to respect the privacy of online players, all of the screenshots in this review were taken in the offline tutorial or provided by Schell Games.
The tutorial takes you through life as a crewmate, solving tasks, pushing buttons, reporting bodies, and getting murdered. Then, you experience the afterlife (dead crewmates can’t vote, communicate with the living, or report bodies, but they can still complete tasks). You also get to play as the Impostor, climbing through vents, sabotaging the ship, and killing crewmates.
Unfortunately, the tutorial is limited to two rooms on a fairly large map. It also doesn’t include all of the tasks that you’ll need to complete when playing a full game. However, it’s still a nice introduction.
The controls are smooth. All of the tasks could theoretically be hand-tracked, but movement is controlled with the controllers, so they’re a must-have. There’s also a button to bring up the ship map and do some other basic commands. The controller layout isn’t overly complex or challenging, and all major controls are spelled out in the tutorial and are changeable in settings.
Movement is smooth, and your view goes into a sort of tunnel vision while you’re moving to prevent motion sickness. If you’ve read my reviews before, you know I can get motion sickness pretty bad pretty quick, but I find Among Us VR to be pretty comfortable. Also, because everything is controller-based, you can play sitting down.
Taking It Online
There are two main options for playing Among Us VR online, one for smaller and shorter games, and one for longer and more populated matches. A shorter game might only have five players including one Impostor, while the longer games have more crewmates and more Impostors. Other than that, the gameplay is the same.
There’s no formal breakdown of how a game plays out in terms of round length or anything like that. But, there is a sort of structure. Here’s how it plays out, as I understand it:
The Impostors can murder one crewmate and sabotage one ship component per round. A round culminates in an “emergency meeting” called when a body is discovered. All of the players converge on the cafeteria to try to decide who the Impostors are, followed by a round of voting, during which the players vote out one player – who may or may not be the Impostor.
There are a few gameplay elements that make things a little trickier. For example, Impostors can still fix sabotages and report bodies. This helps them make it look like they’re really part of the team. Further, fixing sabotages usually requires standing still and facing a wall for a few seconds – a prime opportunity to get murdered by an Impostor.
Now, About My Crewmates…
The first time that I played Among Us VR, I was definitely the oldest person on deck by probably twenty years. I’m no autumn rooster, but I was definitely surrounded by spring chicks.
When this eventually became apparent, I became an immediate subject of suspicion. I felt a bit like Robin Williams in Hook when the Lost Boys rally against the only adult on their island in Neverland. I managed to survive the game, but only to see the Impostor take the ship. I wonder if this dynamic didn’t make things more interesting.
One crewmate shouted so loudly and so consistently that he knew who the Impostor was during the first round of voting that the rest of us all thought he was casting suspicion off of himself. We voted him off immediately only to find at the end of the game that he had been telling the truth.
I’ve been writing about VR since this particular Impostor was eating dirt in daycare. But Among Us doesn’t care. That’s part of the beauty of the game. I chose not to trust my crewmate. Sure he was young, and sure he got a crewmate to change color in the lobby because “nobody likes purple” but – when push came to shove – I underestimated him and it cost us the ship.
If you would rather play Among Us VR with adults, I have a sneaking suspicion that younger players favor shorter matches. I’m sure that the time of day that you play makes a big difference too. But, we’ve already seen how well I understand children.
Fun for (Almost) Any Age
All things considered, Among Us VR is great fun at a great price. So what, there are grade schoolers online? The game is VR, but it’s also a game with simple mechanics built on a social framework. Maybe in an update developers should acknowledge the “age problem” and have separate lobbies for different ages. In the meantime, grow up and play your little video game.
