Bread’s Game Journal 01/09/22: It’s Weird That I Like VR This Much Right?

Over the last year or so I’ve become a very avid fan of VR gaming. As a medium it has a sense of immersion and a sort of theatricality that traditionally video games just can’t replicate, no matter how hard they tried. Thinking about it though, it’s pretty funny that it’s a medium I’m as into as I am.

Tearing apart VR into the individual base concepts that make it work seems to create a bunch of disparate things that I never really liked. I never thought 3D movies were worth the headache they would invariably give me, and I’ve been a pretty staunch “motion controls usually just make games worse” kind of guy, but both of those things are core to why VR works at all. Maybe the two needed to be combined, maybe it’s because I get to explore the 3D space of my own volition, maybe it’s because motion controls in VR involve the entire body, who knows. All I know is that I love it, and think it might be the actual future of video games in the end.

I received an Oculus Quest 2 for Christmas, and I’ve been going pretty hard on a handful of games for it. Pistol Whip, Until You Fall and Resident Evil 4 VR all fill niches that, a little over a year ago, I never really knew I desperately needed. I can dodge bullets to the beat in Pistol Whip, sword fight monsters in Until You Fall, and finally live out my fantasies of being the world most successful himbo in Resident Evil 4 VR.

VR is something that I’m really not sure it makes sense for me to like this much, but I’m glad I do. I’m glad that all these disparate things could come together in a way that clicks in my brain. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to continue to juggling my guns in RE4 VR, like you just know canonically Leon does constantly.