Some exterior sets and props that I made while working on Madrid Noir, a VR film/game made by No Ghost studio and directed by James Castillo. It’s a really cool project, and it makes me excited for what could come next in this medium because I think Madrid Noir really raised the bar for what you can do with a VR experience.
Bread’s Game Journal 01/13/22: VR Himbo Simulator, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Resident Evil 4 VR
I thought of opening up this post with “Why does Resident Evil 4 Work As Well As It Does?”, but that’s a bad question, because why wouldn’t it? When RE4 VR was announced it was certainly bizarre, a high profile VR port of one of the best games to ever exist? And it’s exclusive to the Facebook VR headset? For a game that gets ported to pretty much everything, why go exclusive on one VR headset now? So naturally, a lot of people assumed the worst about the quality of the actual port.
Those people were wrong, as were any of us who doubted that Capcom could pull this off. Resident Evil 4 VR is an actual triumph of porting an old game into an entirely new medium. Far from awkwardly jamming an old game into a totally new format and letting modders pick up the slack *cough*SkyrimVR*cough*, RE4VR went through a head to toe makeover to fit into VR. That said, it’s still entirely identifiable as RE4, in spite of what I just said. The spirit of the game remains exactly the same, even if the way you’re engaging with it has fundamentally changed the playing field.
The Ganado’s still act exactly the same as you know them too, but now you can react to them differently with the wider range of movement at your command. You have two hands and can dual wield weapons if you like, but that of course trades out your ability to effectively reload. All your weapons are dynamically located in the places you’d expect them to be, and reaching for them based on feel alone becomes second nature.
Instead of the hasty port that we feared, RE4VR has far more in common with Half Life Alyx, which in my eyes, is no small feat. It’s a full game, not a fleeting experience that some people often classify VR as as. It has a sense of immersion and scale that, despite the obviously aged textures and environments, makes the whole experience feel new again. And that’s really saying a lot for a game that’s been ported to almost every console released in the last 17 years.
I know it’s not the most easily accessible game in the world, but if you do have an Oculus/Meta Quest 2, and for some reason you haven’t already bought RE4 VR, you really owe this one to yourself.
