Eve Valkyrie may not be an MMO, but since the virtual reality space shooter is also supposed to get a multiplayer mode at some point and takes place in the universe of the super-sandbox MMORPG Eve Online, we took a look at the title at Gamescom 2016. Our author Jürgen was in for more than one surprise.
I had never dealt with virtual reality in my life and had only seen an early version of the Oculus Rift from afar during my time as an intern at Computec years ago. Since I was not a big fan of the roller coaster simulations that were available back then, I stayed out of the whole crowd and left the field to more interested colleagues.
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VR is just nonsense!
Since then, I haven’t had the opportunity to try VR, and I was never really hooked on the topic. I always found it a bit silly when I saw colleagues wandering around like blind zombies when they were exploring a completely foreign world via VR and couldn’t perceive anything around them. I had also heard from some players that VR made them feel extremely nauseous.
Since I often felt nauseous from typical carnival attractions, I was never really interested in VR games and actively avoided the topic. I could much more identify with augmented reality (AR), because in Pokémon GO and similar games, you are out with other people, perceive the real world in an enhanced form, and meet other people, while in VR mode you are completely isolated.
To vomit or not to vomit…
But none of that mattered when I was instructed by our editor-in-chief Schuhmann for Gamescom, and the company CCP with Eve Valkyrie was on the list of titles I was supposed to cover at the fair. I felt a bit uneasy, as Eve Valkyrie is supposed to be a fast-paced space shooter and probably much worse than any roller coaster at a fair! I was genuinely worried about vomiting all over the wonderful, clean CCP booth! And even though the CCP employee was a bundle of enthusiasm who pushed my head into the – rather uncomfortable – Playstation VR headset, I couldn’t shake my worries.
And suddenly there were breasts…
In the end, the headset fit, and even my oddly shaped normal glasses fit into the VR headset. Both my eyes and ears were completely immersed in the game, and I was indeed in a realistically looking virtual space, more precisely in the cockpit of one of the titular Valkyrie star fighters.
I could – unlike a regular space shooter – freely move my head and look around the cockpit:
- Above me: The canopy and the hangar
- Next to me: More controls and parts of the platform
- Below me: The cockpit, my legs, my hands with the controls and my… breasts?!
Yes, that was indeed the biggest surprise. I must have looked pretty dumb standing in the CCP demo room, staring unbelievingly down at myself, but at least in the Gamescom demo of Eve Valkyrie, you apparently play as a female pilot clone. I have often played female characters in regular MMOs and in tabletop RPGs, but this VR experience with a completely different body was curiously more interesting and fascinating for me than the impending space battle.
You have to experience it!
The fascination with the game world and the many new impressions made me initially forget that I actually had a fear of VR, and soon my space fighter was launched into space uncontrollably and I was immediately caught up in a wild battle with other fighters. And this brought the second big VR surprise, because not only did I not feel any nausea, but everything felt so natural and intuitive, as if I were really sitting in a real cockpit.
The immersion was nearly perfect, and for the duration of the demo, I completely forgot that I was actually not in space, but sitting in a cramped demo room with various CCP employees wearing a bulky headset. Therefore, I was more than just a little disappointed when the gaming session finally ended and I had to take off the headset and found myself back in the real world. Without VR breasts and a spaceship, but with a slightly wobbly gait.
Mein-MMO says: Yes, I am convinced now too! VR rocks hard, and you really have to experience it! But I am still skeptical whether the expensive VR hardware will establish itself in the long term for home use, because while space games like Eve Valkyrie can surely be played well from a desk, VR games like the also CCP originated Project Arena (a kind of squash with energy balls and shields) can only be played standing and require not only additional controllers but also a lot of space and a kind of assistant to help with the whole setup. Therefore, I think VR could lead to a renaissance of the good old arcade halls in the future, where thematically suitable rooms, staff, and always up-to-date hardware could be offered.
