Why 2021s Biggest VR Announcements Are PS2 Games

Why 2021’s Biggest VR Announcements Are PS2 Games

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Hot off the heels of Valve’s Half-Life Alyx, many players are left wondering why Oculus is focusing on remasters over their own “killer app”.

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Why 2021s Biggest VR Announcements Are PS2 Games

With this year’s announcement that Resident Evil 4and GTA: San Andreas would be coming to Oculus Quest 2 in full VR, many gamers are puzzled as to why Oculus is focused on remakes rather than original titles. Coming off of Valve’s release of Half-Life: Alyx for the Valve Index being hailed as VR’s first killer app, why isn’t Oculus announcing a competing killer app to drive sales for VR gaming? Why pump so much money into recreating nearly twenty year old games in VR?

Throughout the 2010s, virtual reality exploded in popularity among developers as the technology required to create such products became more affordable and hardware became more powerful. Companies such as Oculus came forward with new VR headsets, seeing success in providing a legitimate VR experience. Most of the best Oculus VR games were simple – games where players stay in roughly the same place, whether they be slashing the controllers like swords or playing a round of table tennis. These games were well-received by fans, but it placed the Oculus in a strange position: with games that largely appealed to casual audiences at a price point that only the more “hardcore” audiences would tend to pay, there’s been a lack of software to justify the purchase to many hardcore gamers.

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Oculus seems to hope to remedy this issue with the upcoming release of Resident Evil 4 and San Andreas, providing a more longform gaming experience compared to the minigames and arcade style titles of early VR. Oculus is setting itself up for success with brand familiarity – Resident Evil 4 and San Andreas were best-sellers of their console generation, Resident Evil 4 spawning numerous ports and San Andreas receiving a remaster this year, and outside of sales numbers, are often regarded as the best games in their respective franchises. Audiences clearly share a love for these games, and Oculus is hoping that will translate well into sales for the VR remakes.

VR PS2 Titles Give Oculus Library Much-Needed Nostalgia & Familiarity

It isn’t just the more boisterous gameplay compared to other VR titles, or just the love the games have had in the past – it’s the ability to experience something familiar from a wholly different angle. The city streets of San Andreas and the horrifying rural village are famed locations in gaming history, places that players have a great deal of nostalgia for, and with these new VR versions, players can now be transported directly into worlds that already mean something to them. These games, once played in a third-person perspective, are given new life by dropping the player in the shoes of the protagonist – with San Andreas being the first GTA VR game. Seeing the world from a first-person perspective never experienced before, these remakes likely hope to cater to the nostalgia many young adults are feeling for the PlayStation 2 era of gaming, and rather than a simple rerelease, are being remade from the ground up to be experienced in full VR in a whole new way.

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Although a new IP from Oculus built specifically to be the next large-scale VR game is much wanted, choosing to take their time and instead focus on remakes in VR will keep players satisfied with their headset purchase until more original large-scale VR games are developed. Special praise for the VR motion aiming in Resident Evil 4, bringing new depth to the combat. With these games bursting at the seams with content, these aren’t the tech demos and arcade games of old VR, these are full-fledged AAA games, and that goes a long way toward providing a more robust experience on the Oculus VR platform. Despite not being new titles, it’s clear that these games will be brand-new experiences in a number of ways, both for those who have played the originals and those who are playing them for the first time.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/2021-vr-announcements-ps2-games-oculus-remasters/

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