I’m not a frequentVRuser, partly because it gives me vertigo, and partly because there isn’t much to play apart fromBeat Saber, which everyone can agree, objectively rules. However, I attended my first-everTokyo Game Showlast week, and so I was committed to giving every remotely interesting thing a shot. I visited the TGS VR booth to nose around and got the chance to put on a VR headset and explore it for myself.
You can explore TGS VR from your phone or PC,like editor-in-chief Stacey Henley did from the comfort of her own home. I, however, stood at the booth in the heat like a plebian. I was handed a protective sheet to put over my eyes and separate my face from the headset, which I appreciated very much, having been sweating from the convention venue’s seemingly broken air conditioning – if I was sweating, the person before me definitely was, and I did not want to be mingling fluids with whoever else had tried it on that day. I was handed the controls, which I had to be taught how to use, because again, I’m not a frequent VR user. After getting acclimated to which buttons did what, I was on my way.
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Or, at least, I tried to be. Vertigo took over almost immediately as I started moving through the world, nudging my field of vision further and further with the controller at the same time as I was moving my head. I felt myself starting to lean forward, though I was convinced my feet were still firmly planted on the floor. I’m fairly sure I exclaimed audibly. I’m completely sure I looked very stupid. After a minute of getting used to the feeling of being in virtual reality, I figured out that looking slightly upward while walking down the stairs and around the world would help mitigate some of the dizziness I was experiencing. Then I was truly on my way.
As Stacey described in her piece about TGS VR, there are a lot of booths and billboards scattered across the game’s various zones. Each studio had made its own booth and photo ops, with statues of iconic characters placed strategically across the play area. Many of these screens were interactable in VR, and I found myself stopping at various billboards to click on them and watch videos. Capcom, Square Enix, Sega, and other big studios predictably had big spots, but it was nice to see other, smaller studios with their own booths as well. Inevitably, I came across TheGamer’s and said, “Oh shit, that’s us!” I’m sure it was very annoying for everybody around me.
I particularly liked that the app incentivised interactivity, awarding you points for completing certain activities, though I didn’t get to hoard rewards because I was playing on a stand-in account at a booth. I was tempted to go back into the VR world on my phone and see what I could rack up, but time got away from me as the show picked up. Regardless, many of these things are still fully accessible from non-VR devices, and you can explore just as much as I did – hopefully, minus the vertigo.
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