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Indie and VR games – and first up, Jeff Minter from Llamasoft was back, not only with the incredible Polybius – now out on PSVR and released on PC some time after Christmas, but also Tempest 4000, due out later this year from Atari. It takes the classic, but difficult shoot-em-up, to even more psychedlic territories!
Smash Tanks is a good piece of augmented reality. The picture shows the TV, but you’d point an iPad at a table, with the gameplay area effectively being on that. Pull back your tanks, like powering the cue in a snooker video game, and destroy the enemy. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it was quite fun.
Hyper Sentinel is a forthcoming title from Rob Hewson at Huey Games, the son of Andrew Hewson from Hewson International, who I also met on Sunday. If you enjoyed Uridium on 8-bit consoles in the ’80s, it’s a great modern take on that. More info about it here, and check out the gameplay video below.
RAD TV from Ruffian Games is a very engaging set of mini-games, involving wild west bar shoot-outs, punch-ups and even force-feeding one character. Note that you do need a lot of room for these, as the characters can appear ALL around you, so clear a big space in the room and make sure no-one’s standing near…
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School – a Korean horror game which looked pretty cool, but was always busy. It’s recently been released on PS4 and Steam.
I didn’t realise it had been out years before, but this version has been completely remade with expanded gameplay features and new content, including an all-new unlockable sequel story. Ji-min Yoo, a brand-new character, takes centre stage and faces the terrors of the night in a thrilling mystery that explores the history of the school and takes place during the events of the main game.
Check out the trailer below.
VR Zone – rather than something big like last year’s Battlezone on PS4, this was a series of consoles and PCs hooked up to PS4 headsets or an Oculus Rift and a HTC Vive. Over the course of the weekend, the HTC Vive wasn’t working when I went over there, and the Oculus had problems when I first was looking to try the game on there, but it was fine when I tried it later on Sunday, and they had a Wipeout-style game on that one.
I’ve not used the PSVR outside of Play Expo, so had a go on a driving game and one where you fly around like a bird. I wasn’t sure of the titles, but the latter was quite cool to simply move your head around and fly around a town, but when I had to turn round so I didn’t leave the play area, while the movement you make is natural, it felt a bit weird as you realise you have to turn 180-degrees in the real world, too! Since I was stood up, I nearly fell over, but such is the power of Virtual Reality!
Go to page 6 for a final set of pics from Play Expo 2017.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.