It’s 7 o’clock and you’re throttling down a straightaway, a golden sunset illuminating the horizon in front of you in the Nilgiri Hills of India. Your high school best friend who you haven’t seen in years is in the lane next to you, accelerating damn near 110 mph as he attempts to overtake you in a turn. You look past the textured leather steering wheel of your Ferrari and stare deeply at the bend in the road as it approaches you, seemingly at light speed. Can you hit the handbrake and power through the curve, or do you let your friend pass?
You hear the roar of an engine behind you. You hear the screeching of tires as you toss the break and deftly pull the wheel. You can hear the voice of your spouse faintly in the distance. Are they cheering you on? No, they’re calling you to dinner. You tell your friend that you’ll have to finish your race another time. Slightly dazed, and with your adrenaline still pumping, you exit to the PS4 dashboard and take off your PlayStation VR headset. This is an experience in which I hope to indulge by the end of the year. Driveclub VR looks amazing, and I don’t think my fantasy is so far-fetched anymore. Just look at this demo footage of a journalist trying Driveclub VR for the first time. Look how giddy he is.
I look at this and I think, “This is is a killer app.” This is the type of experience that is going to sell VR to the hardcore gamers like myself who are afraid of paying for a library of gimmicks. Here we have a game that’s already proven itself. Driveclub may have had a rocky start, but now it’s considered the best racing game out there. You have a few Project CARS faithfuls who would vehemently disagree with that statement, but it’s true. Driveclub is gorgeous, it’s easy to get into, it’s seamlessly social, and it’s fun. Don’t even get me started on the photo mode.
This is what the hardcore gamer wants to see when looking at PlayStation VR, or any VR platform for that matter. I see all of these other games like Job Simulator, EVE: Valkyrie, Battlezone, and Batman: Arkham VR , and I can’t help but feel like these are all being developed as VR showcases and not as deep gaming experiences. Trust me, the honeymoon period with a new VR device is very short. I’ve seen the threads where early-adopters are wondering what’s next, I have a developer friend who has a Rift collecting dust, and my own Gear VR is sitting, neglected, for lack of meaningful gaming experiences.
I think the fact that PSVR is launching as the initial wave of VR hype settles is a great thing. It’s given developers time to observe what’s sticking and what’s not. What kinds of games retain their player-base, and what kinds get played a couple of times before being uninstalled? What types of experiences are best suited to the VR experience? Do first-person shooters still feel good when you have to turn your head to look around you? Will adventure games be satisfying when all you do is float behind your character in third-person view like a phantom?
It seems to me that racing games are the thing perfectly suited to VR, at least for now. Or really any game where you’re piloting something. RIGS looks interesting as well, but it’s Driveclub that has me anxiously glancing at the calendar, counting the weeks I’ll have to wait to play. Apart from the joy of virtual racing, we’ll still have that base game to keep us busy. There are clubs to join, friends to challenge, records to set, and records to break. The fact that we’ll be able to go online and race others live in VR is a dream come true – racing fans have been daydreaming of an experience like this since the 80s.
Give us all of it. Give us all of the racing VR goodness. No doubt Gran Turismo Sport will be competing to outshine Driveclub , and that’s good news for us. It means Polyphony is going to have to offer something just as beautiful, just as social, and wholly unique. And you better believe that these games will look even sharper in Neo mode once Sony launches its new console. The future is bright, my fellow adrenaline junkies. Soon we’ll be pushing 180 mph down long stretches of country road, together, in the driver’s seats of our supercars, in virtual reality. Just let that sink in.