Robinson: The Journey, Crytek’s second VR title and former PSVR exclusive, has landed on the Oculus store. Priced at $40, the game unfortunately lacks support for Oculus’ Touch controllers, leaving players to use a gamepad to awkwardly facilitate the game’s many hand-based interactions.

Robinson: The Journey launched on PSVR in early October, and it seems a brief period of exclusivity has lifted, with the game now available on the Oculus store. The game is the second full VR title for Crytek, who also developed the Oculus exclusive The Climb.

The title follows a young boy and his robotic AI caretaker who have crash landed on a planet inhabited by lush foliage and dinosaurs both friendly and fierce. While the game’s undeniably gorgeous visuals are an achievement for the young VR market, its enjoyment as a game was hampered by the awkward use of a static gamepad on PSVR to handle many first person hand interactions (much of which seem to have been purpose-built for motion controllers).

SEE ALSO
New 'Robinson: The Journey' Video Shows 5 Minutes of PSVR Gameplay
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In ‘Robinson: The Journey’, you control your hands with a gamepad, not hand controllers.

Unfortunately, that awkwardness comes to Oculus’ platform as well, with Robinson: The Journey launching there without support for the Touch VR controllers.

Like Robinson, Crytek’s The Climb also initially launched only with support for the gamepad, but that was before Oculus launched Touch. Crytek eventually made a major update to The Climb which brought Touch support to the game which, again, felt made-for-motion-controllers from the beginning. Hopefully Robinson will see the same treatment, but presently there’s no indication of whether or not that will happen.

Robinson: The Journey is priced at $40 on the Oculus store, while still priced at $60 on the PlayStation Store, though it can be found for $40 on Amazon as a physical disc.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Get Schwifty!

    What the hell man….

  • VirtualBoy64

    “Robinson: The Journey is priced at $40 on the Oculus store, while still priced at $60 for PSVR users.”

    https://www.amazon.com/PSVR-Robinson-Journey-PlayStation-VR-4/dp/B01M5BODWT

    Okay, Ben. Nice research.

  • Damien Wilson

    They get a big fat “F” for that. Don’t expect us to buy this game.

  • Benjamin Orlowski

    $40 For Vive with touch and room scale, I’m in.

    • Sebastien Mathieu

      Me Too!!! I’tired of those exclusive… it’s holding VR back, plus the VIVE is selling almost 2 times units than the Rift, developpers are clearly getting shamelessly paid of….

      • Sam Illingworth

        Where’ve you heard that 2* figure? I kinda hope it’s true (no offence to Rift owners, I just don’t like Facebook, and this whole thing with Zenimax seems mighty suspicious). And everyone loves Valve!

  • James Friedman

    No thanks, this game was TERRIBLE on the PSVR

  • cyberpunguy

    Good work Crytek… You brought Touch support to The Climb but not to Robinson…

  • DrZanz

    I’m not even in marketing and this shit is ridiculous. I’d love to hear the reasoning behind this, there’s just no scenario where it makes sense.

    • flyinb11

      Having played it, it makes perfect sense. The size of the environment requires the joystick to walk around. You also have no need to “handle” anything. I honestly don’t see how you would implement touch or move controllers.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      It’s not that difficult, the PSVR version was also optimized for the controller and not for the move.. Just wait a while and touch will propably be added. But try it before you start to bitch, maybe it’s still very fun with the controller.

      • DrZanz

        Are you new to the internet sonny? This is not even close to bitching.

        The point I was making, which you so obviously missed, is that the game plays like it should have touch support. Nothing in it feels natural with the controller – why would the game be released as it is now, when everyone knows about the touch, it’s not even like it’s in a development stage, it’s an actual thing. An ideal thing which solves any and all problems this game has – control.

        It’s just stupidity to release as it is.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          It’s not stupidity, it’s just economics.. Adding touch support takes time and money, and most Oculus users don’t have the touch controllers yet, so it’s a simple choice to already release it. Just like the Climb got touch support a long time after it was initially released (ok, when it was released touch wasn’t even available to consumers yet).
          Who knows, maybe touch will come very soon, but looking at the state Crytek is in right now, they need all the money they can get as soon as possible, so from a business standpoint it would be stupidity to NOT release it right now.
          And to be honest, if I would own the CV1 version of the Oculus (I only have the DK2), even if I had the touch, I would rather have the game today without touch than having to wait a couple of months to have it with touch support.
          Also, I wouldn’t even be supprised if you fiddle with the settings through the windows filesystem you can actually get touch running.

          • NooYawker

            “It’s not stupidity, it’s just economics”
            They’re being cheap and expect suckers to pay for it.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            It’s not cheap. A lot of Oculus users don’t have touch, I propably even think the larger group doesn’t have them, so it’s not being cheap, it’s going for the larger group.. Touch is something you can always add later if more people have those controllers. Because you might have those, doesn’t mean other have.. Some people even don’t care about touch controllers..

          • NooYawker

            Ok someone is butt hurt for some reason. Do you work for crytek for just a ridiculous fanboy?

          • Andrew Jakobs

            No, I’m just not so narrow minded, I just look at the facts and what would make sense…

      • NooYawker

        Paying for a VR game that doesn’t fully support standard VR controllers? Lazy developers. No one should spend a dime on shitty ports.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          But touch controllers aren’t standard VR controllers, at least not in the sense that they ship with every headset. Please get your head out of your ass and don’t be so closeminded, not everyone is waiting on every game to use touch controllers..

  • Sam Illingworth

    How long for the Vive version?

    Also, when’s the Vive version of thingy, by the Myst people, due out?

    • Sam Illingworth

      Perhaps that’ll come at the same time as motion controller support…

  • NooYawker

    There’s been enough garbage put out already. No one should have to settle at this point. If you don’t have touch controllers you can save up easily by not paying for junk like this. Then you can finally experience VR the way it’s supposed to be.