New ‘Robinson: The Journey’ Video Shows 5 Minutes of PSVR Gameplay

By
Ben Lang
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4

Crytek’s Robinson: The Journey is the studio’s first PlayStation VR game. A new gameplay video reveals more about the title’s gameplay and interactions.

Robinson: The Journey is shaping up to be an ambitious VR adventure game, and a beautiful one at that.

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Crytek has clearly built the game from the ground up for VR. As the new video above shows us, the game is full of small scale interactions between the player and the world: clearing barrels from a stream to unblock a generator, shooting hoops with a basketball for a little rec time, and rebuilding a scarecrow in an effort to ward off the many dinosaurs inhabiting the extrasolar planet that you’ve crashlanded on.

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There’s one dino you don’t want to ward off though, a puppy-eyed raptor called Lica who the main character, Robin, befriends as a pet (despite the wishes of HIGS, the boy’s AI companion). We can only hope that over time our little friend will grow into a menacing ally at our command.

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While the video shows the sorts of things Robin will do around his makeshift basecamp (including power management from the viewpoint of HIGS), our hands-on time with the game has showed that he will adventure far outside of the camp and find lots more to do, including tree climbing, scanning the environment with his multi-tool, and interacting with more wildlife on the planet.

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A prior developer diary video tells us more about how Robin ended up on the planet in the first place, and suggests he’ll probably run into some not-so-friendly dinosaurs throughout his journey.

Robinson: The Journey is set to launch around the time that PlayStation VR launched (on October 13th).

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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."
  • teddy70

    Looks nice. Quality visual. I’d cough up full price…$59? I have Vive and Rift already to cover all titles, not getting PSVR to get this…too bad. Exclusivity gap widens.

    • Joshua Rizk

      I think you won’t be covering all the titles at all. there’s no doubt occulus and vive have a growing library with a large variety of titles to play, but Sony have all these historical partnerships with companies like crytek, square-enix, Capcom, EA, Activision, Namco Bandai, WB Games who are releasing a lot of big franchises mostly all exclusive to sony’s device.

      A lot of occulus’ and vive’s popular titles like eve, job simulator, pool nation VR, windlands and brookehaven experiment are also coming day 1 to PSVR too.

      • drd7of14

        Yeah, some people can’t understand that dev/publishers are businesses. Their goal is to make money. They assume because Oculus/Vive are more powerful than PSVR, that devs would want to work on those platforms. Sure. Devs would, if it guaranteed sales. Thus far, the sales have been rather low.

        And that is likely to do with the install base/audience. The install base for people who have a computer that can run VR, let alone those who do have a computer, that care about VR, is rather low. From there, you have to sell them on your games.

        PSVR’s advantage is that, they already have 40 Million+ users would have VR-ready machines. Whether users are interested in it or not is irrelevant, what matters is that they could be interested in it. It’s the equal to trying to sell UHDBR discs to someone who doesn’t have a UHDBR player, except there’s a 3rd layer.

        PS4->PSVR->PSVR based games.
        40,000,000 sold are compatible

        PC->Oculus or Vive->Exclusive games or multiplatorm…Blah blah blah, that’s not why people buy PCs, but okay….
        Estimated at around 13,000,000 PCs sold are compatible.

        If I want to make money, the choice is obvious. I go with the platform holder/publisher that you are familiar with, and understands that market along with over 20 years of video game making experience.

        Regular people don’t get this. Regardless of the capabilities, it will take several years for PCs, which most people buy for multi-use purposes, are compatible with VR in the majority. And probably not the top-of-the-line VR, as I expect there to be improvements, but the entry level/base models or whatever.

        PSVR is compatible now. Will it be the best, no…Not at all. But it doesn’t need to be right now. It’s in the infant stages. And the fact is, love it or hate it, game publishers are going to go with the winner, especially when it’s clear. And that is PSVR.

        Winner = sales btw, not the gamer. The gamer always wins! If you got the Vive, that’s awesome! I unfortunately can’t afford it right now, but it is my #1 pick. I am just also aware that there will be many unique experiences on PS4. And that’s the route I’m going, at the entry-level. It’s my choice, as an informed consumer. My guess is the less-informed will flock to the same conclusion.

        Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35220974

        • Get Schwifty!

          Yeah, we all need to push for success of PSVR despite whatever platform we bought into, as it will be the mainsail for commercial VR at this point. Hopefully I can score one these for my family for a Christmas present.