Jason Rubin, Head of Content at Oculus, has recently teased ‘months of high-profile VR content’ for the hardware. In a recent tweet, he points towards the upcoming release of Rock Band VR, an exclusive title for Rift and Touch, as the starting point.
Launching March 23rd, Rock Band VR is a big deal for Harmonix and Oculus, having announced the title as exclusive to the Rift back in 2015. Some may feel that the plastic instrument craze peaked before 2010, but Oculus believe that VR has the potential to reinvigorate the rhythm game genre, giving players a genuine sensation of being a rock star, playing to a crowd. Oculus’ confidence in their investment is probably best illustrated by the Rock Band VR connector that is included with every Touch controller package.
In a recent tweet, Jason Rubin points to the Oculus blog announcement of the Rock Band VR preorders going live, teasing that it represents the start of “months of high profile rollouts” for the Rift. Rubin’s optimism is likely to be fuelled by the progress of some of the big-hitters we already know to feature on the 2017 roadmap…
Arktica.1
This sci-fi first-person shooter is developed by 4A Games, the Ukrainian team behind the acclaimed Metro FPS series, renowned for its stunning, atmospheric presentation. Arktica.1 continues the studio’s production quality with extreme attention to detail and customisation options on its wide array of futuristic weapons, and is expected to feature a lengthy campaign. Further details are available in our full preview.
Lone Echo
American studio Ready At Dawn make a huge departure from their last title, The Order 1886, with this zero-gravity action game where you assume the role of an advanced artificial intelligence robot transported to an advanced mining facility within the rings of Saturn. It uses the Touch controllers to great effect, allowing smooth movement through space as you pull and push on objects and interact with equipment in interesting ways. While not much is known about the single-player story, the multiplayer sports mode is very promising, as we detail here.
Wilson’s Heart
In Wilson’s Heart you assume the role of hospital patient Robert Wilson, voice acted by RoboCop’s (1987) Peter Weller, who wakes up to discover that his heart has been replaced with ‘a mysterious device’. With its unique black-and-white style, the character driven story looks to be ripped straight from an episode of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) or Night of the Living Dead (1968).
Wilson’s Heart is an intriguing psychological VR thriller which has you exploring your haunted surroundings, utilising Oculus Touch motion controls to interact with your environment, and it’s the implementation of those ‘virtual hands on’ elements (some of which you may can to catch in the above trailer) which we think may set the game apart.
Robo Recall
As a result of the hugely positive reaction to early Oculus Touch slo-mo combat demo Bullet Train, Epic Games were able to expand the concept into a full game, at the request of Oculus, who will provide Robo Recall for free to all Touch owners. The game features a comedic style, promoting the action-packed virtual smashing of robots in countless ways, using virtually anything you can grab with your Touch controllers. The use of Epic’s new forward render means this is one of the most spectacular games we’ve seen in VR. See our preview for more info.
When asked by Road to VR whether the high-profile rollouts included unannounced games, Rubin further hinted “Answering that would be an announcement of sorts”.
Additional reporting in this piece provided by Scott Hayden