![]() Then you start thinking about the connotations of that joke. The joke clicks after a few confused seconds, and then after that you start admiring all the supporting detail for that joke. Blocked In has you trapped motionless (other than the head) in a cubicle, and as you gaze around the place you notice more and more. The default response to putting on those goggles is to move your head, not to press a button, and as such you see so much more - because it seems so big and so tangible. Blocked In demonstrates something that VR can do so well, something that a monitor can not - make you look around. What a majority of 3D games do is create large environments which are full of small details, most of which you'll notice (if indeed you notice them at all) for a split second as you charge around the place. ![]() ![]() I find these dioramas almost more thrilling, though - I'm simply transported somewhere else, and without the risk of any game-y interaction shattering that fantasy.īlocked In is a gag, but it's not just a gag. Interaction with Oculus DK1 one games is hamstrung by the readability issue and the blur/motion sickness issue, though a few games have found ways around this (more on one those in the next column). Until Oculus DK2 is fully in the wild, I do imagine that 'dioramas' will be a mainstay of any VR releases or coverage. I should also note that The Entertainment further comes alive if you're sat on a swivel chair, for this is an experience played out in 360 degrees and necks don't usually go that far. Look at you, twisting and gawping and spinning. For all the archness and metatextuality, right down at the heart of The Entertainment was one big, playful joke. I was a play too, for The Entertainment made my seated performance into its performance. That's what I was doing while I watched this play within a game. What plums they are, whirling their heads around while they disappear into an imagined world. We've all seen the pictures and videos of people looking like muzzled drunkards in their VR headsets. Which must mean that - ah, well that's the thing, isn't it? You're the audience, except there's an audience behind you. Look straight ahead and two actors recite lines about dusty lives in a gloomy bar look over your left shoulder and the director offers a commentary of sorts look behind you and you see an audience watching in silence, though lines from a journalist's review of the play soon appear look down at the table you're sat at and something narrates your own actions. Watching the play through an Oculus immediately involves one key feature - the ability to turn your head. It's a play about American dispossession with strong Miller overtones, though if there's one thing I do know for sure about anything Kentucky Route Zero, it's that it's referencing art I'm too much of a philistine to know myself. The Entertainment broadly involves watching a play. While this isn't a narrative game - at least not in a conventional sense - I suppose technically the following observations count as spoilers, so please make a judgement about whether to read on. The dialogue is arch and steeped in so many layers of meta-commentary that I'm not sure it manages to sustain the maudlin reflection of KRZ proper, but the central conceit (and the dawning realisation of what it is) is as perfect a Rift experiment as I can imagine. ![]() I'd say it's one of the most essential Oculus vignettes to date, and demands your eyes and ears even if you haven't played KRZ itself. This free 'intermission' for the incomparable Kentucky Route Zero has been around for a while, but it's only now that I've tried the Rift version of it. This turns out to be far more fertile ground with reality-shifting cleverness than it might sound. On with the sterescopic show, anyway - this week I'm looking at Rift games/experiments which are based to some degree around the concept of sitting in a chair. Apologies, this latest in my ongoing Oculus Rift / VR curiosities column is a week late, due to most of the RPS staff being dead last week.
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