As a VR fan, I have a story of shame to share. Over a year ago, I (wrongly) pronounced PSVR dead and bought a Quest 2. I was immediately smitten with Oculus's little headset, amazed at the fidelity of the picture and the amazingly easy wireless set up. I quickly moved all of my VR playtime over to the Quest 2, only breaking out the PSVR for the occasional big release. While I still enjoy a lot of the games on Sony's platform, I didn't bother setting it up with my PS5, instead moving it upstairs to my "retired gaming platform corner", where I could access it if I needed it, but it wouldn't be junking up my living room.
Fully invested in Quest now, I've played several Quest 2 games over the past year, and reviewed a couple of them here on the site. But the thrill of the new tech has faded a little bit, and I have been jumping into VR less and less.
Over the summer, GN tech editor John Yan helped me build a gaming PC, and my entire gaming life shifted. I found myself playing on my PC far more than on consoles, enjoying the ability to just sit at my desk and dive into a game. I got PC Game Pass, and started loading up random titles I have been pulling from Epic Games Store and trying them out. I've been having a blast. But it never occurred to me to hook up my Quest 2 to my gaming PC until John Yan gifted me with Blade & Sorcery over the holidays.
I sat on it, pondering for a while. But with a quiet, bitter cold weekend in front of me, I ordered an 18" link cable and Googled the incredibly simple instructions for how to get the Quest 2 linked to my PC. Then, on Saturday morning, I took the plunge.
Holy lord, I can't believe how long it took me to do this. I've experienced PC VR before on occasion, at shows and conventions, but it wasn't enough to make an impression no me as that much better than what I had been doing. But the scales fell away from my eyes when I booted up Blade & Sorcery for the first time with my PC pushing the visuals. The resolution and fidelity is just so much better than what I had been experiencing. It is freaking incredible. The graphical details, the animations, everything is just so much better.
I immediately grabbed Fallout 4 VR from Humble Bundle for $15, and was astounded and entranced to play through the familiar opening of that game in VR; seeing the inside of Vault 111 in life-sized first person absolutely blew my mind. I need to spend more time with both of those titles over the next couple of weeks, but the game that has me utterly agog is Asgard's Wrath, which I was able to download for free from the PC Oculus Store.
Asgard's Wrath is a stunning AAA game, with all of the usual VR jank smoothed out so that it performs exactly as I want it to. I know I'm super late to the part here (PC VR fans are like "yeah, dude...duh"), but I can't believe how good this game is. I'm sure I'll be writing more about it as I dig deeper into the game, but for now, suffice to say that I am absolutely stunned at the quality I'm seeing.
I guess I thought it would be complicated to hook up my Quest 2, or maybe the difference wouldn't be as striking. But I was dead wrong, and I'm a little sad about all of the time I spent not digging into the clearly-much-better world of PC VR. Oh well, you don't know what you don't know, but now I know. If you need me, I'll be digging through tombs with my shark buddy.
