Resident Evil in Virtual Reality is actually terrifying
First contact with VR
From the moment I was stood holding a lightsaber in the Star Wars VR demo I knew I was hooked. There was a flood of what I'm going to call 'emotions' to my stomach. I was present in the here and now.
It was a slow start- I've spent the last few years being completely down on VR. Like many others in the software industry you get desensitised to hype because it is constant in the technology industry and rarely means anything. Added to that, I'm old enough to remember Virtual Reality being rubbish and failing to take off the first time around, back in the 90s.
I remember seeing this setup on both Blue Peter and Tomorrows World in the 90s. I never tried it and it never took off.
It was essentially curiosity and FOMO which led to trying out the HTC Vive setup in the ThoughtWorks Manchester office. I expressed mild interest and a colleague offered to give me a demo. And at first the graphic resolution and quality seemed grainier and showed much less definition that I had expected. The fact that I was stood in the office essentially wearing a hood, unaware of my actual surroundings made me feel awkward. The sound was pretty disappointing and the overall impression was clunky.
Unexpected impact
Forty minutes later, I remember leaving the City Tower in Manchester with my mind racing about the possibilities of this technology. I called my wife and told her about the moment the light sabre popped out of the droids head and the storm troopers started running towards me. VR is clunky and expensive and awkward but it allows game designers to create experiences which connect like nothing I've experienced before in gaming. Its not a rational thing at all.
Getting a PSVR
So after my initial VR experience with the Vive I decided to buy the PSVR headset to extend my Playstation 4. I'm in my mid-30s so nobody knows what to get me for Christmas anyway — and I'm very lucky in that I have a lovely family who want to get me gifts even though I'm an adult. So I asked everyone for Amazon vouchers and then threw in a few quid of my own.
In fairness Rez Infinite is a great game
Sadly, Sony were out of stock of PSVRs over Christmas and some vendors were asking £50 over the asking price. As I'm not a 15 year old boy anymore, I wasn't going to pay over the asking price. My PSVR arrived last week almost 2 months after Christmas. Since then I've played some great, wonderfully immersive games such as Rez Infinite and Tethered.
(Actually I want to give a shout to Secret Sorcery, the developers who created Tethered. I was so impressed by the amalgam of really great looking VR, 'small scale graphics', early 2000s Peter Molyneux style weirdness and an interaction scheme that really works. And its a decent strategy game! Looking forward to seeing what comes next from this developer!)
Enter Resident Evil 7
With all that said, I want to make a few comments on Resident Evil 7.
Arggh!
It has made me feel a kind of fear I've simply never felt before.
I've never had any fear response to films. The Blair Witch Project was a complete waste of time as far as I was concerned. Amusing to hear some of the reactions in the cinema and at least I could say I'd seen it — but I was not scared at all. Bored perhaps. Equally things like American Werewolf in London, Carrie, The Exorcist, The Descent or The Thing. I found some of these films quite watchable in themselves, but scary was the aesthetic, not something I actually felt. And I'm quite aware that some people do physically recoil, as I've sat with my screaming wife holding onto me through several of these films.
Equally computer games — I can honestly say that I don't recall ever being shocked or actually scared by a computer game before. I remember there was a game in about 1994 called Creature Shock which surprised me when this tentacle thing attacked. So as a 13 year old I was momentarily overwhelmed by the combination of very advanced graphics for the time and interactivity. It didn't last for long though, as Creature Shock was not really very interactive at all after you'd played it for long.
True terror
Resident Evil made me scream yesterday. From the moment I arrived at the spooky house the game builds a slow sense of creepy tension which then unleashes moments of actual terror and shock (Spoiler: you're not alone in the house). All of a sudden I can actually relate to my wife's reactions when we watched The Descent.
After getting brutally murdered at one point I had to take the headset off and have a sit down. Was I just feeling VR motion sickness, or was it mild shock? Short of getting a taxi to the roughest pub in the city and upsetting some gang dudes there is no way I can replicate this feeling.
A breakthrough for immersive experiences
Psychologically and technologically I can relate to a lot of the reasons why this might work and why it might be the case. I guess a lot of folks who read sites like Medium can too. However I just wanted to share the sheer visceral human reaction this technology creates. Many reviews gloss over or make light of it — but its a big deal.
I can't wait to see where this technology develops next.