PlayStation VR2 hands-on: Horizon, Resident Evil, and more

Oculus made the leap to wireless in 2019 with its Quest headset. Everyone had talked for years about how difficult cords are to use VR, and how it would be easy to get rid of them once tech was figured out. Oculus was able to figure it out ahead of schedule.

Sure, the games looked a generation or two out of date compared to those on Valve Index or Oculus Rift S, or even PlayStation VR, but that felt like a fair trade-off for something that didn’t make you feel like you were on a leash. I was able to switch over almost immediately and use Quest for VR more often than not.

I wasn’t alone. Quest became the best-selling headset brand and delivered high quality VR to millions.

After trying PlayStation VR2 recently, I’m reminded of what we’ve been missing.

Last week, I tried Sony’s new headset for the first time and was caught off guard by how stunning two of its marquee games, Horizon Call of the MountainAnd Resident Evil Village, looked. They didn’t rely on particles or stylized art direction; they looked like AAA console games that just happened to be in VR. After playing Quest for several years, I had re-evaluated my expectations about how VR games should look. It was wonderful to see VR games moving forward without needing elaborate set ups.

I’m still not especially thrilled about going back to a tethered headset, but with Sony’s backing and games this pretty, it’s instantly tempting.

Photo: Matt Leone/Polygon

The headset

At Sony’s press event, I had a chance to play around with the PSVR2 hardware and try four game demos. The hardware is very similar to the old PSVR. Sony’s not rocking the boat or shifting plans around like others have been known to do; it’s continuing on the same path it began six years ago.

The headset itself looks a bit different this time around — studded with cameras and cut with sharper edges to match the look of the PlayStation 5 hardware — but it feels familiar, with the same sort of slider, padding, flexibility, and weight distribution we got on the original PlayStation VR.

The key benefits come with the raw power and visual tricks, like foveated rendering (where the hardware only fully renders the areas you’re looking at), that help the graphics look high-end — it’s certainly impressive that it can replicate a game like Resident Evil Village with minimal drop-off from the console version — and a variety of quality-of-life changes.

For example, there’s now a button underneath the front of the device that you can press at any time to switch to a see-through view using the inside-out cameras built into the headset. It allows you to stop a game and talk to others in the room. You also have the option to pick up your headsets, without the need to take it off.

It’s also nice that Sony has simplified the wires involved in the setup. While you do have to deal with a cord sticking out the back, it’s now a single cord that plugs into the the PS5 rather than a mess of cables. If you use wired headphones, it’s still a bit of a jumble to take those off, then take the headset off, while figuring out what to do with two controllers, but it’s progress. Because of the built-in cameras, the setup is much simpler.

These cameras allow the system to follow your movements with greater precision and detail. When games asked for players to move to one side or the other, the PSVR’s original camera was fixed in place. Since the headset tracks, it is possible to look at any place as long as they are visible. It’s old news, but it is a welcomed addition.

Similarly, Sony’s PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers bring the interface up to date, looking and feeling very much like the controllers included with Quest and Quest 2, with handles encased in plastic rings to help with tracking and the ability to register a touch of a button rather than a press. They work great and are a significant upgrade. However, it will be familiar for those who have used other hardware.

Fold in the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers in the controllers, the vibrations in the headset, and the built-in eye tracking, and Sony’s device includes a number of ways to mess with players, along with a few elements that set it apart from the competition.

But Sony’s event wasn’t just about the hardware. In fact, very little of it was — most of it was centered around four game demos.

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Horizon Call of the Mountain

One of the most beautiful games I’ve seen in VR, Call of the Mountain feels like a visual showcase for Sony’s new headset. As you navigate through the new Horizon story, there are explosions and huge robots in the sky.

Although the universe is the same, the game has its own unique world. Horizon Zero DawnAnd Forbidden West, it’s a different sort of experience. For one thing, instead of controlling series star Aloy, you play as Ryas, “a disgraced former Carja soldier searching for redemption,” according to Sony. One more thing: you’re viewed in the first person. Ryas is primarily seen through two disembodied eyes. As you interact with the world, Ryas climbs, swims and uses bow and arrows.

According to developers, the game will take around 6 or 7 hours. Combat will be mainly based on shooting arrows and not the wild melee acrobatics found in previous games. If the demo of Thunderjaw’s giant battle is anything to go by, it should release many of the same endorphins.

Comparable to other displayed games, Call of the Mountain seemed like the one most custom-built for the new headset, with nice touches like headset vibration and using eye tracking to control the game’s menus.

Capcom image

Resident Evil Village

Lady Dimitrescu (at 9 feet 6 inches tall), is the big boss VR game developers love to create stunts around. Capcom had her lined up. Resident Evil Village’s VR mode, which will consist of the game’s primary campaign and is “currently in development exclusively” for PSVR2, according to Capcom.

In a short demo on display at the event, Lady D was the clear standout, talking to you while you dangle from the ceiling of a room with hooks through your hands, giving you a close-up look at just how giant and intimidating she is — and how much more detailed she looks compared to the character models in Resident Evil 7PSVR, Resident Evil 4Quest.

Representatives of Capcom state that VR will include minor adjustments to balance and interface (e.g. the ability for you to hold your hands up in order to block), but not significant content updates from the previous campaign.

Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge — Enhanced Edition

Mix and match Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s EdgeThe history of the company and its products Last CallFollow-up, combine the designs into one package. Add some visual upgrades and the result is the Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s — Edge Version EnhancedExclusively for PSVR2.

Similar to ILMxLAB’s Vader Immortal series, the game has a light sort of theme-park, toy-box feel to it, which is perhaps appropriate given the title. The demo at Sony’s press event consisted of some discussion and minigames in a bar setting, followed by a short outdoor shootout, but this feels like the kind of game that is built for longer play sessions, so it was hard to get a perfect sense of it in a short sample.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retribution

The last game on display may have been the most disturbing, which is saying something considering there’s a Resident Evil game on this list. But Walking Dead’s melee attacks take something out of you up close in VR, and whether you read that as praise or criticism may well determine whether you should play the game.

As a beginner, I found myself struggling to find weapons and ammo and reload while being hounded by zombies, which I’m sure was by design to amp up the fear of it all, but seemed a bit overwhelming, so here’s hoping the full game ramps things up in a more gradual way.

Receiving your freedom

Software support is more important than hardware. And thus far, it seems like Sony’s on the right track there, with a good mix of genres and licenses, though it’s still early. Horizon seems much bigger than many of the major license spinoff titles we saw on PSVR1. And while all four are tied to large brands, Sony yesterday announced that Quest will be playing Horizon as a dungeon-crawler. DemeoPSVR2 is also coming soon.

What the next generation of software will look like is the biggest question. We will see Enhance’s new synesthesia light-show. Team Asobi will bring you something joyful! London Studio: Another filmic ride? As those cards fall into place, we’ll get a much clearer idea of what to expect from PSVR2. But on a hardware level, it’s hard not to like what Sony’s shown so far.