![]() Unlike so many other VR games that let you clip through objects by physically walking, Lone Echo will recognize a head-butt against the wall as such, and send you flying backward. The analog stick on your right hand lets you rotate in place – helpful for those who want to play seated or those with only front-facing sensors – but the most immersive way to play is standing up, so you can turn your body naturally to face wherever you want. For the sake of keeping players comfortable, the game maintains a consistent “horizon” level so you stay “right side up,” but there are also options in the menu that allow you to roll and flip upside down, should you have the stomach for that sort of thing. You can look anywhere, and move in any direction. The result is a world that extends in all directions one that you can navigate fluidly without the need to teleport or glide around with a joystick. This simple mechanic manages to reconcile the biggest conflict facing VR design, providing both incredible freedom and a high degree of comfort. ![]() You can finesse your trajectory with wrist-mounted boosters, but even here, everything is in your hands. Using the Oculus Touch controllers, you can grab walls, pull yourself along, and push off to float free though space. But instead of spinning around with thrusters (a mechanic that left many feeling dizzy and sick), Lone Echo lets you reach out and touch the world. Much like ADR1FT, one of the Oculus Rift’s launch titles, Lone Echo is set aboard a space station, letting players move freely, unbound by gravity. ![]() In making touching the core mechanic, developer Ready At Dawn has built one of gaming’s most tangible worlds. ![]() Lone Echo was one of the first titles to enter development for the Oculus Touch motion controllers, and those virtual hands underpin everything you do in the game. But Lone Echo, perhaps Oculus’s most ambitious title yet, manages to prove that these problems are solvable, and that VR can free players instead of keeping them in place. ![]() It’s been messy, and those early failures have amplified concerns about motion sickness and serious design limitations that could keep VR from realizing its potential. Over the last year and a half, we’ve watched as they’ve experimented, failed, identified problems, and side-stepped them. Virtual reality has forced developers to learn to walk all over again – often literally, as they rethink concepts as simple as basic movement. ![]()
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January 2023
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