Resident Evil Village PS VR2 Impressions
PS VR2 is finally here and with that, we have had almost a week to play through this new take on Resident Evil Village. PS VR2 completely changes how the game is played while keeping intact one of the best horror games of the past 10 years. How exactly has it evolved in VR?
The base PS5 version of Resident Evil Village is fully playable in VR. You can play sitting or standing, but the VR Sense controllers are required to play. You can not use the DualSense controller, unlike Gran Turismo 7. This is OK because the team has done some amazing things with the controllers in VR.
Starting out in VR, the game will take you through a brand-new tutorial area. All of the combat mechanics have changed. To use the knife you remove it from the strap on your jacket, with your right hand and R1. To stab, you hold the knife continuously with R1 as you remove it from your jacket and stab as you would with your hands and arms in motion. At first, this feels clunky and strange but, once you get the hang of it, it feels so natural.
The gunplay has changed too, use R1 to grab different guns strapped to your body and pull them out using your body’s motion. Each gun has separate reloading mechanics that require you to physically load and chamber the ammo. For example, on the rifle, you have to pull back the bolt to remove and insert rounds. With the shotgun, you have to grab the fore-end and make that really cool shotgun-loading motion. From there each gun has realistic sights, you will need these to accurately aim. Using the sights to take down enemies by blasting their heads off is so much fun. If all of this is too overwhelming for you, there are a handful of options to simplify gun mechanics.
Once you become comfortable with the combat, which will take time, the combat is some of the best, if not the best in VR right now. Much like the guns, the hand to hand combat is different in VR. You will physically hold up both of your forearms to block. You will physically have to make punching motions to punch. This will become handy early on as you try to conserve ammo.
Visually the game looks just as good as it did on the PS5. Also, the spatial audio still stands apart as some of the best. The PS VR2 OLED display will show the HDR in full effect. Everything comes together to make Resident Evil Village one of the best, if not the best horror experience out today when played in VR. The only catch is, for anyone looking to get back into RE8 for the Shadows of Rose DLC, it is not playable in VR, only the base game is.
With that, we highly recommend Resident Evil Village for anyone with a PS VR2 headset. This is one of a few AAA VR games across any platform. There is a horror element here that you are not going to find anywhere else.
