Beat Saber (and the Oculus Quest 2)
The first time I saw beat saber was this gameplay video in 2018 and I immediately fell in love with it. I adored the concept and wanted to play it so badly.
There's a VR arcade close to my place, where I actually played Beat Saber for ~30 mins last year. Lots of fun! And last week, I bought and received an Oculus Quest 2 and finally played it by myself.
First of all, god damn that is a good game. It's perfect at making you feel like you're naturally good at it, too. Or maybe I actually am. With only ~4 hours of played time I'm doing hard or expert on most new songs with faster song mode (+20% song speed). Which has this weird effect of making me feel like that's the natural pacing of the song… super, super weird when they are ones I already know, as now the version I know feels slowed down.
The campaign felt short and a bit too easy, with one exception (1-hand expert $100 bills with max 4 misses… spent 2 days on that. Looks like I'm not the only one having problems with it). Though it's been frustrating in places; I find the whole "you need to make at least x mistakes to win this level" pretty ridiculous. Min/max movement is an interesting mechanic but I'm not fond of the execution.
I have some frustrations with the game. No replays I can save to show off the most awesome combos. Hit detection feels way off on some levels. I haven't tried online mode yet, pretty excited about it.
But god daaaaamn it's an awesome game. I'm finally playing something again! I haven't really played any video games since … shit, almost two years. And the workout you get is fantastic. I am finally getting a handle on my lockdown atrophy.
Ben Brode once said: "Make your games super easy to get into. The longer it takes me to get into your gameplay, the less interested I will be in playing your game. Except for Beat Saber: I will jump through any hoop just to play that."
And that brings me to the Oculus Quest 2. I was a 2020 original Oculus Rift kickstarter backer. I actually tried the first dev kit. A pretty awesome and unique feeling, but all that for shitty resolution, motion sickness and 4 cables hanging off your head.
Well, it's all gone. Integrated audio, fully wireless, good resolution, no cables, no base station, no PC required. And the features just blow my mind. IR cameras to detect objects around you, the guardian mode with its virtual barriers, the pass-through mode which lets you see outside the oculus without removing it (killer feature). Casting support so it's easy to show your gameplay to friends in the same room. Oh and hand detection?! This is some Star Trek shit.
I recall my reactions to touching and playing with the first iPhone: "Wow, this is game-changing." - Such is my reaction to the Oculus Quest 2. VR is now a console that is, frankly, cheaper and less intimidating than owning a playstation-type console or some such (after all, you need a TV for those). It's on the same level as the Nintendo Switch. I know a lot of people who are greatly intimidated by VR and this removes almost everything scary about it.
Incremental progress is weird; sometimes you stop following the various upgrades in a field and suddenly you catch up and it's mind-blowing.
The problem with the Quest 2 is still the lack of true killer games. Right now, I bought a $400 Beat Saber game… though, it's still worth it. Like Ben said: any hoop.
(I also got The Room VR because I'm a sucker for these kinds of games and it came highly recommended)
Almost the same as my experience (but on the original Oculus Quest). Beat Saber taps into some visceral feelings that make it an absolute blast to play.
Pro tip: get mods. It's totally worth it. The quality of the community-created tracks is very high, and there's a massive amount out there.
Which mods would you recommend?
I eventually probably will but for now that's too much of a time investment for me. I'm at a point in my life where I want gaming to remain a low-invested-effort activity (utterly unlike how I was a few years ago, by the way)
The Gangnam Style custom track is genius.
Great writeup, Adys! Your post captures exactly how I felt when I first tried Beat Saber. My friend brought over his Quest (pre-COVID, and I hate that we have to specify stuff like that now), casted it to the TV, and we had fun watching him play various games. Normally VR is super isolating, but casting it makes it much more party-friendly. Plus, we were all shocked at how "easy" the whole setup was. My vision of VR prior to this was that you had to have a powerhouse PC, sensors mounted on stands in the room, and wires that would inhibit the sort of "free play" promise of VR. It felt like the kind of thing that was only for enthusiasts; the kind of thing you had to devote an entire room of your house to. The Quest blew me away because it made the whole messy VR process as contained and simple as putting on a hat.
We, of course, all took our turns with Beat Saber. Like you identified, it's so easy and intuitive to pick up, and I loved every second of it. I used to play Dance Dance Revolution back in the day, so the idea of a full-body rhythm game is very much in my wheelhouse, but DDR is very impractical to play at home and is also terrible for knees and ankles. Beat Saber finally scratched the DDR itch I've had that had gone unscratched for many, MANY years.
My husband, seeing my delight with the Quest, actually got me one as a gift. Thus far the list of games I've played on it has grown to include... Beat Saber. Literally nothing else. Like you I don't have a Quest so much as I have a $400 Beat Saber game, but I've definitely gotten my husband's money's worth out of it!
I'm actually a little sad, since I'm on a play hiatus from it. Given the high exposure to COVID from my job, and the non-negligible likelihood on any given day that I'm infectious but unaware, I'm "soft quarantining" from my husband as a precaution which means not spending a lot of time in the common areas of our house, and definitely not doing anything high-intensity that would cause me to expel a lot of breath there (which is like giving the virus a free ticket to ride). Our house is small enough that I can really only play it in one particular spot, and that happens to be between the dinner table and our kitchen: not exactly a low-risk area.
I'm looking forward to when I can boot it up again safely, and I'm actually interested in trying out some of the Quest's other rhythm games (e.g. Audica, Synth Riders, Dance Central). If they're anywhere near as good as Beat Saber then I'll have plenty to love.
I might be about to blow your mind here, because it blew mine when it occured to me that... you can play this outside!
It does require preclude finding a calm/quiet spot, though, so I guess it depends where you live. You also can't play at night unless you have IR blasters of some kind as the camera trackers won't work without some infrared light.
I'd be very careful with that! The Quest guidelines say not to expose the headset to direct sunlight.
Oh wow, huh I had no idea. Don't listen to me then :) Maybe a cap of some kind? Would a hoodie over the lenses work? Sorry, I think I would go crazy if I didn't have beatsaber to keep me moving at this point haha.
No worries! I'm in a very unique situation, and I'm probably being over-cautious. I've just seen so many cases of whole households falling ill or testing positive that it makes me feel I should be taking precautions even at home. Plus I think about how not okay I would be with myself if I were to give my husband COVID. He's working from home and takes every precaution possible. Not that it's ever fair for someone to get COVID, but it would feel especially unfair in this case, as he's been doing everything right since before this even hit (he started prepping in February). I hate the idea that his link to me could jeopardize all of his efforts. Plus, you know, it's also just scary thinking of him getting it in general. If I can have a hand in potentially preventing that, I want to make sure I'm doing my part.
I've had both a Vive and an Index, so here's some VR game recommendations that appear to be Quest-compatible:
I've been absolutely obsessed with VRChat lately. It's been my killer app. I owned VR headsets for years, but after getting into VRChat about a month ago, I've put more time into it than I've put into the total of all other VR stuff. I've been playing it with some online friends I've known for a while, and I've met new friends on it who I talk to every day now. I've been working on making customized avatars and I'm considering trying to make my own worlds for it. I bought a set of vive trackers to get full-body tracking, so my body is more accurately tracked in-game which is great for immersion, more accurate body language, and even dancing.
VRChat does have a weird situation with the Quest though. Avatars and worlds have to be specially set up to work on the Quest, and not everyone goes through the effort, including many people who customize their own avatars. (Personally, I make my stuff Quest-compatible. It takes some work though.) If a world isn't Quest-compatible, you can't go to it. (Most popular worlds seem to be Quest-compatible at least.) If an avatar isn't Quest-compatible, you will see players with it using a default avatar instead. I've seen people describe VRChat as often being "world and avatar show-and-tell", so not seeing some people's avatars does remove some of the fun.
If you do eventually get a gaming computer, you can hook up your Quest to the computer to play PC VR games, including the full PC version of VRChat. If you do this, here's some other must-play PC VR games:
Yall giving me a lot to work with, this is great :)
Second Superhot, it is up there with Beat Saber on how to sell people on VR in that it turns your motion into a puzzle and it's easy to grok "time moves when you move."
PS: my shoulders hurt.
Know that feel. When I first got my Vive I played a few hours of Space Pirate Trainer (amongst other games), and I genuinely couldn't walk up the stairs or lift my arms above my shoulders the next day. My muscles were absolutely wrecked. :P
Which high quality VR games would you recommend? Aside from beat saber I cannot find anything truly "killer app" for my Quest.
I have plenty of shit on Steam, but I won't have a gaming pc for a while still so that's no use to me right now.
I am probably not the best person to ask that unfortunately, since I haven't actually played with my Vive in quite a while and most of the stuff I have played basically felt like tech demos. Some were great, others meh, but nothing I would really classify as "killer". I hear Half-Life: Alyx is amazing, but that's not available on the Quest AFAIK.
edit: A quick google search shows that Superhot is on the Quest. You should check that out if you haven't already... it was pretty good.
Rez Infinite is also on Quest. It was trippy AF and worth checking out too.
Try Thrill of the Fight, it's a boxing game. I get even more winded playing that than I do Beat Saber.
But yeah, the VR workout is real. I don't know if you have played custom songs, but I would recommend them. Rasputin is one of the best songs on there!
https://bsaber.com/
My best friend (RIP) absolutely loved Thrill of the Fight. Every time he would come over that's the first thing he would ask to play. I have some super fond and funny memories of playing it with him while we were both drunk as hell. :P
I was thinking about getting The Room VR, but time and budget have stopped me. Is it pretty good?
Haven't tried it yet (and wasn't going to until next week), but I can make sure to reply here once I do :)
I watched one of the PC versions of The Room, it was really cool. I think that if you don't have the budget for it, it's probably not worth getting… IMO buy it when you want to spend $30 on entertainment value, not when you still have bills to pay.
Oh, my budget is fine. I'm just low because of Christmas shopping, so I'll have some more money after my next paycheck. I'll even have more time, too, since classes will finally be over.
Two words: Pistol Whip.
It's AMAZING. Involves more full-body movement, makes you feel like John Wick, and while the number of tracks/levels is small, as you work your way up the difficulties it becomes punishing.
Unfortunately, I think the Quest's library is always going to be rather stunted comparatively due to it being a wireless peripheral. Of course you have the quest link, but that sort of removes the only (imo) advantage of the Quest. It's the main reason I don't think I'd ever purchase a Quest, as most of the games I like playing need the power of the PC. I do like the camera system that tracks the controllers, however. I have the Rift S and it's super easy to set up. I've heard people complain of controller occlusion but I haven't ever had issues with it
IIRC you can also use wifi with quest link.
I'd been playing Beat Saber for exercise intermittently until one of my roommate's cats chewed through the cable for my Rift the other day (serves me right for leaving it out when I knew that the cat in question likes to chew on cables, though, I suppose). I struggled with whether to just buy a Rift S, or even a Quest 2, instead, but ultimately I spent $100 on a replacement cable from eBay (a used one! Friggin' Facebook stopped making replacement cables for the original CV1 Rift years ago, apparently). I'm just not comfortable giving Facebook more money, since they're still going to monetize my data, and it is possible to identify individual users based on VR motion tracking data, and I don't trust them to use that power for good.
I have to admit I sometimes wonder if I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face here, though, considering Facebook's tendrils extend so deep into our lives that they supposedly even create "shadow profiles" for people not on Facebook. Like, even if I abstained completely from their services, they can infer my existence like astronomers inferring the existence of further-out planets based on perturbations in the orbits of the ones we know about.
I frankly had the same concerns, and really didn't want to give Facebook money. I find their behaviour repulsive.
But they simply deserve it, here. They have built something truly revolutionary. I don't know how to otherwise explain it; it takes a lot to make me abandon my principles on things like these.
You're not the first person I've heard praise the Quest 2, although I am still somewhat skeptical since it's basically an Android phone you strap to your face; given the all constraints imposed by packing all the hardware into a single device and the fact that it has to be battery powered, it seems like it wouldn't be able to match the graphical quality that even my gaming PC's now relatively meager GTX 1060 can manage.
Ultimately, I think if I had already bought deeply into the Oculus ecosystem it would have been easier to hold my nose, but I didn't own that many games and I'd already re-bought all the non-exclusives I could on Steam when Facebook announced the account requirement for Oculus going forward. Now, if the cat chews through Rift cable #2 (which I intend to be more mindful about preventing), I might have to do some soul-searching and weigh the importance of continuing to have access to VR vs. resisting Facebook's further encroachment into my life vs. holding out for a meaningful upgrade (even considering the wirelessness and inside-out tracking, the Quest 2 seems like something of a lateral, if not slightly downward, move even from the Rift CV1 considering it's got a single LCD panel with a lower refresh rate, and possibly a worse FOV) like a Vive Cosmos Elite, Valve Index, or Pimax headset.
How is the inside-out tracking on the Quest 2, incidentally? I've heard that on other headsets that have it (like the HP Reverb G2 and the entry-level Vive Cosmos), the accuracy and responsiveness leave something to be desired.
(re-posting, posted in the wrong spot)
It really isn't, I think there's a few misconceptions here.
First, no, the standalone mode doesn't match a proper gaming rig's quality, but it does have a linked-pc mode. It even has a wireless desktop mode. IMO this renders the whole point moot, because even if you buy all the gadgets and what note, it's still considerably cheaper than all the other alternatives (the Index is over $1k if you want something usable!)
Second, I think in general graphical quality isn't the prime driver for VR. We're not yet at the level where you can be fully immersed in a fantastical skyrim-like world with ultra-realistic graphics, but is that really what you're looking for in VR? It's certainly where we'll end up a few years from now, just as graphical quality has been steadily improving on desktop/gaming PCs and consoles over the years.
All in all, the tradeoffs Facebook made in order to create a standalone, affordable console have been perfect IMO. And if you want graphical quality, then I guess the oculus link or wireless desktop mode are for you. I haven't used it, but a friend of mine has and he's been singing its praise -- apparently he's been having fun getting through Alyx on the Q2.
I get the sense I may have come off sounding more adversarial than I intended -- I wasn't intending to sound adversarial at all, in fact. If I did, I apologize.
You raise good points. I can't honestly say that I've ever thought the graphics were inadequate in any of the VR games I've played, and for all my talk of wanting a crazy-high-res, high-FOV headset, I can't say that I've ever found those aspects of my Rift particularly inadequate either; I only notice the limited FOV and screen-door effect when I'm consciously looking for them. Insofar as I have any technical objection to the Q2, it's that it doesn't seem like a sufficiently drastic upgrade from my Rift CV1 for the time that elapsed between the Rift CV1's release and the Q2's release; but as I was writing out my justification for that, it became more and more apparent to me that I was downplaying the significance of it being standalone and having inside-out tracking; being tethered to a PC and requiring external sensors to track the controllers were/are certainly major obstacles to VR adoption for a lot of users.
Insofar as I'd hold out for a higher-end headset it's out of a feeling that any new headset I buy should be a strict upgrade from the one I have, but I must confess, you and @zisa have gone a long way toward eroding my belief that the Q2 wouldn't be.
You didn't, no worries :) Like I said, it took some convincing to get me to shell money out to facebook for this.
Even though it's technically "just" an Android phone strapped to your head, I think you'd be surprised at how good the Quest 2 turned out. In many ways, it's much better than the Valve Index:
Quest 2 inside-out tracking is on par with Valve Index IMO. The blind spots are different, and there might be a bit more latency, but I can play Beat Saber on Expert+ without issues on Quest 2.
Some notes:
Interestingly, I don't recall ever noticing this in my Rift.
Headset manufacturers went to great length to reduce this, notably by never turning the pixels fully off. OLED pixels can go from gray-white (and vice versa) much faster than going from off to any color. So the pixels are never fully shut off, to improve display latency. (This doesn't make a big difference on blacks; they're still far deeper than LCD.)
Also, OLED pixels are quite variable, so on all OLED headsets I'm aware of, mura correction is used, which essentially uses a pre-calibrated image to "offset" the natural variance in the pixels. If you turn this off, you get better blacks at the expense of everything looking a bit noisy.
Huh, interesting! Yeah, I knew about OLED ghosting because I've seen it on phone screens and have seen apps that have OLED-specific "true black" dark modes implement workarounds to reduce it, but hadn't really thought about why I wasn't seeing it on my Rift. I do recall noticing that the displays did still seem to be lit up a little bit even in what was supposed to be complete darkness, but I never really thought about why that might be.