You can count the GPU teraflops, the pixel-pushing power and the platform exclusives all you want, but for developers to fully display the potential a new milestone gaming hardware device offers, that elusive ‘killer app’ is still paramount to success.
It’s a conundrum both Sony and Microsoft are facing with their PS4 Pro and Xbox One X consoles respectively – each mighty gaming machines, but (thanks in part to a commitment to supporting older console revisions) each not doing much beyond resolution bumps to set them apart from their forefathers.
Nintendo is actually very adept at pulling this feat off. Wii Sports perfectly illustrated the potential magic of the Wii’s motion controls. There was arguably an even greater revolution with the N64 and Super Mario 64 – its 3D worlds were so perfectly realised, its control scheme so perfectly executed, that it caused a sea change. There was no turning back.
Now, just over a year after the Oculus Rift’s consumer headset released, virtual reality has its Super Mario 64 moment, and its name is Lone Echo.
The zero-G dream
Oculus Rift exclusive Lone Echo is not the first VR game to put you in space – a number of spaceship fighter sims have already attempted it, as did the stomach-turning space disaster astronaut adventure Adrift.
But Lone Echo is the first one to get it so very right. So right, in fact, that my memories of playing it are not so much of me settling down to play a game, but more akin to ‘real’ memories that I have of moments out in the physical world.
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Source: TechRadar