VR Battle Arena

After our end of semester faculty dinner, I went with three of my coworkers to play a VR FPS game called Battle Arena.

You get an Oculus Rift type headset, two pistols, and a circle to stand on. You teleport around the arena by aiming a gun at a platform and holding the trigger down for a second or two. You shoot by pointing the gun and shooting. Better weapons occasionally spawn in certain squares.

Other than the fact that teleporting from space to space is the only way to move (and options are limited), it's a lot like Quake or a similar FPS game (yes, I'm probably dating myself using Quake as my frame-of-reference game here...I don't play many video games anymore).

There were a few technical difficulties. My headset kept slipping, which made the screen blurry and I had to adjust with one hand (so stop shooting/moving). One of the other guys had trouble entering the game, so the second time the operator had to stop us and restart it so he could get in. Despite that, we played two games and had a lot of fun.

I ended up getting second place in the first match, third place in the second. Not bad for my first time playing, I think. The coworker whose idea it was to go there won both times, as he's played it quite a bit. When my son gets back to Korea, I want to take him there. I think he'll dig it.

There was another cooperative zombie killing game, but it was only a 2 player game and since there were 4 of us we didn't play it. Maybe next time.

And I can't wait for the fantasy adventure VR/AR games that are sure to come out in the near future! A cooperative dungeon crawl game with swords and wands of fireballs would be a lot of fun!