VR Ping Pong Review: No Table Needed But No Friends Allowed – UploadVR

Of all the sports that developers can shove the letters VR in front of or behind and quickly push out the door, ping pong seems the most susceptible. You just need a motion controller (or two) and youre pretty much good to go. No need to run around a pitch or cooperate with team members; its just you, your paddle, and your opponent.

With that in mind, it surprises me just how long its taken for a true ping pong game to appear on PlayStation VR (PSVR). But, four months on from launch, its finally arrived as a port of Reddolls VR Ping Pong, which initially launched last year on the HTC Vive. The results? Well, its ping pong in VR. It might not be the most ambitious use of the technology, but pulling on a headset certainly beats having to set up a giant table.

VR Ping Pong is one of those games that reminds you that the industry is in a similar phase to that which the wider gaming industry was going through around the time of the Nintendo Entertainment System. This isnt a flashy party game with power ups and special moves but something that wants to capture the nature of the sport as best as the technology can, like Nintendos Tennis or Baseball.

In both versions of the game, you use the headsets respective motion controllers to both wield your paddle and serve the ball, though this can also be done with just one controller if you so wish. Youre placed in a virtual stadium with a set of blocky characters seated and ready to applaud.

Playing against AI, I found VR Ping Pong to be pretty much as accurate and responsive a ping pong game as I, a sporadic player in real life, could ask for. After a while finding my feet (much of my time was spent in the games practice mode), I was able to competently return the ball with slight adjustments to the angle of the controller and force I was applying making a world of difference. In the heat of a match you can quick quickly forget about your real life surroundings and accept this virtual reality as the real one, so make sure you dont have anything placed nearby when playing.

Not every shot I hit went the way I thought it should, but the vast majority of mistakes and bugs came down to blips in my headsets tracking, which the game itself cant really be faulted for (although a foul system that detects irregular movement could certainly help).

What I do take issue with, however, is the lack of multiplayer. In 2017, releasing a ping pong game without even a basic online component really isnt acceptable, and it massively restricts the amount of value VR Ping Pong can offer. It single-handedly prevents this take on the sport being a definitive one for VR headsets; not allowing friends from all over the world to have a ping pong match as if they were in the same room is a missed opportunity. It could have been one of the better social experiences on PSVR.

There are, however, a decent batch of challenge modes that prove to be fun distractions from the main game. My favorite was a minigame in which pieces of the table that the ball bounced on would disappear, making matches progressively harder.

VR Ping Pong is a likable take on the popular sport thats held back by its lack of multiplayer. Theres only so much fun you can have with the AI matches and minigames and, once youve had it, theres little reason to stick around.

Tagged with: PlayStation VR, VR Ping Pong

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VR Ping Pong Review: No Table Needed But No Friends Allowed - UploadVR

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