First of all, it pains me to say this because one of my favourite games of all time – Elite Dangerous – is also arguably the greatest showcase for Virtual Reality.
But it’s also a game which naturally fell into VR, because cockpit-based sim games are very well suited to it.
And, of course, it’s a game that came into being before VR was truly widespread but, wisely, pivoted to support it.
The new Lone Echo on Oculus Rift, however, is built from the ground up for VR. Bloody hell, doesn’t it just show it.
So before I get onto the game, let’s talk about the people who made it. Ready At Dawn are the studio behind it and, frankly, that’s quite shocking. Here’s why:
They’re best known for some PSP ports of God of War games, the lacklustre Playstation 4 release 1886: The Order and something I’ve literally never heard of on the Wii.
All that said, however, they have knocked it out of the fucking park for Lone Echo. It’s built from the ground up to be a VR game and they cracked the most difficult thing – locomotion.
Not only that, but they’ve made it so good that they’ve built an entire game around it.
Until now, most virtual reality games were wave shooters. You stood still, shot stuff, teleported or walked with slightly nausea-inducing feelings and moved around.
Lone Echo lets you do whatever you want. It’s a zero-gravity space game, which is astonishingly well suited to the hand controls of the Rift or HTC Vive (more on that later).
To start with, you can grip onto any solid surface (whether fixed to something or free-floating) and crawl along it, or throw yourself from item to item.
It’s so good it doesn’t take any getting used to. You just… instinctively know how to do it. What’s more, you do things without thinking. Want to grab two crates and use them as oars, to scuttle through a cargo bay? You can, and you do it because that’s what you’d do in real life.
You can also throw them mid-flight to change your trajectory, in accordance with Newton’s Laws. Which is always nice.
Ready at Dawn also created some amazing algorithms that let your robotic hands grab any surface properly, and from the rotation of your hands, they can flawlessly work out how your elbows, arms and shoulders would be, too.
Again it just works. I’ve never felt more ‘in the game’ than when playing Lone Echo. When you remember the game, you don’t remember being in a living room strapped into a headset, you remember being a robot in the rings of Saturn.
With the movement and interaction so beautifully handled, the game gives you licence to experience a very natural storytelling path and get lost in the moment.
So, that’s all I’m going to say. The reason the game is so bloody good is that they’ve cracked it – you don’t feel like you’re playing a game. Also there’s aliens and stuff.
Oh, if you’re a bit savvy, you can get it running on a HTC Vive using the ReVive app with the latest update, rather than buy a Rift for the exclusive. That’s what I did and it’s amazing.
It’s available for £30, go and buy it here. www.loneecho.com.
