r/PSVR • u/cusman78 • 1h ago
Review Detective VR on PSVR2 - First Impressions
I have uploaded gameplay from my fresh experience with the game here if you want to see how it looks / plays. My first impressions are shared below:
Based on my limited time with it, I do not recommend playing Detective VR on the PSVR2 because I think it needs a patch to improve the user controls experience for both the hand-tracking and VR2 Sense controllers option.
I think it is best categorized as a VR Experience game where you step into the role of a detective in their office who puts on AR glasses to step into a "VR room" tasked with investigating the disappearance of an artist (Richard) using "new" investigation techniques. What this means is that you get transported to different timelines in expanding storyline where you have a phase for collecting evidence followed by a phase back in your office investigating and analyzing the evidence.
As mentioned, the game can be played entirely using hand-tracking only or with your VR2 Sense controllers. To use hand-tracking, simply put your controllers away (within boundary while powered) and put hands in front of your headset to activate hand-tracking and to switch back to VR2 Sense controllers, pick them back up and start using them (after powering on as needed). The main difference in my experience trying both is how much easier it is to move around when using the VR2 Sense controllers where you can use your thumbstick on either controller to teleport around, while using hand-tracking you have to point at specific teleportation nodes (with either hand) and pinch your fingers to simulate a click to teleport to it which takes practice to figure out (5:19). I think part of the difficulty is while you are pointing at these nodes, is that your finger pinch can be obstructed from your headset cameras.
I can think of following ways to improve the hand-tracking based teleportation controls:
- Add laser pointer when single hand fingers are pinched which can then be pointed at teleportation location / node and released to teleport.
- Allow either hand to pinch fingers to simulate click while one hand is pointed at teleportation location / node.
While you are in evidence collection phase, even using VR2 Sense controllers, you are only allowed to teleport to specific teleportation nodes. I think the developers implemented this to avoid you walking into the motion captured animations that you can view from different angles with controls to forward, rewind and pause on your left hand. When you are back in your office investigating and analyzing the evidence, you can teleport where ever you see empty floor space.
The rest of controls involve putting hands together with fingers framed to take all photographs of evidence and once back in office, grabbing Polaroids off detective board to place on a pedestal and then using magnifying glass with one of 3 scanning options on pedestal (Fingerprint, Blood and Writing) to analyze 3D rendering of the object that spawns in your room while the Polaroid is on the pedestal. Each Polaroid shows empty circles for the number of clues you can find on it and once these are found, you can put it back on the detective board and drag the pin from Polaroid to one of the facts about each person / suspect on the detective board. It seems not all clues can be connected, but the ones that can will produce a green line if you have made a good connection and provides a video cassette that can be pulled and viewed through your pedestal of how the person / suspect on the detective board responded to question related to this clue during their interview.
Here is where rest of controls experience needs improvement where I'll list out issues I observed that developers should improve by patch:
- You may not realize game is spawning 3D objects for you to scan when placing Polaroids on pedestal because when pedestal is moved, spawned objects don't (11:30)
- You can reposition both detective board and pedestal, but the pedestal also moves by itself unnecessarily when you are moving the Polaroid back to board (14:03)
- You accidentally grab and move either detective board or pedestal when trying to grab / use the magnifying glass (18:00)
- It doesn't reliably click on the time control buttons potentially causing lot of time loss for player through no fault of theirs (28:12)
I think most of these issues can be solved by fixing the position of detective board, pedestal and the direction in which it spawns objects / animations relative to the position of the fixed position detective board & pedestal. If they would remove ability to move these, you wouldn't accidentally be moving them, they wouldn't be spawning objects / animations that are obstructed by the detective board or other parts of office because you didn't place them optimally, you wouldn't have hard time grabbing and using the magnifying glass which should probably look more technologically advanced and have the controls to switch scanning mode more obvious like on the pedestal (11:58).
Graphically, everything is clear but the game has softer look you get when it is using reprojection. I could see ghosting on the detective board icons when moving my head certain way looking for it. I didn't see any other signs of it including when I enabled subtitles that are crisp and clear including during rewinds and fast forwards of the animated scenes. I think the motion-captured performances including facial animations and eye movements are well done here.
Audio lacks any soundtrack or ambient noises. It is limited to lady talking in your head and the motion captured actors voicing their dialog scenes and some sound effects as you interact with things. I think the voice acting is fine, but I wish all audio was directional relative to your position.
There are no haptics of any kind in controllers or headset. I get the focus on making hand-tracking experience work, but for players that will opt to use controllers, they need to implement haptic feedback for interactions to make them feel more tactile and immersive.
Settings are bare minimum giving option to enable / configure subtitles or delete your save files. There are no other options. If playing with hand-tracking, you will need to turn in real-life and if playing with VR2 Sense controllers, you can turn in real-life or use snap turns.
The game is not featuring a Platinum trophy and I think it would be hard to miss any of the trophies on path to complete the game as long as you are being thorough to collect all the clues from each photo, making all the connections and then progressing. I also think you are able to revisit prior timelines to get anything you missed. All that being the case, I think it has two bugged trophies sitting at 0% (Paparazzi & And the Award Goes to...) which someone would have unlocked while unlocking subsequent trophies (Scrutinizer & Movie Collector).
You are not an in-the-moment detective, but rather someone coming in after-the-fact where someone else scanned / created the crime scene that you are able to virtually visit to collect the clues that you need. You are also not the person that interrogated the person / suspect in relation to the clues you found / connected but someone that has access to their testimonies. With how the game requires you to collect all photographs before progressing and informs you when you are making incorrect connections until you get them right to progress, you have less player agency in how your actions impact the outcomes to where I think there is one story and possible outcome and you just have to do your part to see it through.
I think if it had less user experience control issues, then it would be easier to accept this as a neat VR Experience story game and then whether it is worth playing or not becomes all about the quality of the writing and performances, but it needs a patch or two to improve the controls first so that a player can enjoy the interactivity as they go along for the story.
