Explaining VR is impossible. you have to use it Valve and HTC recently showed a collection of games coming to the Vive virtual reality platform to the press, and the platform has an impressive collection of games on the way.
The press and developers gathered near the end of the event to talk about their enthusiasm for the hardware, and even people who seemed skeptical at the beginning of the event were impressed by what they had played.
Reading my own coverage of the event, however, I asked myself how many of these games would interest me had I not played them myself. The regrettable answer? Not many. It’s hard to explain why playing mini-golf in virtual reality is so much fun without actually doing so. Many of these games are based on simple ideas that become magical when paired with the Vive, but it’s tricky to explain that to people who have yet to try any modern virtual reality, much less the Vive itself.
“You sound like a crazy person when you try to explain VR to someone who has never tried it," Job Simulator developer Alex Schwartz explained. "I used to say it’s like strapping the Narnia closet to your face."
"When I explain Tilt Brush to people I use my hands a lot and I say you are using the controller and you’re painting like this across the sky," Google’s Patrick Hackett told me, gesturing expansive over his head. I had asked him to try to sell my readers on both the Tilt Brush painting program and the Vive itself. He was skeptical he could do so.

"They say OK, but I tell them no, it exists and you can walk around it, and occasionally people are like ‘Wow, that’s neat,’ but it still takes using it," he continued. People are naturally skeptical when you try to describe the act of drawing in the air using a virtual reality platform before walking around your creation. "You just have to try it," he repeated.
Joel Green is the producer and audio director The Gallery, a virtual reality adventure game. He said it would have been impossible to make the game without virtual reality. The ability to physically get lost inside the environments and directly interact with the objects in the world isn’t a bonus, it’s the entire point of the experience.
"We could have made some kind of version of it, for sure," he said. "But in terms of what’s in the heart of the game, the idea of letting the player have an adventure in another world in a way they’ve never been able to do before, and really be in another place? That part couldn’t be done with a screen."
It’s not about solving puzzles, although that’s a part of it. It’s about the act of literally going somewhere else. "We want people to come home, get the headset, and go to another world," he explained. "That’s what we’re trying to give them."
But that’s hard to sell via text or even video, and that’s a major problem with technology that’s going require a high-end PC and a significant amount of space, and that’s before you factor in the cost of the Vive itself. So how do you sell someone on taking the jump?
Almost every developer I spoke to was honest about the fact you can’t. "I think most people are going to get into it by seeing other people playing it, and seeing them enjoy it, so I think that’s the way to go," Joachim Holmér, founder of Budget Cuts developer Neat Corporation told Polygon. "It’s very hard to just convince someone by words how it works. That would be my suggestion, get people to find friends who have VR and try it out."
You sound like a crazy person when you try to explain VR to someone who has never tried it
That act of inviting people over to try VR if you buy the hardware is something many developers are including, and social VR is already taking off in the development community and among those with dev kits.
"I focused on how to play with multiple people in the room," Dylan Fitterer, developer of Audio Surf and Audio Shield, said. "I picture people buying this and showing their friends so you want to have a party mode or a hot seat way to enable party competitions." But trying to explain the experience has proven impossible for him.
"It’s one of the really difficult things right now," he said. "And the best way is, of course, to try it. So hopefully you can find somewhere to go ahead and play it."
No one has a good answer for how more people are going to try the technology, outside of the early adopters inviting friends and family over for demos and gaming. Until that happens, however? Convincing people who have yet to try the technology that it’s as good as it is remains an impossible challenge.

Throw yourself a Mario Party-themed birthday party at the arcade Mario Party is heading to Japanese arcades this summer, and Capcom is hosting. The developer launched a website for Mario Party: Mysterious Challenge World today, which will make its official debut at the Japanese Amusement Expo on Feb. 19.
Mario Party’s arcade iteration will allow six friends or strangers to become sworn enemies across a set of minigames. It will also feature boss events and the option to play as a variety of Mario characters, similar to its console counterpart.
The key difference with the arcade version is its housing: Capcom has conceived of a circular, roulette table-style set-up, with six touch panel-bearing cabinets convening around a projector.
More will be detailed later this month, including a firm release date for Mysterious Challenge World. No Western launch is said to be in the works yet, however; Mario Party fans must stick to Mario Party 10 on Wii U for now, a game we had some fun with back in 2015.
While this is Mario Party’s debut romp in the arcade, Mario himself is familiar with the space; Mario Bros. started out as an arcade game, and other spinoff franchises like Mario Kart have also received dedicated cabinets. Namco’s Mario Kart Arcade GP DX even made it into venues overseas in 2013.

The CW star drops by CBS The Flash will make an appearance in an upcoming episode of Supergirl, CBS announced today. Grant Gustin, who plays Barry Allen and his titular alter ego, will appear on a March 28 episode of CBS’ series, but the network neglected to elaborate on further plot details.
The Flash airs on The CW, alongside other DC Comics series such as Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow. Supergirl is CBS’ lone superhero-centric program, although the two shows — along with Arrow, which had a crossover with The Flash of its own in December — share executive producers.
We recap both The Flash and Supergirl weekly. Supergirl aired its latest episode Monday, while The Flash runs new episodes every Tuesday.

EVE’s PS3 FPS goes dark on May 30 Dust 514 will bite the dust on May 30.
Servers for the free-to-play shooter spun off of the EVE Online continuity will close down after three years in play, developer and publisher CCP games announced today. That’s because a development team has been working on another prototype FPS for the PC “using Unreal Engine 4 while harnessing all our learnings from Dust 514."
CCP said it would give an update on this new project on April 21 at an EVE Online fan convention.
"We consider Dust 514 one of the best free-to-play offerings on the platform, but the years have caught up with us," CCP wrote. The shutdown means that a planned 1.3 update to the game will not be released. Players may still play for free until then, but all premium items have been removed for sale. Those who have in-game currency remaining will still be able to use it until the shutdown date.
Dust 514 was a PlayStation 3 exclusive that launched in 2013, and events in it had influence in the larger world of EVE Online.

Get ready for your fingers to bleed all over again Activision launched a special event in Guitar Hero Live today, and with it comes the return of the franchise’s most notorious track: “Through the Fire and the Flames" by Dragonforce. From now until Feb. 8 at 7 a.m. PT, players can check out the Shred-a-Thon channel on Guitar Hero TV, Live’s online streaming mode, to play five intense songs on a constant loop.
The most familiar of these tracks —€” which include songs by Lamb of God and Megadeth — is "Through the Fire and the Flames." After its introduction to the series in Guitar Hero 3, the song quickly gained notoriety as Guitar Hero’s most intense track.
"Through the Fire and the Flames" became a mainstay on YouTube at the height of Guitar Hero’s populartiy, as players uploaded clips of themselves surviving the nearly 8-minute song; you can check one of YouTube’s most viewed (and not work-safe) videos in that genre below.

"Through the Fire and the Flames" even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2009, after one dedicated guitarist played a near-perfect rendition of the song to the tune of 973,954 points. In his journey to the record books, the Guitar Hero fan claimed to have broken 80 plastic controllers while attempting to conquer the song.
Currently, "Through the Fire and the Flames" and the other Shred-a-Thon tracks are only available to play on Guitar Hero TV. Following the event’s conclusion, however, the Dragonforce song will be available as part of the regular Guitar Hero Live game.
Guitar Hero Live is out on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Wii U. A version of the game is also available for iOS platforms. For more on the game and its TV mode, check out our review.

A little earlier than ‘mid-February’ The closed beta for Overwatch will re-open Feb. 9, Blizzard announced today on the Battle.net blog. The beta, which was taken offline in December, was recently bumped from January to a “mid-February" return date.
When it comes back, the build will sport two new maps, a new game mode, a new progression system as well as updates to both private games and character balancing. Blizzard noted that these were key areas it would tweak during the beta’s downtime back in December.
Players can continue to sign up for the Overwatch beta, and those who participated in it previously will again have access. The full game will be available to PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One owners later this spring, and will have additional content offered to players for free post-launch.

There’s almost too much desert in Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. But there’s also not nearly enough.

For a real-time strategy game series that utilized outer space as its core environment for a decade, it’s weird to open Deserts of Kharak’s campaign for the first time and realize just how much sand you’re going to have to drive through in this Homeworld prequel. The opening narration even emphasizes it. “Our planet is dying," says protagonist Rachel S’jet, who adds that "the desert grows with every passing year."
The characters are motivated only by survival, searching for an "anomaly" that they say will save them from the growing starvation and dehydration that are hurting the population. Their vehicles are land rovers of various sizes, their abilities limited to smoke screens and long-range launchers. It’s so simple and straightforward that the only jarring element seems to be this endless desert.
it’s weird to open Deserts of Kharak and realize just how much sand you’re going to drive through

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But the drastic change in this setting makes sense, not only in terms of the narrative, but also as a way to reboot a franchise whose first installment dates back to 1999 and has been stagnant for years. The history of the Homeworld name is complicated, with the licensing changing hands multiple times before landing with Gearbox in 2013. Besides a re-release of the first two games, there hasn’t been much anchoring the franchise in the public consciousness. Luckily for fans and the uninitiated, the game that would eventually become Deserts of Kharak bridges that gap in time.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is a prequel, but also exists as a stand-alone title. Thanks to a streamlined story and a beautiful, hand-drawn style that emphasizes the emptiness of sand and dust, I never felt at a loss as someone who never played much of the original Homeworld games.
The game is filled with Easter eggs and references that connect the two sides together. For example, main character Rachel S’jet is an ancestor to Karan S’jet, who leads Homeworld 1 and 2. But this mostly serves as a link rather than an important plot point; you don’t need to know future events to understand the story beats. You just need to learn how to drive the Kapisi — a giant production facility that also doubles as a self-sufficient aircraft carrier and battle fortress — and how to strategize your units.

Deserts of Kharak never feels too static despite taking place over one long road trip through the desert where you fight the same enemies, the Gaalesian, again and again. Each level requires its own strategy and multiple steps to clear each objective, and the game drops hints and slowly reveals techniques and systems over time. As the team discovers more technology as they move across the desert, more vehicles and upgrades are unlocked.
I suspect that this could get tedious for more advanced players, but even newer players may find some monotony as well. The Kapisi crawls across the dunes, and the expanse of the maps means your small assault vehicles will take their time getting to an area, but this becomes more manageable as the style of play becomes more familiar.

With just 13 missions that take anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour each (depending on your skill level), the story is brief, although not necessarily lacking. Developer Blackbird Interactive keeps plot on the outskirts of each campaign, allowing dialogue, lore and character moments to book-end battles.
For example, Rachel S’jet is a prime member of your team, and her motivations move the story forward without too many bumps. But there’s not too much to Rachel as a character that is complex or interesting, While her determination allows her to lead a team, it also gets her into situations that make you question whether you should let her out of the Kapisi at all.
More intriguing are the Gaalesians, a desert race that look upon Rachel and her companions’ need to reach space as heresy. The details in their compounds and their clothing, which seem reminiscent of a previously nomadic lifestyle, are more impressive than their place in Deserts of Kharak’s story, where they mainly function as a barrier to the Coalition.

for the most part multiplayer is more of the same

For Deserts of Kharak, it feels like the destination is more important than the journey. The story is secondary to Blackbird’s need to get the Coalition to space in time for the events of the original Homeworld. The "anomaly" Rachel and the others are searching for is ill-defined for most of the game — how do they know it’ll change everything? Why doesn’t the Coalition try and work with the Gaalesian for survival tips? Who knows?
Once you’re done with the story, there’s multiplayer, assuming you have more luck than I did in finding a game. The lobby was usually dead, with a game popping up on the public games list and disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared. Matchmaking was just as useless, timing out before matches could be made.
Once I found a game, there wasn’t much to explore. The campaign does plenty with its desert format, but Deserts of Kharak’s multiplayer offers only five maps — and each map has a particular player limit that only serves to lessen the kinds of matches available. There are a few options in the menu that can change up each round, such as including extra objectives, but for the most part it’s more of the same.

The two are producing their own Mr. Robot-type show Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are about to venture into television once again following a series order from SyFy for their new show, Incorporated.
The series, which is described by the network as a “futuristic thriller," follows young executive Ben Larson as he masks his identity in an attempt to infiltrate one of the biggest corporations in the world and save the woman he loves.
The show stars Sean Teale (Reign) as Larson, and will also include the acting talents of Eddie Ramos (Teen Wolf), Dennis Haysbert (24) and Julia Ormond (Mad Men). Affleck and Damon will act as executive producers on the show, which will be run by Ted Humphrey (The Good Wife).
Incorporated is the latest to join SyFy’s recently rebranded slate of programs, including The Magicians, The Expanse and Brave New World.
Dave Howe, president of SyFy and Chiller, said that Incorporated was the type of science-fiction that "holds up a mirror to the world" and "challenges the notions of the world we live in today."
If it sounds like the type of genre programming made popular by shows like Mr. Robot, that’s exactly what it is. Networks like SyFy have seen what USA accomplished with the type of dark, off-kilter dramas they’re producing and are jumping on board.
Incorporated will air later this fall.

Thank the Force he didn’t, too The editors of Star Wars: The Force Awakens have admitted to being tempted by the side of the Force that involves pointlessly jarring cameos of old characters. In the end, however, they opted against one for Yoda.
Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey told Entertainment Tonight they were all set to do it, too. Frank Oz, Yoda’s voice (and puppeteer, on the occasions Yoda has been a puppet) “came in for a day and did a whole bunch of Yoda," Brandon said. He was happy and they were happy and that was that.
Then the two editors went back on it, tossing whatever Yoda material they had. Oz’s voice is still part of the much-talked-about montage when Rey has her Force vision, but no Yoda.
Yoda, of course, croaked in Return of the Jedi, whose events are set about 20 years before those of The Force Awakens. Nothing precludes him from reappearing as a blue-haloed Force ghost or in some other form, corporeal or otherwise, but considering how much The Force Awakens drew on content and themes from the original trilogy, probably best to let sleeping 900-year-old Jedi Masters lie.

The Vive wants you to walk in VR, and devs say the cable won’t hold you back There is a cable that connects the Vive virtual reality headset to the computer. When you’re walking around your room-scale VR experience, or even just standing in front of your system, you can feel it. It’s always there, and during my time with the Vive’s games at the recent developer showcase I often felt that I was going to trip over it, or perhaps pull a computer off the shelf.
But the developers working with the technology say I’ll get over it.
“The things people expect to have problems with aren’t problems for those who have been spending significant time with the hardware," Alex Schwartz, CEO of Owlchemy Labs, the developer behind Job Simulator told us. "Some devs have thousands of hours in VR. It’s not something that’s actually posed a problem after giving hundreds of demos."
"This isn’t just marketing, but I honestly find that there’s kind of a sixth sense you develop over time, to the point where anybody who is using the Vive regularly doesn’t even think about it," Joel Green, producer and audio director of the upcoming VR game The Gallery told Polygon. "Developers don’t really talk about the cable being an issue anymore, that I’ve heard. Because of the way it falls down the headset and you feel it on your body occasionally, you just kind of learn where it is and now it’s not an issue. I don’t think it takes too long for that to happen."
That thought was repeated multiple times when I asked about the cable.
"The cable itself becomes a little more natural once you’re in the game, you find yourself kind of flipping it with your leg and with your foot," Alex Knoll, the lead designer on Hover Junkers said. "To us the cable just becomes natural, like a natural extension of yourself. We don’t really find big problems with it."
It just takes a bit of time.
"We found that players who have spent some time in the Vive or people who have spent about 20-40 minutes playing in game are able to subconsciously manage the cable without any problem, either by moving in ways that wont tangle it or by kicking it out of the way without thinking about it," Knoll continued. "Many of the experiences have players turn around frequently and all developers have reported the same findings: the cable is just something you deal with, its never a real hindrance."
So don’t worry! According to the developers spending the most time in VR, you get used to it. And apparently it’s a fast process. "At the content showcase we demo’d for the three days to over 50 people and even to some people who have never set foot in VR before," Knoll said. "We didn’t jockey the cable for anyone and there were no problems."