Hands-On Experience of Silver Phantom – Promises of Immersion Dulled by Restrictive Gameplay

Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Ghost It's a new kind of VR movie hybrid for the Quest; It calls itself an 'interactive anime', combining the real-time rendered narrative of a movie with sprinkles of first-person gameplay. It sounds really great on paper, essentially giving you two ways to step into your favorite anime universe and experience it in all its Shonen glory. But in practice it's entirely a guessing game as to when you can have fun and when you're expected to sit back and live your new life as a camera-person-chimera.

Silver Ghost, Listing you as the hero of this beloved mecha-filled world, this game will no doubt tickle the fancy of hardcore Gundam fans because, well, this Gundam, but most others will probably be left scratching their heads. Including me.

But not for its characteristically heavy dose of exposition or overt display of Japanese social mores on full display – I'm a dusty old anime fan myself – but because it combines all the milder ills of VR filmmaking, with some moments of great value entertainment.

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Inside Silver Ghost In its quest to offer both embodiment and immersion – slightly different concepts – it manages to clumsily do both at the same time. The narrative richness and visual flash of the film completely surround you (immersion), but it's significantly hampered by too much reliance on replicating traditional shot composition in VR, which is a shame because everything is visible Perfect, from the characters' expressions to the full-blown mecha action taking place in space.

While the messiness of the first-person game mechanics is intended to make you feel like you're actually there and having an impact (apparation) on the environment, these moments are scattered at seemingly random intervals, leaving you constantly questioning. From where You're unceremoniously dropped back into the first-person perspective to engage in one-off tasks – essentially, you feel like the little sibling who's only allowed to play with an unplugged controller when gaming. real The action is going on around you, you never know when your big brother will give in and let you press a few coin buttons..

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I admire the three developers (Bandai Namco Filmworks, Atlas V, Albyon) for taking the risk of developing the two-hour narrative, even though it doesn't feel like it. future To me, this isn't an example of cinematic VR, but rather something that repeats the same mistakes that the first 360 filmmakers have made since enterprise-level VR cameras took off in the mid-2010s.

Switching cameras too often is jarring, and treating your head like it's exploding is either something you don't really care about or fierce hatred. Either way, this comes at the expense of embodiment, as you never know when your perspective will change and whether you'll be able to return to your body for brief moments of action.

And (the rant continues) instead of letting the scenes breathe and drawing the user's attention to a particular action, you're basically encouraged to keep your head still; This is made worse by the fact that the frame rate is quite high, making subtitles difficult to read. Of course, you can experience it with English audio and no subtitles, but that means little for those who want to experience Japanese with English subtitles (superlative signature appearance). If neither of them is your native language, it will be a little difficult to get used to it.

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By the time the end credits roll, Silver Phantom's replay value comes in the form of an optional mixed reality wave shooter that's stylistically similar to Valve's 'Xortex 26XX' minigame. Laboratory (2016). You'd never want to have rows of toy-sized Gundams in your own living room. Negative It made me feel like a kid again, a little bit scorned for not having more fun at the main event.

There's also a cool MR gallery that lets you get up close and personal with a handful of mecha that fans should definitely appreciate.

In the end, you can pay $16 for a much worse cinema experience, so whatever you do, take it. It's a polished, sometimes entertaining experience that Gundam fans will probably enjoy, which is great. But not for me.

In the meantime you can get Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Ghost Available in the Horizon Store for Quest 2, 3 and 3S.

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