Playing in VR doesn’t rob you of the joys of local multiplayer as much as you might suspect, but that original option is still always going to be there. Perhaps that’s what’s key to Gang Beasts’ VR support: it’s additive. The developer rightly notes that there are going to be times players just don’t want to put the headset on, and it’s crucial that they’re getting the same experience when they don’t. Importantly, Brown doesn’t want VR support to dominate Gang Beasts with its release, which is likely to reach the Early Access version before Oculus Home. As anyone that’s beaten up #SelfieTennis’ deformed tennis men will know, maybe that’s not something you want to experience. In fact, Boneloaf tested such an experience in which one player stepped into the shoes of their fighter, but came away comparing the experience to Saving Private Ryan. What you probably won’t see, though, is a first-person mode. Brown and Thomas talk of experiments with letting unskilled players join in by altering the environment. That’s not to say the developer isn’t testing deeper waters. The developer wants to keep things fair, which means that modes like local multiplayer in which only one player uses the Rift/PSVR might not make it in, though they are being experimented with. “We’re just trying to work through that process and trying to merge the various different builds and projects for the game together so that we end up with a very consistent experience between online and local,” Brown tells me. VR is changing Gang Beasts in unanticipated ways, then, but Boneloaf wants to keep the experience consistent. A punch-up on moving trucks used to be decided at random as signs appeared from nowhere to knock you away, but now you can look to the right to give yourself ample warning and move aside.
A mad scramble on train tracks becomes even more desperate when you’re hurriedly looking back and forth for signs of a train. That also brings some new dynamics to the experience, as you can check for incoming danger. Here, though, you can lean into the action and frame a shot how you want it. Simply put, the isolation of VR isn’t affecting any of the sheer fun we’re having. Moments later, I’m getting a taste of my own medicine as I’m hastily picked up and carelessly tossed off of the map, and I exchange the same cry of failure while another laugh picks up. I hear a anguished “No!” as the red player sinks into a pair of rotating meat grinders and I laugh. I can’t help grinning like an idiot as I barge into one player and send him stumbling into the jaws of death in the meat factory level. It’s still a somewhat disturbing joy to latch your arm onto an enemy, lift them high and drag them over a barrier as they kick and squirm, then mercilessly let go and watch them fall.
You can imagine the laughs and cries of panic that surround you instead being shouted down the built-in microphone when online, and the isolation that VR provides doesn’t drown them out in any way. Four players sat together over a local connection, but when you strap on the Oculus Rift you might as well be by yourself. The online functionality was simulated in a way at this year’s EGX Rezzed in London. Maybe it will come’.” That mode has finally arrived and fans have VR to thank for it. Online support wasn’t announced until after the VR version’s reveal at last year’s Oculus Connect, which led to an awkward period as the team’s Matt Thomas describes: “The whole time people were asking us about online we were like ‘Yeah, maybe. “So everyone put together that we would have to do that anyway.” “Without online in VR, it’s a very lonely game to play,” Boneloaf’s James Brown tells me. So why would you want to take part of that experience away and put on a VR headset? Well, for one thing, you still won’t be alone the inclusion of VR support has practically demanded the integration of online play, a long-requested feature. For now, that translates to a ‘diorama mode’ that keeps the same overhead camera position. Esper developer Coatsink is helping Boneloaf port it to both the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR. It’s like across between Super Smash Bros and River City Rampage.
Each player controls a stubby character that they’ll lead into battle, attempting to pick up opponents and throw them off of the sides of trucks and into meat grinders, and the last man standing wins.
For those that don’t know, Gang Beasts is multiplayer brawler played from an isometric view.
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