Stephanie Bendixsen: Blood & Truth made me a VR gaming convert

We all know the limitations of VR — clunky wired headsets, control-sticks and motion sickness. But one game is so intensely stressful and thrilling it feels more real than anything you’ll have played before.

I have to be honest, I thought VR would be “over” by now.

Like 3D glasses at the movies, it tends to be a fad that enters the industry at various intervals promising an exciting new way to experience games.

Granted, with each new decade, advancements in video game hardware come forward in leaps and bounds; but the very nature of VR is to simulate reality, and that’s something we’re still very far from achieving.

Equal parts thrilling and terrifying, the VR I giddily hope we achieve within our lifetime is the all-encompassing, feels-like-you’re-there fully-immersive experience that we’ve dreamt about in sci-fi imaginings like Ready Player One and The Matrix.

Blood & Truth is an intensely stressful and terribly thrilling gaming experience.

I long for the day when I can “plug myself in”, feel the forest floor beneath my feet, the wind on my face and searing heat of dragon’s fire as I prepare for virtual battle. The terrifying part is there’s the very real possibility we’ll create worlds so much more appealing than our own — we’ll never want to leave.

But you can’t halt progress, so, hey — let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the meantime, we’re still faffing about with clunky wired headsets, control-sticks and cameras. So far, I just haven’t been sufficiently convinced.

The current problems facing VR are:

1. Space: Few of us have the luxury of clearing an entire room to flail-around in as we fight-off our enemies. As such many VR games are designed to be played seated, where your character moves about the old-fashioned way — with a controller. This brings us to the next problem.

2. Motion sickness: There is an absolute disconnect in the brain when your eyes perceive your own movement in a VR space, but your body isn’t moving along with it. This results in swells of nausea making the swift, agile movement we’ve come to know in traditional video games almost impossible in VR.

You’ll find yourself relying on your arms, head and torso to react to what’s happening around you.

The current working solution to this is a kind-of teleporting movement system. Rather than the shaky-cam feel of constant movement achieved from moving independently, your character can sort-of jump from point to point at a controlled speed — which doesn’t seem to trigger the same nauseating sensations.

So, we find ourselves seated, headset on and erratically teleporting around a virtual space — it’s hardly feeling like the “immersive experience” we’ve all been craving from a simulated environment.

So, I took VR for what it was, a gimmick, soon-to-be phased-out and revived again in another ten years.

And yet … there is a dogged commitment to VR from the industry this time that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Various iterations of headset designs keep coming, new games and new ways to play. New solutions to old problems.

This week, I got my hands on Blood & Truth, a first-person VR shooter by SIE London Studio for the PSVR.

Blood & Truth offers the immersion VR fans have been seeking.

It was born out of a heist demo created for the launch of PSVR 2016 — one of the more popular experiences, it evolved into a fully-fledged virtual cockney gangster fantasy.

After the obligatory waggling of my disembodied hands about, picking things up, throwing them at people and just generally being a knob — I set off into what quickly turned out to be a heart-pumping, action-packed adventure.

I admit, I was a little cocky going in — the game moves slowly as you get your head around what it means to actually do everything with your hands.

No longer is it “press A to reload” or “B to climb” — you’re using your hands to manually perform each and every task.

Holster and retrieve your gun, grab and reload clips, pick up and manoeuvre lockpicking tools — even climbing ladders is done by grabbing each rung, one-by-one.

At first I was worried it would start to feel tedious, but believe it or not, that “immersion” I’ve been banging-on about? I felt it.

The pressure as I fumbled with another clip in the middle of a gunfight, searching for cover and wildly swinging my head about as I scanned the room for new enemies.

It was intensely stressful and terribly thrilling.

The game doesn’t take itself too seriously.

You’ll find yourself fighting against your own limitations, and the game is naturally forgiving to allow for this physical adjustment.

Rather than the lightning-quick reflexes of moving your fingers mere centimetres to make things happen — you’re suddenly relying on your arms, head and torso to react to what’s happening around you.

The “reality” of that movement is decidedly less John Wick than I had envisioned for myself — and anticipating this, as a kindness the devs allow you to take a stupid amount of bullets without dying.

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As I blasted my way through each mission, I was clumsy and awkward but determined to get better, move faster — and gain a keener sense of my surroundings.

The best thing about Blood & Truth is it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

There is a tongue-in-cheek approach to mission design and storytelling, it isn’t afraid of cliches and does a great job of serving you a glorious, gangster fantasy that feels more real than anything you’ll have played prior — despite the fact that your hands are floating in the middle of virtually nowhere.

Dare I say it, I’m a convert.