Time for some VR goodness!
Day Three of the Electronics and Entertainment Expo started with an appointment with Pico Interactive. Their philosophy is to keep the consumer in mind. They wanted to create a portable, cheap, VR experience that everyone could enjoy. In the past they knocked it out of the park with the Pico Neo and this year, they did the same thing with the Pico Goblin. It really does give you the “freedom to play!”
The Pico Goblin is a simple, comfortable VR headset that will allow people to play VR games wherever they want. It will also allow access to VR apps and videos in the same manner. The headset isn’t too heavy and it is very simple to adjust on your head. The controller is lightweight and simple to use. A simple comparison for this controller is to a Wii Remote since it does similar functions and is a similar shape. There will be five games for free built into the Goblin at purchase. Let’s get into the games that were shown off during E3 2017 at the Pico booth!
I was able to put three games through their paces during my appointment and all three were pretty fun games. The first one was called Defender. The premise is simple for Defender; you are tasked with defending yourself from the oncoming invasion of skeleton warriors that are coming for you. You have two options to defend yourself, long-range attacks and short-range attacks. The long-range attacks in the demo start out in the form of a small cross bow and the more you “level” it up, the better it becomes. The short-range attacks were a sword and then it changed to a spear. It didn’t matter what I was using, all I wanted to do was kill these skeleton monsters. Motion controls to swing your weapon, like a Wii Remote, and button pushing to use the long-range attacks. One minor issue I had with the controls was when I was trying to change from long-range to short-range and vice versa. You swiped on the circle pad on the remote to perform this action but it wasn’t as responsive as it should have been. I made the adjustment in gameplay for it and defeated all the monsters but I wouldn’t expect something like this in the final version.
Next up was another motion control game called Elfen Snowstorm. This time around you were tasked with protecting your area from these punk elves who weren’t full of Christmas joy. They were coming out of Santa’s workshop and throwing snowballs at you. Interesting control scheme for this game where you had to lineup the cross hairs for aiming with your head and then use the remote to throw. At times, it didn’t receive my command to throw but when I put some muscle behind it, I was knocking these elves down like nothing. When the game upped the difficulty and brought out the elves with shield-looking blockers, it was tough to hit them and defeat them. They were moving faster than the regular elves too so there was that added challenge too.
Lastly, I played a horror game called Voice Room that was pretty spooky. You start out in the middle of the room with nothing but your trusty remote, I mean flashlight. You see a doll on the chair and if horror movies have taught me anything, dolls are evil. You survey the room and you can see blood on the walls and the doll moves from the chair. Next thing you know the TV turns on and snowy channels are on the screen. You look back to the couch and the doll is over there now. How did the doll get there? Start to look back to the chair and then, well I’m not going to ruin it for you. You’ll have to play the game and find out what happens next!
These were three games that I played during E3 on the Pico Goblin. There will be plenty more but it looks like the Pico Goblin is off to a good start. If the headset doesn’t make me feel lightheaded/ill, it’s a winner all the way in my book!