I should have learned to not get my hopes up by now but, as a huge fan of Sony’s PSVR2, it’s hard not to get excited when a State of Play featuring new PSVR2 games is announced. Now, I’m not naive enough to believe that Half Life: Alyx is ever going to come to the headset (even though I desperately want it to) but, when one of my favourite VR games ever is the PSVR1 exclusive, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, I think it’s fair to hold out hope for an Astro Bot Rescue Mission 2 for the PSVR2. (I mean, I’d even take backwards compatibility for the original Astro Bot Rescue Mission at this point!)
That’s why yesterday’s announcement of Astro Bot was so bittersweet for me. Like everyone, I’m pumped for a new Astro Bot game, they’re such joyful, heart-warming and uplifting games – and on top of that this new one looks a bit like a StarFox x Mario Mash-up. “How can that not be a Game of the Year contender?!” I thought, as I watched the reveal. But then, as the trailer passed the one minute mark without showing footage of anything that looked like VR gameplay, my heart started to sink. That sunken heart then broke completely in two when, at the very end of the trailer, big bold words saying “COMING TO PS5” appeared. So no PSVR2 support at all?! For a character that technically only became big thanks to Astro Bot Rescue Mission on PSVR1? What gives?
To add extra salt to the wound, as I was scouring the trailer for potential PSVR2 clues (just in case, you never know, etc…), I noticed that there is a bit in the trailer during the casino world section, where Astro Bot wearing a VR headset. The only trouble is… ! Sorry for shouting there – but, come on. How can Sony and PlayStation expect its fan base to stay excited about the future of the PSVR2 if its main mascot won’t even wear one?
I’m not one of those people who thinks that the PSVR2 has no games by the way. It has loads of them – and plenty of those are really, really great games, too – but, off the top of my head, I can only count two first party PSVR2 releases from Sony since the headset came out last year. Horizon: Call of the Mountain and Gran Turismo 7, while the Sony-published Firewall Ultra, a game which launched in a less than ideal state, caused its developers, First Contact Entertainment to completely shut down soon after citing a lack of VR support. Hell, Sony even closed its London Studios earlier this month, so that’s any hope for Blood and Truth 2 down the apples and pears.