Major Update for Blade and Sorcery whilst First Person Tennis Simulator leaves early access and gets a full release, complete with added multiplayer support
April saw significant updates and developments to two great fitness-oriented titles, both worth checking out, let’s dive in.
Needing no introduction Blade and Sorcery became a smash hit over the festive period and is still sitting near the top of the sales charts well into the spring. This ultraviolent hack and slash with stunningly realistic physics satiates bloodthirsty VR fan’s murderous desires to thrust swords, pierce sides and ragdoll deserving warrior scum into gruesome and bloody deaths. The game was lauded for its realistic swordplay and combat but gamers weren’t content with merely slaughtering virtual enemies, they wanted to dismember and decapitate them too! Well, developer Warpfrog has listened to these frankly disturbing demands and released a major update that adds in not just beheadings but four more weapons and a whole extra game map, namely a canyon level which introduces verticality, with cliffs and a ravine, all to show off the fancy new experimental climbing mechanics.
Watch the trailer below, but be warned this game is violent. You’ll feel like you’ve spent a day in the life of Arya Stark or the Mountain, but if you can handle the blood it’s tremendously good fun.
Also exciting is this game’s release on the Oculus Store, where previously it was only available on Steam. It’s nice to see Oculus’ reputation for selling only standing, forward facing experiences finally being dispelled for good with full 360-degree room scale titles like this and Thrill of the Fight both now available to buy directly from the Oculus Store. If you do still have an original Oculus Rift with just two sensors check out my article from last year on buying a third sensor and creating a room scale setup. Of course, the newly released Oculus Rift S features full room scale out of the box and should work perfectly for this and all room scale titles.
I gave the game a full review in February. Full details of the update and all it covers can be found on Steam here, and if you want to improve at the game check out Richard Bashura’s game guide.
If you haven’t yet tried the game I can highly recommend it. Youtuber The Baron did an in-depth playtest of the new update which I’ll link to below.
Blade and Sorcery is available to buy on both the Oculus Store and Steam priced at $19.99 or £15.49
First Person Tennis Simulator gets multiplayer, and planned Quest launch!
First Person Tennis hasn’t quite achieved the popularity of Blade and Sorcery, but it’s a very solid virtual tennis experience, and if you’ve got the space to move around a bit, can be quite a workout. I greatly enjoyed the title when I reviewed it last year when it was still an early access title.
Well, April 2019 saw the title come out of EA and get its full release. More importantly, it saw the inclusion of the much anticipated multiplayer feature. That’s right you can now play against your friends online.
I spoke with the game’s developer Mikori games and asked them for a little background on how the multiplayer works, and any further plans for the First Person Tennis game.
They told me that the multiplayer supports crossplay, so if you own the game on the Oculus Store and have a friend who owns it on Steam, you can play together which is great. The game connects you to a Discord server where you can create a room and wait for somebody to enter it, or invite a friend. You can choose to play against each other in either arcade or full simulation modes, which is excellent news as it will cater to both casual incompetents such as myself and the hardcore with real tennis experience. Teleportation is disabled in multiplayer, which makes sense as it would be hard to imagine playing against an opponent who could in an instant move from the baseline to the net!
I was keen to ask Mikori Games if they had any further plans and they surprised me by saying their current goal is transferring the game to Oculus Quest. They are currently working on a timeline of around 5 to 6 months for this and then hope to port to PlayStation VR too. I think the option of playing this without wires on the Quest is a tremendously exciting one and would be worth the inevitable drop in visual quality, as in active games, freedom of movement matters more than graphical fidelity so this is definitely something to look out for, hopefully before the end of the year.
For more information check out my original review on this game or watch below for a brief video review from Youtuber Tekdad.
First Person Tennis Simulator is available to buy on both the Oculus Store and Steam, priced $24.99 or £19.49
