VR fitness enthusiasts can rejoice this week as virtual reality’s most physically demanding, challenging, and downright awesome fitness title, Ian Fitz’s ‘The Thrill of the Fight’ has been approved by Oculus for release on its highly curated store.
If you’re new to VR and are unfamiliar with the game, The Thrill of the Fight is a hardcore boxing simulator with realistic fighting mechanics, a fully customizable set of options that allows for full 12 round fights and a scalable difficulty level that, at its hardest will basically require you to become as fit a professional fighter to be able to compete. So if you currently look like 2017 Tyson Fury and you want to lose 150 lbs to look like 2018 Tyson Fury then this is the game to get you there!
If you’ve played Creed on the Quest and were disappointed that it was a bit too arcadey, then TOTF fight is the game for you. No stamina bar, no punching too fast for your computer avatar to cope, in this game your own fitness is what keeps you going. It’s like torture, but in a good way, as you can see in the game’s trailer below.
Why the Quest version will be the definitive way to play The Thrill of the Fight
Over the last two years, TOTF has been my most played fitness title, and with over 100 hours of playtime logged so far, you could safely say it’s my favorite game. But there’s always been one annoying distraction that prevents total immersion into the experience, and that’s the damn PC headset cord. As this game is a full 360-degree room-scale (or is that ring scale?) experience the cord gets in my way more than in any other game. If I’m not tripping over it, I’m having to constantly remind myself which way I turned last time, so that I ensure I turn the other way next time to avoid twisting my cable too much. The wireless Quest version will completely do away with this and I am so damn happy about it.
Furthermore, this is one game that really requires a lot of space to enjoy fully so the ability to take the Quest anywhere means you’ll be able to play this where you have the most room to do so and are no longer forced to play where your computer is set up.
Ian does report that currently there are some tracking issues when putting up your guard (controllers close to the headset) but this problem was present on the Rift S also until a recent patch fix sorted that problem completely. Oculus has said they are working on a similar fix for Quest tracking and if their track record with software fixes for both the original Rift CV1 and the new Rift S are anything to go by then this is a problem they will likely drastically improve over time.
Official launch statement
As for details on the launch they are fairly scant so far with no official release date. Developer Ian Fitz announced the following on his Steam page;
‘.Hello, everyone! I’m thrilled to announce that Oculus has accepted my concept pitch for putting The Thrill of the Fight on Quest. I’ll be working out details like the launch date as I get closer to finishing the Quest port, but I wanted to go ahead and share the good news.
I’m very excited about the Quest port. The game feels great with no wires, and it’s very convenient to be able to take the headset wherever you have the most room to play without being tethered to a computer. TOTF was already a graphically simple game, so I’ve been able to keep the Quest version very close to the PC version visually, and it plays identically. The inside-out camera tracking can lose track of the controllers pretty easily while you’re keeping your guard up, but I’m hoping the upcoming tracking improvements for the Quest are as good as the update for the Rift S and make that much less of an issue.
I’ll have more details in the coming weeks. Thanks!’.
Meanwhile, for more information on the game itself, I covered it in detail last year when it launched on the Oculus Rift store, which you can read here.
