Review – Motor Racing on Playstation VR
The PlayStation VR brings Virtual Motor Racing to reality with stunning graphics and sounds that create an atmosphere as if your actually sitting inside the cockpit.
PlayStation VR connects straight to your existing PS4 console with the help of a tracking camera. It costs around £350 and Driveclub costs around £30. The camera is sold separately and costs around £42.
In order to get the best out of the VR a 4K TV is essential which increases the graphics and resolution.
Sony’s promotion of the Driveclub experience on the VR with the high-resolution shots is a bit questionable as it’s not quite of that standard, but I was still mostly impressed by the whole experience.
Gameplay
The Logitech force feedback steering wheel which costs around £200 adds to the motor racing experience with vibrations and movement responses from crashes and sharp breaking.
The sounds allow you to feel the power of the car your driving, and the VR allows you to take a sneak peek in the other drivers cockpit before the race starts.
The graphics are pretty detailed and create the illusion that your in a different place; also being in the cockpit of some of the fastest cars in the world is complete joy.
Everything’s rendered entirely in 3D and precise head-tracking means that you instantly forget that you essentially have a mobile phone screen strapped to your face and makes you completely blank out the world around you.
Most complete
When you slide into the vehicle, you’re aware of the cockpit curling up over your shoulders. Floor the throttle and you quickly discover how many of the problems with racing games VR can solve.
Placing your car in 3D space suddenly becomes a breeze, instantly improving your lines through corners, and even little touches like having shift lights in your peripheral vision rather than at the bottom of a TV screen make a huge difference.
Being in first person camera is best as you get more of a realer experience when driving. The PlayStation VR is definitely the second coming of racing games, especially with the new Gran Turismo coming out which his PlayStation’s highest selling racing game.
It gives me hope that the Driveclub experience is only the beginning of something epic.
DriveClub VR turns out to be the most complete game in PlayStation VR’s launch line-up. It’s got 80 cars, a hundred or so tracks and handling that positively begs you to hustle cars through corners.
It’s perfectly playable with the standard Dual Shock controller, of course, but if you have a steering wheel and pedal set the final piece of the immersion jigsaw falls into place and suddenly you’re a racing driver.
Handling
It does take some getting use to at first, especially using a steering wheel, which is much more difficult in comparion to using a controller.
Operating the gas and brake with your feet and the gears as well as steering wheel with your hands is not easy.
Be prepared to spin off track a lot. I found for a newbie like me, it’s best not to just jump straight into a Ferrari but start off in a slower, less powerful car like a Golf GTI.
Once you master the handling on that, then progress up the car classes.
The screen HUB that includes race time, laps and position can be seen when you look upwards into the sky.
Pros & Cons
As its such an addictive experience you do start to come across motion sickness where your head slightly starts to spin once you take off the VR, but I was playing it for a good three hours, so it was expected.
Another negative is that the visuals get blurry at times which makes it hard to see where you’re going. Also if you bought the game originally on PS4 you will not be able to load progress saves from the original.
“DriveClub VR is the perfect game to sell the fantasy of being behind the wheel of your dream car”
In comparison to the actual game, the graphics took a slight drop but perhaps that was because it may be too much for the VR and to reduce technical errors like lags and glitching. But everything’s in a slightly myopic soft-focus and some of the scenery is more simplistic.
Most of the content from the original game is still here, including the online mode. Driving mode is also still the same, with a good balance between accessibility and realism.
If you are a true motor racing fan who is also into gaming I highly recommend you give it a try as I found myself stuck in the cockpit for hours and I’m not a big racing afficionado.
DriveClub VR is the perfect game to sell the fantasy of being behind the wheel of your dream car, and only the first in an upcoming wave of virtual reality racers that will include Gran Turismo Sport.
Sweeping open roads, accessible handling that flatters your driving skills and obscenely detailed cockpits to pore over make this the quickest and most affordable route to becoming a VR true believer.