Me and a group of pals have been having a lot of fun at the new VR place here in Da Nang, Vietnam. A little too much fun actually because we have basically completed every single game that the one place has.
Someone discovered some other VR places and on Friday we decided to go and check one of them out.
I could tell already when we walked in the front door that this might not be the finest establishment. The other new place we have been going to every single week but one, is very modern looking with a ton of competent staff. This place had a few people lounging around that didn't seem all that interested in even getting us booked in.
I was more suspicious when before we even started out 1-hour session, that they wanted us to pre-pay. It was at that point that I started thinking that a lot of people must be dissatisfied and want to get a reduction in price. It would be about 30 minutes later of our 1-hour session that I realized my fear was indeed correct.
The other VR place that we go to which is called "Another World" and is really great, has you walk around to move your character in the game... like physically move around a room that you are standing in, in the real world. In this one, which seemed quite budget right from the start, you have to use a controller that is in your right hand in order to move you in the room you are in. This was very disorienting and actually made me feel a bit queasy kind of like how you would feel from motion sickness or seasickness.
It didn't help that the room we were in was exceptionally hot and poorly air conditioned. I was sweating like crazy and I told my friends in the room with me that I had to bail out and took my headset off and stopped playing. After another 10 minutes or so my friends did the same. We had booked an hour and only made it about 30 minutes into that time and we were all done with it and didn't even want to try another game.
This was a virtual escape room so there wasn't any variety in the gameplay either. We just kept pushing every button in the virtual room and even though we have 3 nationalities here with college degrees and a decent amount of intelligence, we couldn't figure it out. Had it been an actual escape room where you can see one another and have a conversation, I think we would have done better.
This to me was so disorienting and fake feeling that I had trouble just getting my virtual hands to do what I wanted it to do. All of us kept bumping in the walls in the real world too because the only way to change your perspective, like which direction you are looking in the game, is to physically turn inside this small hot room we were in. I don't know how to describe it really, but it was not something we are ever going to do again. At least it was only around $4 a person for the session.
Something in the lobby kind of reminded me that we are still in Vietnam though and that was the completely unauthorized usage of copyrighted material all over the place. Apparently they have a Harry Potter themed escape room... a real physical one... that is their most popular attraction. If JK Rowling's attorneys were to catch wind of this I don't think they would even bother to do anything about it.
So if you are going to do VR, I would suggest going to one of the more modern ones where you actually move your body to move around the virtual rooms. For me and my 2 friends all of us found the sensation to be rather unnerving and nausea-inducing. I honestly felt like I was going to throw up for the next 30 minutes or so after we were done and went home and had a nap.
This was quite disappointing because apparently these sorts of VR places are far more simple to establish and seeing as how we are in a land where copyright means almost nothing, there could have been a lot of bargains to find there. It's a shame but much like the one time I went to the go-kart place, it is a one-and-done for me and everyone else that went.
