Space Channel 5 VR review: The worst value proposition for a PSVR game yet, Ars Technica

channel the groove moxie –

Does an uneven – minute campaign for $ sound good to you? We didn’t think so.

Enlarge / Space Channel 5

hero Ulala (center, in yellow) deserved so much better.

For anybody in the tiny Venn diagram of users who have heard of and are anticipating this week’s Space Channel 5 VR , I have very bad news: It’s the worst value proposition of any PlayStation VR game ever made. And while this Dreamcast-era revival’s issues could be forgiven in isolation, the game’s mix of price, brevity, simplicity, and ho-hum aesthetics makes it a bummer for anybody with increases of a new, solid VR-dancing option.

Space Channel 5 , for the uninitiated, is

a beloved rhythm game made by Sega for the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. It pioneered a “mods in space” aesthetic, as if a groovy British dance club from the ‘150 s took off in a rocketship. Its star, an intrepid “space reporter” named Ulala, engages in Simon-style dance battles with monsters; she watches a pattern of button taps to the beat of the music, then responds in kind. It’s similar to rhythm-gaming classics like

Parappa the Rapper .

The best thing I can say about Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash!

, which is currently a PlayStation VR exclusive, is that it neatly translates the original game’s formula to a version with motion controls. The original game limited its players to tapping four cardinal directions and a single button, while

SC5VR replaces all button taps with arm motions. Move your hands up, to the sides, down, or forward, then mix and match these for approximately dance moves.







                      Though Ulala figures prominently in the game, you actually play as a different character (and get a brief “mirror” moment to see yourself in Ulala-like garb). Thus, you play

SC5VR with Ulala as your guide, and she’s usually dancing in your peripheral vision.






                      Watch the Morolian aliens dance, then repeat their poses back to the beat, as in the classic electronic game Simon.

                                              Grounding Inc.






                      This is how that dance sequence looks as captured from my PSVR system. Since it’s a dancing game, your hands don’t really figure into the action in a visible manner (meaning you’re not holding a gun, sword, or other useful “item”).

                                              Grounding Inc.





                      Remember Jaguar from the original games? He’s back.

                                              Grounding Inc.





                      Say “hi!” to a trio of rival dancing broadcasters.

                                              Grounding Inc.






                      And here’s that moment, as captured from my PlayStation VR session.

                                              Grounding Inc.







                      No, this image was not ripped from the Dreamcast original, even though the polygon count and textures on that asteroid might imply otherwise.

                                              Grounding Inc.





                      At least the game’s “friend dictionary” is full of wacky text. Is this famed Ars Technica Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher? I mean, the last name doesn’t appear in this entry, so, there’s no telling.

                                              Grounding Inc.







                      The game’s sole “challenge” level has a ho-hum song and a lengthy grind of various dance moves. No, beating this doesn’t unlock Michael Jackson as a secret character. (FYI: MJ guest-starred in both original-series games.)

                                              Grounding Inc.




You might expect my negative intro to mean that this Wii-like stuff is a failure, but as controlled by PlayStation Move wands, it’s really quite solid. For starters, the controllers’ gyroscopes appear to track motions even when players move outside the PSVR tracking system’s limited gaze, which means you don’t have to fear waving your arms too aggressively in real life. More importantly, SC5VR s development team understands the realities of arm and body fatigue, and how players do or don’t remember a variety of poses, in choreographing its levels. You’ll only get one or two weird pose options mixed into a particular 90 – second routine, like the “raise your arms in a flex” move or the “one hand straight up, one to the side” L-shape. And even at the highest tempos, the dance moves can still be done at manageable speeds as opposed to the lightning-fast button taps of the series’ first two games.

Unfortunately,

SC5VR does not include support for sit-down play, as it includes a few moments when players must physically side-step as a dance move, and there’s no “accessibility” toggle to let seated players otherwise enjoy the game. (It also requires a pair of PlayStation Move wands, as there’s no gamepad-only mode.)

Did the Morolians handle the sound design?

The above is ultimately a solid foundation for a VR rhythm game; we honestly haven’t seen such a classic rhythm-gaming system work this well in vr. (The closest is the

Hatsune Miku VR dancing game, which is best left ignored.) So how did Grounding Inc. (which includes some of the series’ original devs) mess this one up?
First is the abysmally short runtime. The campaign weighs in at 60 minutes, and it’s broken up into four levels. I did not go into

SC5VR expecting an epic campaign, since the first two games in the series ran at roughly 551 minutes, but the brevity isn’t just a bummer from a bang-for-buck standpoint. When a game is this short, its scant selection of music is far easier to scrutinize. These four songs are a far cry from the catchy original games, played back mostly in low-grade MIDI, and some of them cling tightly to a low-resolution sample of the original game’s theme. You have to dig into

SC5VR

‘s menus, which include a wacky dictionary about each of the game’s NPCs, to find one bodaciously catchy bossa nova song. Its infectiously catchy horn sample, as spliced with modern DJ trickery, mostly makes me wonder where

that inventiveness was for the rest of the brief game’s soundtrack.

The runtime is padded by an additional “challenge” level, which stretches to nearly minutes — and it’s the only place you’ll find half of the game’s dance poses. These easily could have been mixed into a “second quest” of remixed original levels, if not an unlockable option to play remixed levels from the original Dreamcast games. Instead, they appear in an uncreative dump of marathon dancing as opposed to the campaign’s balance of dancing, resting, and wacky exposition. (Though, as another criticism, the game’s script and plot have some serious logical gaps, with a new trio of rivals almost instantly becoming Ulala’s friends after a single showdown.)

(SC5VR) ‘s dancing worlds are remarkably unmemorable, as they all take place in simple, static rooms. Monsters from the original game reappear as relatively low-polygon models, so it appears that little effort was put into generating new content. The sound design makes “giant crowds” of nearby monsters and fans sound like a tiny gallery of interns being mic’ed at the last minute. And the game’s dancing characters share identical animation routines and nearly identical body and face proportions — which looks weirder when you’re surrounded by dancers in VR than when you’re playing the original games on a decades-old console.

Broadcast signal lost

Space Channel 5 VR

trailer Between all of the above issues and a lack of storytelling to explain the original series to newcomers, I struggle to recommend SC5VR to anybody who owns PlayStation VR. The worst part is that the game’s solid core gameplay is a clear sign that its dev team

could have made an excellent and unique VR rhythm game instead of rushing this scant disappointment out for $ .                                                      (Read More