Oculus Venues is the latest content creation from Oculus Studios, released on Thursday 19th September. The game allows players to view various events in immersive virtual reality with up to three of their friends(or randomly assigned people).
The game starts by visiting a futuristic-looking multi-purpose building. Once inside you are asked questions about yourself and which interests you have, then 3 random events are chosen for you, you can choose one event or accept what has been chosen. Events range from watching Ninja’s play Fortnite with Drake(yes it is as bizarre as it sounds), professional wrestling or even stand up comedy.
Venues use the touchpad on the left controller for navigation around this space, while doing this though it feels like something is missing as you can’t really see it. The right controller is used as either the ticket, event map or menu.
Once you have chosen an event and found a seat everything begins to change around you, the room becomes totally empty and your chair transforms into a cinema type seat. The first thing I noticed was how awesome this looked and felt, it really gives off that feeling of actually sitting in these seats watching this happen in front of you; it’s awesome!
The game graphics are brilliant too; they look very realistic but still cartoony enough to give that slightly surreal feel like other VR titles such as Beat Saber or Job Simulator. It really helps immerse yourself into what feels like a live concert or sports event.
One of the major drawbacks of Oculus Venues is how it has been designed to be played. All the games in Oculus Venues require you to sit down and there isn’t any room-scale movement, this can either be really good or potentially very bad depending on your point of view. To me, it didn’t seem too much of an issue but when I tried showing my friends they struggled with feeling sick after half an hour’s playtime, so if you get easily motion sick I wouldn’t recommend playing this for a long period of time.
Oculus Venues is a great VR experience and one I recommend people try out. The game graphics look brilliant and it really feels like you are there in this digital space, my only real letdown with this game is that the only room-scale movement is left/right turning your head which isn’t as immersive as Touch controls but overall would still highly recommend this title to anyone looking for something different yet fun to play on their Oculus Quest!
Final Score: 8.5/10