I have had a PSVR since launch and I would be lying if I said I felt like I have gotten my money's worth out of it. The first week I was loving the demos and was blown away by the shark cage experience (which sold me in the first place ) and thought "WOW this is the future of video games and maybe even movies!"

That was 2016. Fast forward and I might have logged 30 hours total since that first week. Largely collecting dust, my PSVR sat in the corner behind my couch until last weekend. All throughout the Covid times I really thought about "Jacking In" every so often but that never happened until I cleared some space and decided to set a little VR spot.

I looked through my list of VR games and I landed on Paper Beast. I think it was a Playstation+ game or something I bought on a lark but I had no idea what to expect and I think that made it just what I needed. Without going into too much spoiler territory it is really experiential and focused on looking around and trying things out. It surprised me. Exploring environments and interacting with Beasts and the terrain has been a welcome change of pace and something I am looking forward to get into some more.I have a bad habit of reading too much into things and obsessing with knowing every little detail about a game before it even comes out and since I just jumped into this blind it felt nice to have a little bit of excitement for a change.

I’ll keep playing and maybe keep writing how it goes.

PlayStation is also giving away some psvr games right now for their Play at Home initiative... One of them is Paper Beast. But! The others are Moss, Astro Boy, and Thumper. All are real bangers!

I thought the "unexpected experience" was going to be... a bit different. When I tried Oculus for the first time last year for a couple hours I had a quite weird, dream-like experience of unreality for a solid hour or so afterward where I felt like the world around me was as fake as the game I just played (Vader Immortal). It felt like I was going to be able to clip my hand through real objects like they weren't there. Driving was especially weird because I felt like I could slam my car into buildings and it wouldn't matter.

.... Uh but maybe that's just my own weird thing. In any case I haven't had much desire to try VR since then.

So, I kept playing and it got really weird to the point where I have no idea what to even call this thing. It is a game of sorts but it takes the idea of a walking simulator and cranks that all the way to 10.

There's something oddly unnerving and unsettling I experience when playing this game. Every time I put this game down it sticks with me. Not in the VR motion sickness kind of way but in the I’m not sure I should be doing this sensation.

For me the game has created a sense of unease I get in the same way when you're walking in the woods alone or when you are exploring an abandoned building. Couple that with really good sound design and some strange things that happen it really gets to you. I’m not sure if this was the intention but the effect is really enticing and keeps me coming back.