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Richard Boon Senior Game Designer at XR Games took to the PlayStation Blog to announce a new PSVR title which features the iconic Angry Birds franchise!
Thanks to the new movie, Angry Birds 2, PSVR users will be receiving a brand new VR title centered around the movie. However, it will be unlike anything we’ve seen from the franchise thus far. Players will have the option to play as the Captain by mounting the PSVR headset on or play on the TV portion as the crew!
The new trailer showcases a little taste of what’s to come when the game — Under Pressure releases later next month on August 6th!
Check out the announcement gameplay trailer down below:
Boon goes into plenty of detail discussing the game’s mechanics and features, make sure to check out some of the highlights down below:
Everyone Can Play
The history of video games can be seen as a history of the accessibility of technology. For a lot of people in the 70s, the first computer they would’ve encountered would have been an arcade game. Nolan Bushnell’s conceptual shift from Computer Space to Pong reduced a page of instructions to “avoid missing ball for high score.” When the Space Invaders arrived, their inexorable descent was a metaphor for the encroaching information age, and we ate it up like a hungry Pac-Man. Home computers were suddenly cheap enough to be bought by parents to help educate their children.
People Want To Play Together
The first, best reason is always social. If humans play, they want to play together. Additionally, if people are being introduced to new games, it’s good to be in the same place as the person helping teach them. On top of that, there are concerns with kids playing games in VR, so it would help if there is a non-VR component as well. Sony’s social screen technology, which allows one player to play in the headset and everyone else to play on TV, empowers local multiplay. That’s a good start.
Captain and Crew!
The local nature of the play leads naturally to asymmetric gameplay. Two interfaces, a first person view in VR and a top down view on TV. Two ways to play, two roles. This is the starting point. So what’s the story? What are the player roles?
The VR player is the captain of the submarine from The Angry Birds Movie 2. The TV players are the crew of that submarine, doing repairs, crafting torpedoes and storing treasure. The VR player is in charge of the TV players, and is able to help them out with gameplay and learning.
Talk to Each Other!
The captain has a gameplay tool called the Magnashot, which is a classic Angry Birds slingshot with a magnet in it. It can suck stuff up and throw it back out — including the crew players. This gives the captain a lot of power. But there are things that only the crew can do, such as load machines and move explosive crates (which do not mix well with the Magnashot).
Stand Together or Fall Apart
And what happens when things go wrong? For friends playing together, when things go wrong they laugh. This is a slapstick game in which fumbles multiply, small setbacks snowball, and bad things could happen to anyone. This open, low-stress / high-comedy framework is one way for people of different abilities to play together in comfort. Everyone can contribute, and anyone can make a mistake, with consequences just as entertaining as a win, if not more so.
Angry Birds 2 Movie: Under Pressure hits PSVR consoles on August 6th! Are you excited for the upcoming VR title? Let us know in the comments below!
