Insomniac Games, the developers who’ve provided us with plentiful and diverse weaponry to fight off both blobs and terrifying alien invasions (along with a zombie head or two) in games like Ratchet & Clank, Sunset Overdrive, and Resistance: Fall of Man, has released the trailer for its first of three Oculus-exclusive titles, Edge of Nowhere. The game will be released on June 6.
The game is a third-person survival adventure set in Antarctica, but despite its icy theme there seems to be more to the Arctic lands than humanity ever suspected. Insomniac describes the game as an “unsettling psychological thriller” and has adjusted the level of gory creatures and malformed humans in the trailer accordingly.
Third person isn’t the typical choice for a virtual reality game, but it has proven successful with a number of other titles, one example being Herobound: Spirit Champion. Done right it can be both comfortable and enjoyable. The two other games heading to the Oculus Rift are Feral Rites and The Unspoken, each of which are slated for a release this fall.
The game is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness and has players portray Victor Howard, who is desperately searching for his friends across the icy landscape. But the further the game progresses, the more insane Howard becomes. As such, it’s a much more story-driven game than many others that are out there. Unfortunately we don’t have any details on an estimated playtime.
Impressions from those who have played Edge of Nowhere seem to differ. Some say that the slow camerawork and the effort put in to minimize nausea shows in how little they’re bothered by it; others say they still felt nauseous when playing the game. But the game does seem to have some unique takes on virtual reality. For example, the scenes are done in such a way that the player is meant to feel like they’re witnessing the scene on location as opposed to being an invisible observing camera. The third-person perspective has been implemented to decrease tendencies to become nauseous, but it’s still not that easy to accommodate everyone when you try to create new types of experiences in VR.
Edge of Nowhere will be released tomorrow, June 6, followed by the Studios’ two other VR games in the fall of this year.
