Bored Gamers: causing a(n oculus) Rift

Greg Marshall, quite frankly, cannot contain his excitement

With two weeks to go until the big day (at time of writing), I finally feel it is appropriate to mention Chrimbo. Often stated “it’s for the kids really”, the big child in me selfishly refuses to let them have all the fun, as I get a tad over-excited at the festive fun to be had. Though the aforementioned statement is also quite true – I no longer dare to hope to open the Millennium Falcon or the new Transformer toy as an adult, instead resigned to the fact that I will receive some socks and smellies as usual.

The big child in me selfishly refuses to let the kids have all the fun

But had anybody seen me today, they may have very well mistaken me for an eight year old on Christmas morn. Today Santa bought toys! By ‘Santa’ I mean, of course, our studio guest, and by ‘toys’ I refer to the awesome Oculus Rift. Yes, here to give us a try on the futuristic racing game Radial-G, our guest Sam had brought in the latest in virtual reality head wear, and you could cut the excitement with a knife!

I had been lucky enough to try the Oculus Rift on two prior occasions, once on a simulated bike ride and secondly on an indie release so overwhelmingly poor that it didn’t even make the cut for the segment on the show. Here, though, was a bone-fide game, designed to showcase the excellent gaming peripheral for fully peripheral gaming. To say that there was a bit of excitement amongst the crew would be underselling it.

Adam our visual mixer and Brad our sound engineer actually briefly wrestled to get a go, whilst Kat our stand-in production manager braved the motion sickness she received the first time she tried the Oculus for a chance to go again. We were fortunate that one of the games creators was on hand to talk on air, as playing the game with the cameras rolling led to a rare occurrence for Jim and I – an almost complete bewildered silence!

Still, I realise there will be no chance of one appearing in my Christmas stocking, not least because they haven’t been released yet, but I have already planned to be good for Santa for the whole of next year in preparation for the Christmas after!

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