Zone of the Enders 2 is a dizzying nostalgia trip in VRSep 9, 2018 - EurogamerThe statement I'm about to make may cause some of you to shake your heads in disapproval but, considering I've forewarned you, I accept no responsibility for any whiplash which may occur. You see, I've never played a Zone of the Enders game before today. Not the first one, nor the second one and definitely not the one that came out on the Game Boy Advance. In this week's Ian's VR Corner video you can watch me end my Enders drought when I play through the early stages of Zone Of The Enders: The 2nd Runner - M∀rs. Check it out in the video below. Read more…Zone of the Enders 2's PC remaster proves that cool doesn't ageAug 31, 2018 - PC GamerZone of the Enders 2: The Second Runner is still impossibly cool. It should not be this cool, because 15 years have passed since its mecha designs and anime cutscenes and laser particle effects first wowed on the PlayStation 2. It should not be this cool because it stars a character named Dingo Egret, and the word dingo may be spoken more in ZOE2 than in any other game in history. Every time someone says dingo, it's hard not to laugh. But here we are: this lavish 4K remaster looks remarkably sharp as Zone of the Enders 2 arrives on PC for the first time, and it's the best reason I've had to put on a VR headset all year. I spent about four hours learning how to pilot Jehuty, Dingo's prominently codpieced mech, in a wholly new first-person VR mode designed for the remaster. This VR mode, better than anything else I've played, sells the fantasy of being a mecha pilot in an over-the-top anime. At first VR does feel a bit tacked-on: the opening minutes are cinematic heavy, and watching those cutscenes play out on a flat floating rectangle in VR is a reminder that this game was built for a TV screen. But once I got in Jehuty and started flying around, taking out other mechs, everything changed. There's a whole new UI for first-person mode, which gives you a cockpit view that fills your field of vision. The adaptation works: in a few hours of playing, I never got queasy. The VR cockpit. "To prevent motion sickness, we used a vignette when players move their heads during the game," developers from Konami and Cygames told me in an email follow-up. "Also, by changing the player perspective from third-person to first-person, it is a bit hard for player to recognize what they are doing during the game, so we displayed a hologram Jehuty on the lower-right corner in the cockpit view to make it clear what the player is doing." A ring floats around that holographic model of Jehuty, serving as a 3D radar. To make navigation easier, there are new waypoint markers threaded through the environment that you can lock on to and easily move toward by pressing forward. It's a compromise that loses some of the freeform flow you'd have playing in third-person and gives ZOE2 the vague feeling of being an on-rails shooter. But those markers help make up for the lack of peripheral vision and keep VR from feeling too fiddly. And you're free to ignore them and jump the rails whenever you choose. Combat got a similar tweak: every time you take out an enemy the camera snaps to another one, which is jarring but never made me motion sick, and it helped me stay focused on the action. That was welcome, because mechs in Zone of the Enders are not lumbering behemoths. Even on the new "VeRy Easy" mode designed for VR, combat gets intense quickly. Hordes of drones will flit around you like robot hell bees while larger enemies swoop in with beam swords or pelt you with lasers from afar. Fighting them in VR is...Konami's Zone of the Enders 2 remaster has a release dateMay 15, 2018 - EurogamerThe Zone of the Enders sequel remaster, bizarrely subtitled The 2nd Runner - M∀rs, will launch for Steam and PlayStation 4 on 6th September. The remaster is notable for its new first-person VR mode, which you can mess around with on PC, or PS4 via PlayStation VR. The full game is available to play in VR, and there's also some extra VR baubles to try such as a Jehuty hanger area, a 3D model viewer and a cinematic theatre to re-watch cut-scenes after completing the game. Read more…
