I'm a big dreamer, me. I see something I love, like VR, and I like to imagine the best outcomes for it. You know, like Sony actually bringing a new Astrobot for the PS VR2, or let's say, smaller, lighter, cheaper headsets for everyone. Of course I get disappointed every time: the newer headsets seem to get incredibly expensive and, well, of course Sony made a Sony with the PS VR2.
One of my biggest dreams, though, is that one day in the future, every game released will have a hybrid VR mode. A simple switch at the beginning, like the one Capcom put in Resident Evil 7, that gives players the choice of experiencing the game in VR or enjoying it on the flat screen of whatever TV or monitor they choose.
While this dream seems like a distant improbability, we can at least enjoy a taste of this fantasy thanks to Praydog's magical UEVR mod, which lets you convert any UE4 or UE5 game to VR with the click of a button. Sure, not every game runs perfectly, and there's a lot of tinkering around in the mod's menus to iron out the kinks, but still, for this week's VR Corner I managed to play a demo of a game that hasn't yet been fully released in both third-person and AND first-person virtual reality.
That’s right, this week’s VR Corner focus is the demo for Visions of Mana, the next entry in the Mana series that’s coming out later this month. In the video above, you can see me exploring the cute and colorful world that Ouka Studios has created, and while this game is best played from a third-person perspective, I did discover a couple of quiet areas that were great to wander around in first-person VR!
Most of the many Mana games out there have always been played from a top-down or 2.5D perspective, and while Visions of Mana does give you a lovely three-dimensional world to explore, until now players have never been able to see the lands of Mana from the eyes of the series’ protagonists. With the UEVR mod, however, I was able to position the in-game camera so that I could see the world just as this game’s hero, Val, does. I was able to inspect everything in exquisite detail, from his friend’s adorable eyes and someone else’s gnarled claws to a whole host of adorable farmyard and house animals and much, much more. Hell, I even got to experience what it’s like to gallop through some incredibly lush fields on the back of a dog-like Pikul. Torrent, eat your heart out!
The Mana series actually began life on the Gameboy as a side story to the Final Fantasy franchise, but with UEVR there’s nothing definitive about this VR fantasy. Praydog’s mod gives us a glimpse of what a hybrid future might look like one day, and that’s a dream worth dreaming about, in my opinion!