I picked up a PlayStation VR headset last Thursday, the day it actually launched, and I've spent most of the weekend with it strapped to my face instead of doing anything productive. $399.99 for the headset alone, plus another sixty bucks for the camera since I didn't already own one for my PS4. That's basically $460 to look at low-poly worlds through a slightly heavy plastic visor, and I still don't fully know how I feel about it.
The setup process alone took longer than I expected. You have to sit in a specific spot, hold up the controller, let the camera figure out where your face is in space, and my living room is apparently not shaped the way Sony wants living rooms to be shaped. I ended up dragging my coffee table into the kitchen for the weekend just so I'd have enough clearance. My girlfriend was thrilled about that, as you can imagine.
Once it's actually running, though, some of this stuff is genuinely something else. Batman: Arkham VR isn't much of a game, it's more like a forty-minute tech demo where you get to stand in the Batcave and look at things, but the first time I looked down and saw my own hands as Bruce Wayne's hands, I laughed out loud, alone, in my apartment. That's a weird thing to admit but it's true. There's a moment early on where you pick up a mask off a workbench and just kind of turn it over in your hands, and it's the closest thing to "presence" I've felt from any piece of tech since I first got broadband as a teenager and downloaded a song in under a minute.
Then there's Rush of Blood, the on-rails horror shooter thing bundled with Until Dawn, and that's where I found out I apparently get motion sick from virtual reality. Not dramatically sick, nothing embarrassing happened, but about fifteen minutes in my stomach did this slow uneasy roll and I had to take the headset off and sit very still for a while. I've read other people describe this exact thing happening with the Rift and the Vive, so it's not just a PSVR problem, but I guess I'd assumed I had an iron stomach for this kind of thing. Turns out no. A friend of mine bought a Vive back in the spring and has been smug about it ever since; I'm not about to hand him more ammunition by admitting this, so if you know him, don't mention it.
Eve: Valkyrie was the surprising one for me. I went in expecting a tech demo and came out having genuinely enjoyed forty-five minutes of dogfighting in a cockpit, turning my head to track enemy ships instead of using a right stick. It's the first time a control scheme in a game felt like it disappeared entirely. Rez Infinite I liked for completely different reasons, mostly because it doesn't ask your inner ear to process fast movement, so it's the one game I could play for a solid hour without any weirdness.
Is it worth the money right now, in October 2016? Honestly, probably not, unless you're the kind of person who already buys every new piece of hardware the week it comes out (hi, hello, that's me apparently). The library is thin, most of what exists is demos and short experiences rather than full games, and the cable running from the headset down to the little breakout box down to the PS4 is an absolute mess that I keep tripping over. But there were a couple of moments this weekend where I forgot I was wearing a headset at all, and I don't think I've felt that from a new gadget in a long time. Not since I got my first smartphone, maybe.
I'm also just relieved I don't have a Note 7 sitting in a drawer somewhere that I now have to mail back in a fire-resistant box. Small mercies.
Going to go see if my stomach can handle another round of Rush of Blood tonight. Wish me luck.