The notion of the “killer app” is
overused in this industry, and
it often only has real meaning
after the fact—it can be easy to
look at a console, or a specific
market, and pinpoint the killer
app that lead to a piece of
hardware taking off. It doesn’t
have to be one thing—there
are several reasons the iPhone
redefined cell phones. The PC,though, has had a number of
moments in its evolution that
have seen it survive, but there
hasn’t been a killer app.
There’s a couple of tech
areas that are struggling, and
maybe they need that game-
changing release. VR is clearly
in need of something to lift
it from the drab hole it finds
itself in, and there may well belight at the end of the tunnel in
the form of Half-Life: Alyx—
if you want a killer app, you
can’t ask for much better than
Valve to swing to your rescue.
I personally suspect this one
release will sell more VR
hardware than anything before.
The other area that could
do with some big-name love
is real-time ray tracing. We’vehad a handful of decent games
with ray-tracing effects—
Control being star so far—but
there’s nothing that makes me
think, “I need this.” Bizarrely,
the ray-traced spin of Minecraft
has me most excited, where
the basic graphics of this
much-loved classic stand out
as an obvious improvement. Is
it a killer app? Time will tell.ALAN DEXTER
Executive EditorI THINK VR is a lot of fun. I’ve fooled around
with most of the big-name headsets (I’ll
get my hands on a Valve Index eventually),
and most games I’ve played have been
genuine fun. Some games just work in VR;
the moment I first dived into space combat
sim EVE: Valkyrie was a revelation. I can’t
properly describe the mix of emotions
I felt upon looking down and seeing my
own newly space-suited body gripping
the controls of my ship, lasers glinting
off the cockpit glass, while missiles subtly
followed the movement of my head.
And yet, when I look at the industry,
I can’t help but feel disappointed. Half-
Life: Alyx is a single pinprick of light, a
hopeful glimpse into a world of glorious,
immersive, big-budget VR games, but I’m
afraid that it won’t be enough. Developers
understandably don’t want to commit toomuch to VR projects when
the format is still struggling
to achieve any significant
mainstream success. It might
be a jealous, entitled thing to
say, but I want more! I think
of all the game worlds I’d
love to explore in VR—from
a fresh perspective like Alyx;
not going back into Skyrim for
the 90th time, Todd—and I’m
practically salivating.
The deep, expansive
universes of Warhammer,
Bioshock, and Titanfall would be glorious
in VR. I want to pilot a towering mech
around a battlefield swarming with other
players, to lop off some orc heads with
a weighty swing of my sword. Let me
explore the most beautiful settings ingaming, like Rapture or Hyrule, or crawl
through creepy vents aboard Dead Space’s
USG Ishimura. And lastly: EA, please let
BioWare bring back Mass Effect as a VR
shooter-slash-dating-simulator. I have no
shame. I’ll pay good money for that.I desperately want to love VR. Why can’t I?
VR Struggles
Look, BioWare, honestly, I just want to talk.CHRISTIAN GUYTON, STAFF WRITER©^
BI
OWARE92 MAXIMUMPC JAN 2020 maximumpc.com
in the lab