PlayStation VR2 Review - Impressive, Expensive, Immersive

The PlayStation VR2 is here and after using it for almost two weeks I think it’s safe to say that it’s still not worth the investment for casual gamers. The technology powering the PS VR2 is cool, and some games make good use of it to offer some incredibly immersive experiences, with only more games added to its minuscule library. The new headset retails for $549.99 USD and for that price, I can only recommend it to the most hardcore gamers willing to spend so much for such a small quantity of experiences. If you wear prescription glasses, forget about it.

Virtual Reality is an interesting concept that’s always just a few steps away from becoming a viable alternative to traditional media. I’ve had my fair share of experiences with VR entertainment, but of all mediums the technology has been used for, gaming seems to be the ideal choice. I’ve used a variety of VR headsets in the past, ranging from cheap, DIY kits to expensive HMDs (head-mounted displays) like the PS VR2. My experience with the Meta Quest 3 is still fresh, so I was excited to jump on the PS VR2 to compare it with.

Let’s start with the basics - in the box, you get the PS VR2 HMD, two sense controllers, a pair of stereo headphones that can be attached to the HMD, some documentation, and a pair of charging cables. Setting up the PS VR2 is easy - you plug in the headset to the PS5 console with a single USB-C cable and turn on the sense controllers. That’s it! You’ve now entered virtual reality! Of course, before you can actually launch a game, you’ll have to tell the system whether you’re playing standing up or sitting down, along with measuring the boundaries of your surroundings to create a virtual play area. Setting up the PS VR2 is extremely simple, you simply put on the headset and follow the instructions on the screen. The headset scans your immediate surroundings to create a virtual boundary, and you’re in.

For this review, I spent a little over a week playing a variety of VR titles, including the following:

• Horizon Call of the Mountain
• Gran Turismo 7
• Resident Evil Village VR
• Tetris Effect
• Humanity

• Smash Drums

• Star Wars: Tales from The Galaxy’s Edge

• Box to The Beat VR

I think that’s a good variety of titles that cover all types of experiences - from sitting with a regular DualSense controller in hand to standing up and being physically active. Now, I will say that my immersion was blocked by the fact that I was playing in a smaller room, but the PS VR2 can adapt to smaller boundaries rather well. At any given moment I could recalibrate the screen to point forwards, and the built-in head tracking works pretty much flawlessly. 

The adjustable scope and IPD (inter-pupillary distance) are a boon for anyone to mold the HMD into fitting their face. I would like to say that the lens separation in the headset was never at the ideal distance where I would forget about its existence. Wearing the PS VR2 is like wearing a scuba diving mask or very tight swimming goggles - it gives you mild tunnel vision. Many VR games include a default vignette effect, so your freedom of movement seems to be a little more claustrophobic than it needs to be.

The PS VR2 includes a button to quickly switch to the see-through mode, which uses the front cameras on the headset. It’s a really handy feature that provides a sense of safety when things get too crazy in whatever application you’re immersed in. Complimenting that is the sufficiently long USB-C cable, which not only makes the set-up process easy but is also unintrusive enough for you to enjoy your virtual haven. As far as setups go,

PS VR2 Technical Specifications

For those interested in the numbers, here are the PS VR2 specs:

• Display tech: OLED
• Resolution: 2000 x 2040 per eye
• Refresh rate: 90 Hz, 120 Hz
• Lens separation: Adjustable IPD slider
• Field of view: 110 degrees
• Dimension: 212 × 158 × 278 mm

All of these combine to create one of the highest-end HMDs on the market, but we can talk numbers all day. What matters is the experience of using it, which is where my feelings are mixed. That starts with the headset itself, or rather how it feels having it on your face for extended gaming sessions. It’s a heavy headset that is weighted more towards the front, so I’d have to tighten the strap a smidge more than I would find comfortable.

Talking about the hardware itself, the PS VR2 can block light really well. I was playing in a well-lit room, but I couldn’t tell how strong the lights were around me after adjusting the headset’s scope distance. It uses a light, leather-type material for its forehead pads and light blockers, which rest comfortably on your face.

The included earphones are surprisingly good, providing an accurate 3D soundscape in the games I played. The earphones attach nicely to the headset, which has dedicated compartments to keep them in. I like this configuration, and it gives you the option to use your own earphones or wireless headphones as well. The built-in microphone is also acceptable, as I never heard any of my friends complain about the noise levels during party chat.

Now, I have myopia, so I had to use my prescription glasses while using the PS VR2, and that’s where the problems started to arise. For starters, I couldn’t get the eye-tracking to work. This, in turn, meant that I couldn’t experience the foveated rendering tech as well as Sony’s engineers would’ve liked. Foveated rendering makes it so that the display will render higher details at the specific points one looks at by tracking their eyes through the multitude of cameras built into the headset. In the absence of that, the PS VR2 defaults to rendering the center point of your gaze on the screen, so at no point do you get a completely crispy image across the display, unlike your TV. Combine that with the fact that I was wearing it on top of my spectacles, and you can see where I’d be disappointed.

The PS VR2 is certainly one of, if not the, brightest VR headsets I’ve used. You’re getting a nice OLED display with HDR that supports 120Hz, which for many would be a better experience than their TVs. I could feel the brightness being cranked up while driving daytime tracks in GT7, or climbing up the side of a mountain in Horizon. However, it still felt like a simulation of brightness in real life, something that didn’t help with the immersion quite as much as I’d hoped. It’s not going to beat your high-end gaming TV with 4K and VRR support, but compared to the rest of the competition it’s a marked improvement.

The Sense controllers offer an intuitive experience that, once you’ve developed the muscle memory for it, works as sufficient extensions of your hand in virtual space. Grabbing objects using either the triggers or the bumper to the side feels natural, and the visual feedback of seeing your fingers wrap around objects thanks to impressive motion tracking adds to the experience. While the motion tracking is good, there are areas where it can struggle to keep up with your movements, which I found out hilariously when sifting through virtual boxes in Horizon. Overall though, the Sense controllers are better than their competition, offering a premium and sturdy feel so you won’t have to worry about breaking them easily.

Like the DualSense controller, the VR2’s Sense controllers don’t have the longest battery life, but that’s only if you look at the numbers. In practice, you’re not going to be playing in VR for more than thirty minutes at a given time, so running out of charge is not an issue you’ll be facing frequently.

PS VR2 Gameplay Experience

Sony sent me the PS VR2 Horizon: Call of The Mountain bundle, which is great because that game is perhaps the best demonstration of the new technology. The game is set during the events of Horizon: Zero Dawn and follows a new hero, Ryas, as he embarks on a quest to find his brother. It’s a stunning title that aims to showcase all of PS VR2’s new features. Using the sense controllers to climb mega-structures and shoot arrows into robot dinosaurs accurately translated the fun factor of the mainline Horizon games into VR. This was also one of the more physically demanding games, and while it may sound silly I quickly found myself tightening my grips on non-existent ropes and crevices on the surfaces of cliffs. It takes a while for the immersion to kick in, but when it does it’s very hard to beat.

Horizon: Call of The Mountain is a gorgeous game, utilizing the power of the PS5 to render environments in incredible detail. The increased resolution of the VR2 lets you scrutinize objects in the game world at a deeper level and the asset quality here is astounding. Objects in the distance do tend to break the immersion occasionally, especially giant water bodies where you can see through the pixels. Combat in Call of the Mountain is a high-intensity exercise, completely hijacking your senses to ground you in the moment. Throughout my playthrough, I never switched back to the analog controls, preferring to move as Ryas does in the game world. The controls for combat take a while to get used to, but once you do there’s no better feeling than whipping out the bow, crafting a shock arrow, and aiming for a robot’s head while dodging its lasers, all within the span of a few seconds. The storytelling in Call of the Mountain is a little too dependent on exposition from NPCs, and it’s quite a shock to see a life-sized Aloy talking to you at eye level.

Following daily sessions in VR games, I found using VR2’s theatre mode for 2D content a much more comfortable experience. When playing standard games while wearing the headset, you’re presented with a giant screen floating endlessly in the void. This is how I’ve been playing games that offer big-budget spectacle, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok Valhalla, and The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered. I wish that games offered an ultrawide field of view while playing it with the headset, as I could never really picture myself walking the streets of Night City in first-person in Cyberpunk 2077, thanks to the obvious borders of the virtual screen. Not being able to use foveated rendering with eye-tracking also meant that the picture was blurry beyond the center, and the render target of 1920x1080 in theatre mode doesn’t help matters either. Playing games this way was a novelty that wore off soon enough though, as the picture wasn’t as clear as on my TV, and again, the weight of the VR headset was a major distraction.

This is where games like Tetris Effect and Gran Turismo 7 come in. The VR modes of these games are an extension of the standard modes, which don’t require too much physical activity. Tetris Effect teleports you into a gorgeous virtual space while you use your DualSense controller to control the falling blocks. The increased responsiveness, thanks to the higher refresh rate, meant I was playing better in the VR mode while being completely in a state of zen, fully engrossed in the incredible tracks the game has to offer. The same goes for Humanity’s VR mode, which is made by the same developers. It doesn’t offer a completely new way to play. Rather, it uses the medium of VR to put you into the play space of the game, increasing immersion not through physical engagement, but through sensory feedback.

Grant Turismo 7 offers a similar experience where you can play the game just like you do normally, but the expanded first-person field of view lets you appreciate the incredible level of detail going into the inside of these beautiful sports cars. In VR Mode, GT7 integrates its HUD elements into the car’s dashboard seamlessly, which is an extra nice touch. In a similar vein, Horizon’s Machine Safari mode lets you sit back and take in the views of this beautiful world that Guerrilla has created.

One of the best features of the PS5’s DualSense controller, the haptic feedback, has been integrated into PS VR2 all across the board. The sense controllers offer appropriate feedback when you interact with game objects, although it’s a little hit or miss depending on the title, as I found while playing Smash Drums. The haptic feedback in the main headset though, I could do without. The idea of sending a buzz through your head when an object flies by close to you is cool, but the overall strength of the vibration is too strong for it to really give you the appropriate feel. The headset’s haptic feedback is reminiscent of the vibration you felt in the PS4’s DualShock 4 controller, which was just used to signify major moments of spectacle and not much else.

Does Buying a PS VR2 Make Sense? 

Spending close to $500 on a gaming console requires some justification, but spending even more on an accessory to play a handful of games? Honestly, regardless of region, I don’t think the PS VR2 is worth the investment at the moment. The hardware is impressive, but its games library just isn’t strong enough. And then there’s the cost of the games themselves, which are as expensive as standard AAA titles.

Of course, hardware enthusiasts can easily ignore my verdict and buy the latest and greatest for the handful of experiences it offers. For my money, if I really was into VR that heavily, I’d probably invest in a Meta Quest simply because it can be used wirelessly, and has integration with PC VR for a bigger library of games. Perhaps the PS VR2 will grow into offering a more meaningful experience once we have more games on the platform, but I can only talk about the experience it offers today.

Score: 8/10

The PlayStation VR2 is an impressive piece of tech that offers the best VR experiences in its class, but its price and games library make it hard to recommend. The absence of notable VR titles like Half-Life Alyx and the recent Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR are weak points that make it tough to recommend to casual gamers.