April 11

Today during their EVE Fanfest keynote in Iceland, CCP announced that EVE: Valkyrie, their VR combat spinoff, is getting its first big update (for me anyway, as there's technically five so far) on April 11 across all platforms (Vive, Rift, PSVR).  Groundrush adds in a new ship type, more wormholes, a better tutorial, expanded co-op, and a better ranking system. The most notable update however is an additional  map, which will bring ground-based ship battles to the EVE universe.

CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson joked that this is basically fulfilling a promise they made back in 2006, when they showed ground flight in the original EVE Online. "Same concept, different game," he retorted.

The post EVE: Valkyrie is getting anot??her big update, Groundrush, next week appeared first on Destructoid.

Virtual dogfighting

Virtual reality software providers are in a weird spot this early in the game. They need to push the tech to its limits to really sell people, while other developers have to pr??ovide traditional experiences that help justify the platform.

The latter is basically what CCP Games did for EVE: Valkyrie.

EVE: Valkyrie (PC [reviewed], PS4)
Developer: CCP Games
Publisher: CCP Games
MSRP: Free with Rift ($59.99 Founder's Pack)
Released: March 28, 2016 (PC), TBA (PS4)

Valkyrie has a silly premise, but it works within the confines of the massive, ever-expanding EVE universe. You, the player, are dead (not a spoiler as this is evident right away), with your consciousnesses uploaded into a central server of sorts that allows you to?? take control of various ships and access "memories," which basically amount to training missions. Beyond that, the entire game is multiplayer oriented, which justifies the "respawn" element.

Jumping into the tutorial, I got a sense of what the game was trying to accomplish immediately. VR, as a rule, is very intuitive. Moving your head moves the camera, which is presented in a first-person cockpit view. Looking at objects while ??holding down the missile button initiates a lock-on sequence, and so on. The rest is controlled with a traditional Xbox pad, with buttons for thrusting, decelerating, ?and firing the main gun.

As Steven has mentioned before in his hands-on time with the game, the UI is one of the best parts. I was wowed with how seamless it was integrated into Valkyrie, and although having to turn one's head to see the thruster level and the like is odd at first, it eventually became second nature and added to the immersion. I can see a Voltron game whe??re you're communicating with teamm??ates, checking meters and knobs, and I am crestfallen it doesn't exist yet.

Having an enemy strip your shields, triggering an alarm, is intense, and VR provides a greater sense of urgency when it comes to survival. If you're scared that the entire affair will be disorienting, don't be, because even with the semi-intense death sequence (where your window cracks) it's never nauseating. I suspect that this is due in part to how smooth the visual style is, and that you're seated a little further back from the front window. Likewise, turning on a dime (due in part to the impeccable control scheme) to weave into a tiny gap to escape missile fire is all the more engaging, especially on a map like Necrop??olis, a ship graveyard.

Don't think it's a tech demo, either, as Valkyrie is surprisingly deep. As players unlock new ships and become accustomed to certain styles (speedy or defensive for instance) everything really starts to click. The unpredictable nature of human opponents helps, but generally, I haven't been this excited to dogfight in space for a long while. Playing this brought back good memories of all of the hours lost with X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and Colony Wars.

So about the monetization scheme -- microtransactions do exist. Rift owners get Valkyrie automatically, but given the money CCP pumped into this project, it likely wants a bigger return on its investment. The "Founder's Pack," which you'll get for pre-ordering, comes with $60 worth of goods, which basically translates to 2500 Gold (which retails for $9.99) and an exclusive fighter ship. It's odd, because while Gold is mostly used for aesthetic purchases (like paint jobs) directly, you can exchange Gold for Silver with the quartermaster, at a rate? of 500 for 87,000, respectively. There's also room for XP boosts, which go for 80 Gold for a day, and 2,000 Gold for 30 days, among a few other increments.

Silver can be used to buy tangible things like shield upgrades, and new loadout slots (read: docking stations for extra ships) to use mid-fight to change up your strategy. I hate that I even have to explain all this, because it would be much better suited as a $60 game where you get everything, and simply unlock goodies automatically like Call of Duty by ranking up. But CCP is no stranger to microtransactions so your mileage may vary.

Despite the convoluted focus on getting players to spend money, I can see myself constantly going into EVE: Valkyrie for skirmishes months down the line whenever I boot up the Oculus Rift. It's addicting and easy to pick up, and the progression system has legs without feeling like I need to dump money into it. It's crazy to think we've come this far, as I can recall playing MechWarrior back in the early 2000s with a rudimentary helmet, dual joysticks, a?nd a rumble vest at a friend's house. This is much cooler t??han that, suffice to say.

I hope this turns out better than Dust 514.

The post Review: EVE: Valkyrie appeared first on Destructoid.

Hands-on, eyes-on with EVE: Valkyrie

EVE: Valkyrie has been one of the best full-game showings for virtual reality (versus novel tech demos, which are still my favorite use of VR) for a while now and as we edge towards the early 2016 wave of VR release (Rift, Vive, PlayStation VR), EVE: Valkyrie will b??e at the forefront, coming packed into R?ift pre-orders to make sure the hardware has software to really sell it.

I sat with a near-final Oculus Rift on my head for over an hour with no signs of illness, just a sweaty face and pinched nose bridge (my nose is very big). And while the in-cockpit view EVE: Valkyrie remains an incredibly cool experi??e?nce, one of my favorite things in the demo session was, oddly enough, the UI.

This is the first time I've felt closer to the Minority Report style control that the Kinect promised. Looking at a menu option from the space hub highlights it and, controller in hand, a button press selects it. This allows for cool looking H??UD style menus that actually work as well as the typical menu format -- the only one that really works -- where your options are vertical or horizo?ntal.

You can start a game, look behind you at the space bar, head to the hangar to look at your ships and "pimp your rides." I went with gaudy army camo all day, even though there are no trees in space, unless you consider trees on planets to be in space, technically. The hanga??r is where you peruse your ships and pick your four options in the Launch Tube (basically loadouts chosen when you respawn). There are Fig??hter, Heavy, and newly shown off Support ships.

The latter can shoot spherical webs into space. If your enemies fly through them, they get debuffed and vision obscured by nanobot spiders on the cockpit; if your friendlies fly through, they help them out. The supports ended up being the higher-scoring ships in most of the games we played, which went from team deathmatch to an objective capturing mode wherein you deploy drones to capture one of three points, rather than needing to hover in place, freeing you up to continue on. Or you destroy enemy drones and deploy your own. But the drones have a cool down?? upon destruction, so loosing one and leaving it unprotected might not be the best idea.

EVE: Valkyrie has no single-player, but it does have PvE introductory segments that focus on the backstory as well. There are short objective modes, a free-fly just for zooming around learning maps and maneuvers, and a survival mode with increasing AI waves.?? Given its eSports ambitions, the team is pulling the old, easy to learn, whereas, "over a perio??d of months you can be a master."

There are also ships to unlock and ways to mix the three classes. Progression milestones unlock blueprints, and there are overall Pilot Reputations as well as class breakdow??n. Once you land a blueprint, new ships are paid for in salvage, which is collected from dead opponents during matches and split evenly between all players and differentiated into three rarity types. Aside from gaudy army camo, you can also customize the UI colors, cockpit controls, and other aspects from the first-person view you'll spend most of your time in.

The flying is smooth and simple, with a boost and barrel roles mapped to the triggers. Looking around the cockpit rather than straight down the sights will help you keep? track of enemies zipping around in vast 3D space, and the lock-on missiles are actually mapped to where you're looking to encourage you to keep your head on a swivel and allow you t?o lock on to opponents just by line of sight. Plus, it's pretty neat to look down at my surrogate mannequin VR body and suddenly have boobs.

While sensitivities will vary, I was happy that could spend over an hour ensconced in VR without issue. And the partnership with Oculus to launch with all Rift pre-orders is a smart one on both accounts: Oculus gets software to sell the very idea of VR while Valkyrie ensures a more robust early player-base.

The post The ?coolest thing about VR space dogfights? The menu?s appeared first on Destructoid.

Hands-on at E3

EVE Valkyrie is super neat. It looks like a coo?l dogfighting-in-space game when you watch a trailer, but actually being in the cockpit with the Oculus Rift? It's a trip and used to great effect. Looking down at your fa?ke chest and hands on the controls is sort of weird, like having a phantom extra limb.

Moving your head to look around the cockpit and out of the windows is neat. I knew there was just a wall behind me in real life, but wh?en I turned around like I was backing out of a driveway,? I saw more bits of my ship.

It's not a perfect simulation. You still lose peripheral vision and have to do mildly exaggerated neck movements to look up or down or left. Maybe a mix of Oculus type tech and eye tracking is our future. But for the time being, EVE Valkyrie works remarkably well with the Rift -- and looks better than anything? I've played with it. 

My time with Valkyrie was short, a two-on-two deathmatch. I spent a lot of the time marveling that I could look up through the clear cockpit and ou??t into space. Then suddenly remembering that I should probably be watching the (space) road so I don't run into debris or opposing missiles.

The space dogfighting was straightforward. Thrusters to accelerate, a brake to slow down. The ship was equipped with missiles an??d a machine gun. The missiles can shoot?????????????????????????? up to five at once if you paint your target long enough.

I manag?ed a kill and two deaths. Looking up and seeing the missiles that are coming to kill you is pretty neat. When your cockpit shatters and you lose control of the ship and y?ou've been killed, it feels odd. And then you're back in runway and ready to rocket out to space again. It's a neat experience, one the Rift is tailored for. 

The post EVE Valkyrie is the best use of? the Oculu?s Rift so far appeared first on Destructoid.

Five devs talk about making a VR game

For a panel at EVE Fanfest 2014, some of the developers at CCP's Newcastle studio sat down to discuss what exactly goes into making EVE Valkyrie. The long version's in this video. The short version is that whatever they're doing, it's great so far.

The post This is the th??ought process behind making EVE Valkyrie appeared first on Destructoid.

Muscle memory got me typing 'Valkyria'

Destructoid's Brett Makedonski is over in Iceland for EVE Fest contributing to the over fishing and extinction of whales. He also brought us a meaty (not whale) preview of EVE Valkyrie and I'm not sure if I'll ever write it enough to overwrite my desire t?o type 'Valkyria.' Keep up the? great work, SEGA.

Anyways, all we had to go on that the PS4/PC (Project Morpheus/Oculus Rift) looked great in Unreal 4 was Brett's word and should we really believe him? Well, he seems to have been truthing this time, as the pre-alpha f??ootage shows.

The post Can ?you EVEn handle footage of EVE? Valkyrie on Unreal 4? appeared first on Destructoid.

The former tech demo might not see release in 2014

EVE Valkyrie was a surprise hit at the EVE Fanfest earlier this year, so much so that there were calls to turn what was essentially a tech demo into a full game. Chief managing office at CCP Dave Reid has spoken to Digital Spy, confirming that Valkyrie will start off small ??but they have "grand visions" for the game.

"Now there's going to be complexity, and I won't promise [that] you'll see that in 2014 when we launch, but that is ultimately the long-term vis?ion," Dave explains. I'm sure part of the hesitancy in making any promises lies with the Oculus Rift hardware and how well it's adopted; no point in ploughing months of dev time into a game seemingly so dependent on hardware if said hardware fails to sell.

Reid sums up this sentiment pretty well: "...making this a game requires us to not just have a hot tech demo that just works for a few minutes, but actually gives the full robust capability that a gamer comes to expect when they're playing a game." Still, even without Oculus Rift support, I'd still like to play Valkyrie if only for the current dearth of ??space combat sims. 

EVE Valkyrie to last year?s eventually work alongside EVE Online [Digital Spy]

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Well, this is cool

EVE Valkyrie has been officially announced at gamescom, as what started as an impressive tech demo has transformed into a full-fledged game. Originally code-named "EVE-VR?", the Oculus Rift-powered title puts players in the cockpits of space vehicles as they duke it out with other virtual dogfighters.

Not much is known yet about EVE Valkyrie other than it's expecting a 2014 release date, and that it's being developed by CCP's Newcastle studio in the United Kingdom. When asked by IGN whether there?? would be any single-player aspects, CCP dodged with an uninformative "we're not ready to talk about that yet."

Hopefully more news comes out of gamescom about Valkyrie. It looks like one of the most promising uses of virtual reality that could be offered to an already huge and established fanbase.

Gamescom: EVE Valkyrie: O??culus Rift's Space Dogfighting Game [IGN]

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