Vacation Simulator review: Slap on some SPF %number%, have fun with VR robots

Enlarge / What happens when your virtual vacation's metrics go awry? Find out in the delightful, aimless Vacation Simulator. (credit: Owlchemy Labs)

When I think about the history of virtual reality as viable, consumer-grade tech, I think about a certain "game jam" in early 2015. Valve had been putting the final touches on its first SteamVR system, and the company invited a wave of interested developers to get in on the ground floor and make whatever weird demos they wanted, all in order to promote the nascent concept of "room-scale VR."

Four years later, those early efforts remain some of VR's must-play games, apps, and experiences. Chief among those is Job Simulator, a hilarious mini-game reaction to the idea that the rise of VR and robots would lead to a future in which humans forgot what real jobs were like.

That absurd premise was met by a quality still unmatched by most VR games: if you can reach for something in an Owlchemy Labs game, you can grab it, play with it, use it, throw it, juggle it, and more. The game's designers built a world whose best quality was somewhat invisible and therefore often overlooked: you likely won't realize how awesome Job Simulator is until you boot into another VR game and yell at its static, dead environs. Like, why can't I pick up that animal, throw it into a microwave, nuke it, put it between two pieces of bread, add some cheese and sauce, lift that sandwich to my real-life mouth, eat it, and see my VR avatar puke up the result?

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments