Heavy Gear Kickstarter Adds Oculus Rift Support

Fanghawk

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Heavy Gear Kickstarter Adds Oculus Rift Support

If funded, Heavy Gear Assault will use virtual reality to make players feel like actual Mech pilots.

The Oculus Rift is a fascinating piece of technology, but until everybody has one, we can't be sure it's an appropriate fit for each genre. After all, the Rift is a VR headset <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118663-Project-Holodeck-Creates-Accessible-Virtual-Reality>and not a holodeck; odds are most players will be sitting comfortably with a controller in hand, experiencing a slight disconnect between their perceptions and reality. That said, the Rift could be very effective in mecha and flight sim genres, where both players and avatars are seated while driving their chosen vehicles. CCP provided a great example <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123553-EVE-in-Virtual-Reality>with its EVE-inspired space combat demo, and now Stompy Bot Productions intends to adopt the technology as well. The developer has officially announced that, if its Heavy Gear Assault Kickstarter is funded, the game will launch with Oculus Rift support to help players feel like honest-to-God mech pilots.

The original Heavy Gear videogames, and the tabletop versions before them, depict a war fought between human-piloted "gears" on the colony world of Terra Nova. Stompy Bot's Heavy Gear Assault is set in the universe's competitive dueling circuit, where players engage in arena-based multiplayer matches to earn honor, fame, and fortune. Stompy Bot has also revealed that <a href=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stompybot/heavy-gear-assault-0/posts/490704>it will include single-player chapters as stretch goals, with each "episode" depicting a mission from previous games or the universe's established lore.

Personally, I think mecha games are a great direction for the Oculus Rift to take. While the headset certainly feels immersive, trying to represent natural human movement is more complicated, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123278-VR-Enthusiast-Puts-Mirrors-Edge-Through-Oculus-Rift-Paces>sometimes disorienting players or triggering full-blown nausea. The Rift sounds like a more natural fit for the somewhat-niche piloting genre, suiting its games the same way joysticks did for the era of flight simulators. We won't know yet how effectively Stompy Bot can implement the technology, since Heavy Gear Assault still has another $770,000 to raise before continuing the discussion. In the meantime, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119294-Hawken-Adds-Oculus-Rift-VR-Support>hopefully teams like Hawken's Meteor Entertainment will fill in the gaps, making us feel like the pilots we aren't.

Source: Joystiq

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Alcaste

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I loved Heavy Gear as a kid. Here's hoping this takes off. Sadly, I don't have any money I'd be fine with throwing out of a moving van, though. Too many kickstarters lately :(
 

Product Placement

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It's amazing how popular the rift is among game developers, trying to make it big on Kickstarter.

Seriously, it's like a law now, that one of your first stretch goals has to be "Oculus support"
 

VitusPrime

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...I never knew this kick starter was around.

LOOK ALIVE GEAR HEADS!

OT: Oculus support would be awesome for this game, hope it gets past kickstarter.
 

Pandalisk

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VitusPrime said:
...I never knew this kick starter was around.

LOOK ALIVE GEAR HEADS!
Ah ha, flash backs to my childhood


I don't think i'd kick start a new Heavy Gear TV series for sure
 

Covarr

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May 29, 2009
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It's true, Rift's strong point is definitely games with a first-person view where you don't directly move your character (Mech games, racing games, tanks, etc). Choosing the right games to use this technology with will mean the difference between success and failure.

I'm sure that won't stop someone from attempting a puzzle game or 3rd-person platformer for it though.

P.S. Thanks
 
Apr 28, 2008
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Holy shit I remember that game. Used to play it quite a bit waaaaay back in the day. It was like the only game we had for Linux. Remember it being pretty unwieldy control-wise, but I loved the zero-g sections.

I'll keep my eye on this. Might even chip in. I don't really care about the Rift stuff, but the game sounds neat!
 

Saulkar

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I created this waaaayyyyyyyy back in 2009 to celebrate my love of the game!


I think it is comparable in quality to the original series.

On the other hand I am really not (ecstatically) optimistic about this game anymore seeing as it appears to be trying to fund itself exclusively through donations. Something that I feel will not do the series justice.
 

dakkster

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I absolutely LOVED the first game. It didn't quite live up to the MechWarrior legacy, but it was still a highly entertaining game. The second one never got a proper release in Sweden and when I found it as a warez release, the key bindings were impossible to get right...