Yes... as a follow-up to my last post I have a second thing!
I was browsing through the offerings on the PS store and came across this. I admit I was a bit excited. Now I know I'm about 18 months late to review this, but give me a break I only started this blog in October and only discovered it a few days ago. I'm a huge P&T fan so when I saw they released a VR game called Penn & Teller VR: Frankly Unfair, Unkind Unnecessary & Underhanded I knew straight away I had to get it and try it out. I was looking forward to the whole "taking part in the act" thing myself and was intrigued about the "party" aspect of this game.
The idea of this game is that P&T teach you to be what I can only describe as an assistant in 14 routines. Routines like picking a card in the room, putting the headset on and P&T using their usual shock and awe techniques to tell you what the card is. (I won't spoil the secrets on here, but anyone can do it). And some (if not the majority) of the routines aren't magic tricks - they are just ways to prank your friends. They cover good healthy topics like immersion therapy, water torture cells and a version of their legendary bullet catch (although I like this one, I felt they could have done more to make it more like the actual stage routine). It's slightly prank-heavy but the idea is that you create the show, build them up - then prank them mercelessly.
You create the show, you can select the routines that the game does for your friends. Some are mundane (Penn backstage for example), and some are bloody terrifying, and some are gross... You set it up before the guests even put on the headset so by the time they play it they think it's a single show that you couldn't have possibly manipulated to fuck with them and their fears.
But I should clarify one thing. This isn't a game. It's basically a way to fuck with your friends. Which is where I was screwed. Because if you haven't noticed at the moment we can't exactly invite friends round for an evening of beer and psychological torture, I was kind of left watching this trying to imagine peoples reactions to the routines it was offering. I did a few on myself but like with all magic it's not the same without a volunteer. I spent a while trying to figure out whether these routines work and how good the pranks were... I was left with only my imagination...
Until my primary-school-aged son walked into the room. I suddenly had a... test subject. So with careful planning, I created a show on the VR for him. Steering away from the ones I thought would completely psychologically torture him like Immersion Therapy (I'm not a monster) instead I let him try escaping from the water torture cell (which I am determined to do myself dammit!), catch a bullet and play Rock Paper Scissors, as well as watch a P&T routine which I'll discuss later.
I soon came to realise that this game actually made a good tool for teaching people a very basic skill of misdirection. The VR show acts brilliantly to distract your participant. The subject thinks they are still part of the group and that we are all involved in what they are doing, but the fact they have huge goggles on their eyes and are in a "different reality" allows for a great deal of misdirection and other "prank" work to happen. It goes to show how vulnerable people really are in this situation as you can get away with pretty much anything! I won't go into details too much on the pranks because it would spoil the fun for you, but my son, bless him fell for them hook, line and sinker. He was suitably annoyed with me but saw it in good humour.
It kinda makes me think it was trying to be a futuristic magic kit, teaching some basic principles of misdirection and mind-fuckery, and in true P&T style allows a sense of shock and playfulness to come through it without leaving you truly scarred for life. It's not really a solo player kind of thing, and once you know how it works, like all magic it's not necessarily as interesting for you to take part in, but it doesn't really matter. It's meant to bring friends together to do something fun and confusing - and scare a few people to death for those with no moral compass.
There is an issue with this thought though. It tries to be a magic show and prank show in the same product, and to be honest, I would rather they focused on the magic side more than pranks, but I get that pranks are way easier to do than magic is in VR (let's face it no matter what happens it's easy to figure out sleights and vanishes in VR and creatively at the moment it could be limiting) but there's a lot of opportunity for magic in this which might have been missed in favour for easier shock and awe pranks.
A VR headset could be a really good tool for magic and we are already starting to see an online shift into magic - could this be the next big thing? In this particular iteration...no, it isn't - it relies too much on gotchas and heavy-handed pranks instead of things that would make your friends jaw drop. If it had more wonder and routines that integrate real life and VR it could be a really cool tool for magicians to have at home. But there is a catch.
It advertises itself as a party game, and although I haven't tried it with friends yet I am concerned it could have a very short shelf life. Because some of the tricks rely on the second screen anyone else with you suddenly is in on the trick. Play with more than one person and suddenly everyone else knows exactly how it works. The Rock Paper Scissors game will only work with one person at a party - and in fact, every prank would be the same... And that would be a concern. Let's face it once one person has had the living daylights scared out of them everyone is going to be expecting you to fuck with them... Which take the fun out of it. You start to become limited in what you can do.
Especially as a couple of the pranks are pants... I'll be honest. There's one about the future of handsfree tech - well that has been around for quite some time - it's also painfully obvious how it's done. Take those pranks out of the equation, and you're left with fewer options to fool your friends. I'd be interested to see how long it lasts with friends but I'm not sure how long it would keep a single group of people entertained once the first victim had done their show.
One thing I will say is that they've clearly tried to put a bit of what I can only describe as a love letter to P&T fans like myself in there. You find yourself in their theatre at the start, going backstage to what they call an intimate recreation of their lounge, you feel like P&T are your friends guiding you on how to do these pranks. You gain a real connection to P&T through this. And this is summed up by what some may call the most mundane of the "bits", but for me was a true favourite. You're watching a magic show.
In one bit Penn and Teller do their cups and ball routine for you. It's a beautiful recreation of their routine, but instead of you being seated in the audience, you are standing right in front of them. It's like having a personal intimate performance by two of the worlds best magicians right in front of you. It's really easy to think that as it's CGI it's just fake, but you can actually glimpse the balls being loaded. It's not perfect and I can't guarentee this, but I'm pretty sure the trick uses all the sleights they do in the real show.
It's a nice homage to two wonderful performers, and makes you feel that you are with them on stage - or their assistant in pranking your friends. I think this game shows there is a real potential here for magic in VR. If you could set up a third screen on say a phone it would be a lot better or develop tricks based around VR like the competitive eating one in this game it would probably have a much longer shelf life. It's a nice idea, but like many things in VR just needs thinking out a bit more before it could be truly amazing. It could be like Inject of VR - if it was developed and thought through more... but until then it's probably good for a few play throughs when different guests come around - if we are ever allowed to do that again!
And there goes the last full review I will write on this blog... Well until the next interesting thing anyway.